voussoirs

Saturday, 25 October 2025

PAIRS 24 – DOLPHINS & THE KILLER WHALE

The Sculpture by the Sea 2025, (Bondi, Australia), displays a puzzling leap that presents as an ironic visual game, with dolphins arising from an oversized toaster. The work, called SOMA, is by the artist Drew McDonald - see: https://www.instagram.com/p/DP-_MMLEfHc/ and https://share.google/UEUhF4bxbWaqn7sxn. One is left wondering why we have this unusual association, as the engineering of the piece is admired. The leap has been cleverly structured to read as the arc of two dolphins, all apparently unsupported as they surface from the red SOMA block modelled as a piece of kitchenware. Here one is reminded of how the cliché tap with running water stands elevated with its puzzling appearance, free from any supporting supply pipe. Such deception is the art of engineering in sculptures.

The blurb tries to explain the work:

Drew McDonald, recipient of both the People’s Choice and Kid’s Choice Awards in 2024, returns to Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi with his new work, 'SOMA'.
Drawing inspiration from Dada, Surrealism, and Pop Art, McDonald transforms familiar icons and creatures into playful and absurd amalgamations that challenge perception and spark curiosity.
Crafted from stainless steel, paint, concrete, and sandstone, and installed in Marks Park, 'SOMA' blends the familiar with the unexpected.
Discover more about this sculpture in the Exhibition Catalogue or by downloading the Sculpture by the Sea App.

One is reminded of Banksy's Dismaland work, where the same wonderment is exhibited. A large killer whale is modelled leaping from a standard toilet pan: see - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-34330108. This work touches on the sarcasm and cynicism we see in Banksy's cultural commentary so familiar to us in his political and satirical street art, his stencilled graffiti, a situation that is here layered with an exaggerated, comic absurdity. These stinging critiques fizz with a fire not seen in the Sculpture by the Sea work which seems happy just to be crazily clever, transforming familiar icons and creatures into playful and absurd amalgamations that challenge perception and spark curiosity.

Banksy’s work has more in its assemblage: there is a man standing nearby, holding a hoop up for the orca to pass through, with an adjacent inflatable play pool waiting for the splash, turning the toilet joke into a silent scream protesting against the tricks we train these intelligent, captive animals to perform for our careless, lazy entertainment.

While there is a similarity in these two pieces that show marine mammals leaping from incongruous sources, they stand as stark contrasts, with Banksy's piece criticising the premise of the other that uses dolphins as a visually quirky intervention for our passive delight; for our quiet 'appreciation' - playful and absurd amalgamations that challenge perception and spark curiosity. One can hear the soundless scream raging in the Banksy piece, an horrific shriek that is made tolerable, manageable, with its nonsensical premise.

Is McDonald’s piece referencing the warming of the rising oceans in an 'arty' manner – being ‘toasted’? Perhaps we are reading too much into this work by ‘over-thinking’ it? One can see the toaster’s brand name, SOMA, as the fictional drug from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World that managed emotions; or the survival horror video game of this name, perhaps suggesting the outcome of our careless inaction? Is the message that we are ignoring the terrible impacts of climate change, being ‘Soma-ed’?# Maybe the inference is self-referential?

The concern with modern art is that the artist can do anything and just leave the artwork alone, for the viewer to bring value and meaning to it, perhaps thoughts never contemplated by the artist. McDonald seems more interested in playing with Dada, Surrealism, and Pop Art than in any intellectual concerns, for he fails to even suggest or hint at these references. Banksy's work is always pointed and intelligently clear, stinging complacency with its multi-layered intent.

Google AI Overview:

Soma

In Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, soma is a fictional drug used by the citizens of the World State to control their emotions and maintain social stability. It serves as a pleasure-inducing "opiate of the masses," providing instant happiness and escape from unpleasant feelings, which eliminates the need for religion, art, and deep emotional experiences. The drug allows the populace to remain passive and content, reinforcing the novel's themes of technological control and the suppression of individuality.

Wikipedia

Soma (stylized as SOMA) is a 2015 survival horror video game developed and published by Frictional Games. It follows Simon Jarrett, who finds himself on an underwater remote research facility under mysterious circumstances, which contains machinery that exhibit human characteristics such as possessing a personality and consciousness. He embarks upon discovering its history, while trying to make sense of his predicament and potential future.

McDonald's 2024 submission to Sculpture by the Sea:

Drawing inspiration from Dada, Surrealism, and Pop Art, McDonald transforms familiar icons and creatures

into playful and absurd amalgamations that challenge perception and spark curiosity.

PAIRS 23 – SCIENCE & OPERA

The recent publication of the Isola Della Musica Opera House in Hanoi by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop - see: -https://www.dezeen.com/2025/10/21/isola-della-musica-renzo-piano-building-workshop/ - reminds one of the Australian Academy of Science building in Canberra, now called The Shine Dome: see – https://shinedome.org.au/.# The similarity is not only in the idea of gleam, with one having ‘Shine’ in its title, and the other being promoted as ‘a pearlescent opera house,’ with ‘a pearl-like appearance,’ but also in the concept of form: both projects have pierced domes with arches.

Isola Della Musica Opera House in Hanoi.

Australian Academy of Science Building in Canberra.

Isola Della Musica Opera House in Hanoi.

The new opera house adopts an old idea that seems to be inspired by the example of the unusual roof of the Sydney Opera House, with its use of quirky roof forms for these functions, tiled to catch the light. No doubt the building will look beautifully ‘pearlescent,’ but it will very likely lack the articulated rigour of the Sydney forms that use a different gloss to define its spherical surface segments with a beautiful rigour that the Piano project has turned into an amorphous massing missing such precise, geometric subtlety.

The new copper cladding on the dome has yet to weather.

The Australian Academy of Science building is an iconic domed building located adjacent to the Australian National University campus in Canberra. It was designed an astonishing sixty-six years ago by Roy Grounds, in 1959. The building is a significant example of mid-century modern architecture and is on the National Heritage List. It functions primarily as the headquarters of the Australian Academy of Science and is used for academic events, conferences, and functions. This dome, supported on surrounding arches, is clad in copper and stands in a perimeter pool.

Australian Academy of Science Building in Canberra.

Isola Della Musica Opera House in Hanoi.

The opera house has an almost identical portion, with other parts swelling high and low to encompass the associated purposes. We are told that "The shape of the shell is not arbitrary but is related to the functions and the volumes covered," which seems self-evident. Perhaps the statement is highlighting the fact that it is not like Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim where the top one third of the building is pure dramatic ‘expression’ without any other function? This domed structure, like the Roy Grounds form, is surrounded by water. The domes in both projects are perforated to introduce light into the interiors.

Bilbao Guggenheim, section.

For more detail see:

https://www.google.com/search?q=science+dome+canberra&sa=X&sca_esv=e56551571a6f13fc&sxsrf=AE3TifO2O_9BZZjz4-hvC64y3ZdEdknmiA%3A1761345263241&udm=50&fbs=AIIjpHxCtmkhHKu27CW9pNYJlh4RoZZ_y8scaivnpjp3a9aEstvyzM9WArA0Q4B52rAVe2QNsj_451Xh5JY5sEH7FWDt1szGffc68go3UGnLJxO8GWLaWQK7w7UYt5NMiWRuQREl6_22V7hkW-B3BHpN7h15JFHFhqWKB1ZUT8My4CyhO44VyARPzlD9u2lh23x2zt0cYtrLVEfbvbgIe_5-Oc-t_7cO8oDZ-9OSXO16gmo0Z8ETQ-4&aep=1&ntc=1&ved=2ahUKEwjh9Pe18r2QAxVmzTgGHVRNNZoQ2J8OegQICBAD&biw=1920&bih=1065&dpr=1&mstk=AUtExfC76UDeav0P5SsxBQF_I7hs-Da16ST-oK51SyMWop9ov6a9rOc4m7k3b4gjToyKYs2jd0gsWi0Bwk0h2OdBanC8bnggMbxt5q-JScAM4dt8nb0cxV65mxlV9lACuoCGmd4a9gvmJvFhup079Xqd2u8YGNXJIw6htEc90JnjTyegwYPaVGnybSpkRKEsF9ZFVqud46efvvkuqHt0u4ALtdTAin7y2tqb1Z_nu3O975_8Oe4-4rGFKrgW-ufdPi2K6SCVwPJXKL8-6cHja7FXbK64ADbrJp0_ZK64gzB-C39gB27Wsgy0lU4jFns1xTD_nniVMnn5GygEYdYbATHymUW5cUmG5BdYaw&csuir=1&mtid=ff_7aMzIC4vC4-EP3-GHmAU

Friday, 24 October 2025

PAIRS 22 - HOUSING & PUB

The Sekyra Flowers housing project recently published by Studio Libeskind has many of the eccentric characteristics of the Ettamogah pub: see - https://www.dezeen.com/2025/10/21/sekyra-flowers-daniel-libeskind-housing-prague/ and Ettamogah Pub - Wikipedia https://share.google/JwsU1ev8hTR2jI3oJ.

Sekyra Flowers Housing Project, Prague.

The Jewish Museum, Berlin.

One wonders if Daniel Libeskind finds himself burdened with the expectations generated by the project that made his reputation - The Jewish Museum in Berlin. This special project presented what was described as street map diagrams sprawled, gouged and scratched across a tortured, angular mass expressive of its subject's terrible trauma; but have these transformative shapes and massings now become a decorative style; a recognisable Libeskind motif? Why might the glass observation deck on the Boerentoren skyscraper in Antwerp require such patterning? – see: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/06/24/studio-libeskind-boerentoren-updated-plans-antwerp/.Why is the Fan d'Issy, a mixed use building in Paris, so profiled? – see: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/03/03/fan-dissy-studio-libeskind-paris-green-wall/. Why might the housing blocks in Prague be deformed?

The Jewish Museum, Berlin.

Glass Observation Deck, Boerentoren Skyscraper, Antwerp.

Fan d'Issy, A Mixed Use Building, Paris.

The Ettamogah pub is an expressive cartoon image generated by Ken Maynard as a quirky sketch to background his humorous illustrations published in the Australasian Post. One can liken it to the exaggerations in the classic 'hot rod' sketches that seem to have become the car designers' inspiration rather than merely remaining a diagrammatical emphasis for the comic book reader's expressive enjoyment: WOW!

Sekyra Flowers Housing Project, Prague.

Likewise, we can now see the pub sketch in actual built form in four places across Australia in an effort to create a desirable tourist attraction in the same vein of such absurd, unusual things as The Big Pineapple and all the other 'Big' things spread across the country yearning for attention. A prawn, an oyster, a bull, a ram, an apple, etc. all wait to perform their unabashed amazements for the eyes' entertainment. The logic seems to be that the boredom of everyday existence can be broken by differently unusual things, if only for a short period. John Gloag once described a twisted, skewed, half-timbered Medieval façade as being "interesting for about three minutes." One thinks of Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim in the same manner, being created with much the same intent: to attract tourists to town. It has been so successful with this ploy that nearly every city, town, and village in the world wants its 'Gehry Guggenheim.'

Bilbao Guggenheim.

While the deformities in the two projects - the housing and the pub - bring the other to mind, one has to ask about the intentions of such skewed variations in the housing scheme. The pub is clear about its origins and ambitions; one is waiting to discover those behind the Libeskind project. Might it be the maintenance of a reputation gained by an architect who did unusually expressive contortions for the Jewish Museum to create Brand Libeskind, just as we have Brand Gehry and Brand Hadid? Surely the distortions are not merely for 'comic book-like' expressive wonderment labelled 'Libeskin'?

"He's the chap who designed the startling Jewish Museum in Berlin?"

"Oh! Him: mmm. Still doing it eh?"

Fan d'Issy, A Mixed Use Building, Paris.

Sekyra Flowers Housing Project, Prague.

Libeskind is reported as saying:

"Sekyra Flowers will be both an architectural contribution to Prague's current renaissance and my personal tribute to this magical city," said Libeskind.

"Rising at the heart of the new Rohan City district, the towers represent one of the most ambitious and exciting urban projects I have ever designed. Their foundations are rooted in a deep ethical and philosophical commitment – the very essence of why I practice architecture," Libeskind continued.

"For me, it is not only about shaping buildings, but about creating a living environment that embodies openness, community and a forward-looking vision – values that have guided my work from the very beginning."

Alas, we still have no idea why the buildings are so distorted.

Studio Libeskind expands on matters with the statement:

Situated near Prague's historic Old Town and the Vltava River, the four buildings at Sekyra Flowers will have varying geometric forms clad in reflective, metallic tiles.

Renders show staggered, angular rooflines, some of which will be topped with green roofs to "evoke the impression of blossoms opening in bloom", according to Studio Libeskind.

Blooming blossoms have a different integrity and scale, with the buildings potentially becoming comical in their own floral way - something like the Big Sunflowers?

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ON GARDENING

I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exulted criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants, but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the best. Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden Mitchell Beazley London 1998 – Introduction (first published 1908)

MORE IS LESS

Significantly, in the era of the ‘information revolution’, the same process is now affecting disinformation: whereas in the past it was lack of information and censorship which characterized the denial of democracy by the totalitarian state, the opposite is now the case. Disinformation is achieved by flooding TV viewers with information, with apparently contradictory data. The truth of the facts is censured by over-information, as we have seen from the press and television discussing the Balkans. The globalitarian state, built out of economic-strategic alliances, is no longer old ‘Anastasia’ with her scissors: it is Babel. Now more is less. And in some cases, less than nothing. Deliberate manipulation and unintentional accidents have become indistinguishable.

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

‘That which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause,’ claims the wisdom of the ancients. p.76

As Negroponte has rightly remarked, with the ‘liberation of information’ on the Web, what is most lacking is meaning or, in other words, a context into which Internet users could put the facts and hence distinguish truth from falsehood. On the Web, where, as everyone knows, the terrorist temptation is constant and where depredations of hackers are committed with impunity in a strange state of legal indeterminacy, the difference between (true) information and (false) deception fades a little more each day. In entering the looking-glass worlds of television and home computers, we are in the end left in the position of Kinglake’s old ‘English soldiery’. As they saw it,

insofar as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no size, no shape and was made up of nothing . . . In such conditions, each separate gathering . . . went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging.

As Albert Camus asserted: ‘When we are all guilty, that will be true democracy.’ p.78

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

At the end of his book, Kapuściński asks whether, in our encounters with others in the future:

Will we jointly wish to refer to what – as Conrad puts it - ‘speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity of dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.’?*

* J. Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’: A Tale of the Sea, New York: W.W.Norton, 1979.

Architecture stands in between of all of these circumstances of encounter, but how does it explain itself beyond being a bespoke ‘grand design’ of a potential genius?

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

Herodotus . . . wanted to know them because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the world, he did not believe that we should isolate ourselves from Others, or slam the gates in their faces. Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be.

“And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.”

Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/04/steve-coogan-interview-stan-and-ollie

HILLS

The hills bespeak a healing power and closeness to unseen help now lost in the security of modern welfare. Those who befriend the silent peaks in a lifetime's work know well their embracing strength. (p.91)

For only once is it given to man to lie in the arms of the eternal forces which give all matter form. (p.98)

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

This blog began as a co-operative concept. While the idea and the stimulus was generated through discussion, the blog has turned out to be an individual enterprise. SPAN stands for ‘Spence and’ in the context of others. As a word, it fitted in nicely with the idea of voussoirs - parts and pieces, complete with keystones, that could ‘span’ the gaps in understanding and communication. The word SPAN also allowed for a shared input into a blog.

Spence Jamieson is an architect and the author of these articles. The blogs show the scope of his interests.

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

the wedge to isolate, array and shape ideas; the keystone to highlight core, supporting issues. voussoirs is a concept to start an architectural discussion to span the large gap in the debate on things architectural; a bridging of the void in architectural issues by exploring considered bits and pieces. The state of the profession today is highlighted by silence and self. It is introvert and protective. Educational centres remain isolated within their own constructs, being run primarily as businesses. They put very little back into the community. They indulge themselves in their own interests and exclude contrary and different ideas and ideals. They constantly avoid any challenge on concepts or strategies that might change the plotted course. Rarely does comment ever come from this academic world into the public or any arena. Very few publications help direct the public interest. Rarely do newspapers grasp the issues and explore them. One aspect may be given space in the popular press, but architectural debates and concerns are rarely given attention. The professional institutes are doing much the same as the educational institutions. Private practice is doing likewise, offering, if anything, only its own pushy propaganda to the public. Yet there is a discussion and debate in these silences that needs a larger and more open platform. Discussion is alive and well amongst a few in at least one curry house, but the debate needs to be a broadened. voussoirs is the place for this discussion. It is a site for ideas, comment, articles, and critiques on things architectural and associated issues. It is here that matters can be aired and ideas discussed and debated without fear of the neglect and disdain that institutions and private groups and publishers give to open speaking and differing ideas.

There can be no true understanding of any idea if discussion and debate are curtailed in favour of a preferred position.

ON COMMUNICATION

. . . there has been a growing feeling of concern to solve what is now commonly called “the problem of communication.” But if one observes efforts to solve this problem, he will notice that different groups who are trying to do this are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.2

ON ART & METHOD

Even in relationships with inanimate objects and with nature in general, something very like communication is involved. Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it be properly said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.4

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

The early 50's and 60's is a period that is gaining interest in architectural ideas. Perhaps this is why Princeton chose to republish The Tao of Architecture. It is a beautiful little book that discusses the implications of traditional wisdom in architecture. Given the astonishing lack of direction in current architectural theory, the publication is very timely.

Amos Ih Tiao Chang, The Tao of Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956, reprinted 2017.

p.26

Laotzu's idea of formation is heavily concerned with emptiness or non-existence. To him who regards nothing as persistent, what is essentially important in things is the possibility of becoming something, not the opportunity of remaining as something confronting deterioration. Consequently, meaningful incompletion is taken as the most desirable state of tangible being.

p.22

. . . the full meaning of existence is beyond the power of any manifestation. What appears tangible, architectural or natural, is only a means to suggest that which is lacking in appearance and existing in man's intangible understanding and aesthetic feeling.

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts – serious, sad thoughts – and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That's because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not just a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self. Whereas imagination is nothing but compensation. There's even something horribly autistic about sitting in one spot and spinning out invention by the yard. How much more interesting an open and poetic process involving contemplation, study, movement, meditation and composition.

Kenneth White Across The Territories Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa Polygon Edinburgh 2004 p.86

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time - - - is he who shall create poems in stone.

When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

. . . no one can relieve (the architect) from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but (the architect). It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.

H.B.Creswell The Honeywood Settlement Faber and Faber Limited London 1967 (fourth edition: first edition 1930 Architectural Press) p.128

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

Everything is the symbolical representation of an idea. p.28

The same artists, who had to follow a strict rule when treating the history of God, could use all of their imagination when treating the ornamental: whence the blossoming of the grotesque and the original. p.38

In those days religion, drama, and art had the same aim and sought to provoke the same thoughts. They did not pretend to amuse the people; they endeavoured to teach them. p.51

This way of thinking and reasoning takes sometimes a very subtle turn. p.53

Hélène Fouré The French Cathedrals Their Symbolic Significance Bruce Humphries Inc. Publishers, Boston, 1931

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow that it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people’s; for you have some right to your own time, but none to their’s. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you; for those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for immortality.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture George Routledge & Sons Limited, London p.109

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

But how much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture and Painting George Routledge & Sons Limited; New York: F.P.Dutton & CO - p.64-65

ON EDUCATION

'. . those who are responsible for giving instruction in the theory of architecture should be practising architects. The warning is necessary because, strange though it may seem, English schools of architecture to-day tend to be run by men who either do not practise at all, or whose practices are for them a very subsidiary spare-time occupation. Often a teaching appointment is a means by which a clever student avoids the humiliation of entering an office as a junior assistant, thus depriving himself of the only opportunity he will ever have of learning something of the practical side of his profession from the bottom upwards. There can be no doubt whatever that the teaching of theory has suffered severely as a result of this habit: and this leads me to the conclusion that no man should be permitted to teach until he is recognized by his Faculty as a Master of Theory and Practice. In other words, he should be not only a practising architect but also, what is unfortunately a much rarer specimen, a good architect.'

W.A. Eden, The Process of Architectural Tradition, Macmillian & Co. Ltd, London, 1942, p.p. 86-87

ETHICS

Thus Pugin laid the foundation stones of that strange system which dominates the nineteenth-century art criticism and is immortalised in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: the value of a building depends on the moral worth of its creator; and a building has a moral value independent of, and more important than, its esthetic value. We must not consider this emphasis on morality peculiarly Victorian. Whenever esthetic standards are lost, ethical standards rush in to fill the vacuum; for the interest in esthetics dwindles and vanishes, but the interest in ethics is eternal.

Kenneth Clark The Gothic Revival - An Essay in the History of Taste, (1^st edition Constable 1928); third edition John Murray 1962, reprinted 1974, p.149.

MODERNITY

The everyday is covered by a surface: that of modernity. News stories and the turbulent affectations of art, fashion, and event veil without ever eradicating the everyday blahs. Images, the cinema and television divert the everyday by at times offering up to its own spectacle, or sometimes the spectacle of the distinctly noneveryday; violence, death, catastrophe, the lives of kings and stars – those who we are led to believe defy everydayness. Modernity and everydayness constitute a deep structure that a critical analysis can work to uncover.

Henri Lefebvre, The Everyday and Everydayness, in Stephen Harris and Deborah Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1997, p.37.

NAMING

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself. . . . All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended; the unique insistence is, for the moment at least, sacrificed on the altar of continuity.

Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art, The University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p.1.

ON BRANDING

Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. It's about the manipulation of the virtual reality in which so many live. The manipulators include anyone with an interest in what we might think of them - not just big companies with products to sell but political parties with votes to win, design gurus with clients to attract - anyone, in other words, acting in some kind of market. They all have an interest in controlling their appearance to make us believe it is the reality.

John Humphrys Beyond Words How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain 2006, p. 86-87

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/faking-provenance-misuse-of-meaning.html

PRECONCEPTION

Leone Huntsman Sand in Our Souls The Beach in Australian History Melbourne University Press 2001, p.16:

Thus first impressions were filtered through existing preconceptions, starkly revealed in Sir Joseph Banks's description of the people seen from Captain James Cook's Endeavour when it first touched on the Australian continent in 1770:

In the morn we . . . [discerned] 5 people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Here Banks refers to William Dampier's unfavourable accounts of the West Australian aboriginal people in published accounts of his landings in 1688 and 1699, and reveals his own awareness of the extent to which perception was influenced by expectation.

see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

"It can be in the morning, any old time, I wake up with an idea and it starts following you around.

"You go, 'Ah that's good' because you know when it's going to work, it's going to be fruitful.

"Other times you'll get the edge of an idea and maybe it fades away or there's just no way it can be made to serve, you know?

"Then you just, it takes its time and you work on it and if necessary you work on it more than once. I'm known to work on it two or three times before you get it right."

Les Murray

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/les-murray-latest-volume-reflects-on-bunyah/6816714

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

The world seems to find it necessary to use more and more jargon in general reporting and conversation. It is especially noticed in accounts and discussions on the arts. The ABC TV arts programme presented on 7 January 2017 at 6:15pm had more jargon than usual; indeed, had more unusual expressions than previously encountered, ones that had not been heard before:

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

looking at "the fan deck of what you do."

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

“to unpack an issue,” meaning to analyse it in some detail;

and

“to segue,” meaning to shift to a new topic or activity.

This last term is a favourite of radio announcers. The Italian word is often misspelt as ‘segway’ because of the similar phonetic sounding that is more commonly understood as Segway, the brand of a human transporter.

The parallel is interesting, as the idea of being ‘transported’ is common to both words, but it seems to hold little interest to the radio voices that appear just too cleverly happy with the use of this different, interesting expression.