Archive Project Published in Interstices 12

Thanks to the Editors, Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul, Andrew Douglas and Julia Gatley.  

Christopher Wren; St Stephen, Walbrook

It's a rare thing to stand within a node of perfect geometries. One exists for a moment in a 'weightless hour', outside of the City time. 


The air is soft and the light quiet.
Upon reaching the centre, there is nowhere closer we can get,
only stillness and nothing left to say,
from here all paths radiate away.

Memory House Models

Early iterative models, somewhere between drawing and concept design:

Book Review in BLOCK

Rich in narrative and architectural metaphor, the figurative drawings of Graham Percy are vessels of a shared New Zealand and expatriate cultural memory. This book, A Micronaut in the Wide World, The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy, written by Gregory O’Brien was my introduction to Percy and his artwork, and I have been completely enchanted by his augmented worlds and alternative histories. 


Graham Percy was born in 1938 in Stratford-on-Patea, Taranaki, a namesake inspired by Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace. Percy graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, and later moved to London in 1964 on a scholarship at the prestigious Royal College of Art. Based in London for the rest of his life, he was a successful graphic artist, illustrator, and typographer, imagining worlds for both children and adults. A Micronaut also reveals Percy’s private life as an artist. With humour and empathy he reflected on, amongst many themes, a remembered New Zealand, an expatriate condition, and Kiwis travelling through the world. 


Architecture was a realm of imagination and play in Percy’s life and art. He settled in a Le Corbusian-inspired Swedish-designed terrace house in Wimbledon, with his second wife photographer Mari Mahr. Their house was based on Le Corbusier’s Modular Man, the second bedroom is the width of the Man’s outstretched arms, with the ceiling at his fingertips.  These proportions are the same as used for the children’s bedrooms in the Unite d’Habitation and the monk’s cells at La Tourette. The Wimbledon house is ‘where living and thinking spaces merge’. Like the much loved Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, Percy’s house is a contemporary cabinet of curiosities, a microcosm of the world across time and space. 


Sir John Soane, in response to his collection, designed a house of architectural mirages.  Wall panels unfold to reveal layers of drawings and secret niches, stained glass skylights and mirrors create atmospheric and ambiguous spatial conditions. Graham Percy navigated the interior of his Wimbledon house with its carefully assembled collection of artefacts to generate ideas for drawings. Many beautiful and sensitive photographs of the Wimbledon house connect the drawings to the artefacts, and underscore how collections and memories can inspire design.  


Graham Percy’s drawings consider the explicitly architectural to the more subtle use of modular compartments in the construction of his page. The Chinese Alternative Medical Centre by the Sea (1996) is building-like, whilst retaining a playful whimsy. Chairs with architectural things behind chairs with miscellaneous things – all by the sea (2005) brings together Modular Man, oversized objects and miniature buildings, all compartmentalised on an array of chairs. 


Spreads from Percy’s visual book Arthouse (1994) further reveal his fascination with architecture.  Arthouse is a dream-like house with spaces transformed for artists such as A Vegetable Patch for Tatlin, A Garage and Workshop for Piranesi.


Percy also uses an architectural assemblage of modular compartments in the drawing The Kiwi – Fourteen Aspects (2005), where kiwi birds are stacked over the page in various scenarios – abroad in Venice wearing Venetian masks which wonderfully follow the shape of the Kiwi’s beak, a Kiwi rendered as a light bulb, and a Kiwi on the New World Order pyramid on American greenbacks. 


Typography was another passion of Percy’s which is analogous to architecture. I enjoyed a quote in the book taken from German architect Peter Behrens, that typography is “second only to architecture” in reflecting the concerns of the times. Percy wrote and illustrated Whose house is this? A Lift-and-Look ABC Book (1998) in which each letter drawn is in the form of an architectural construction. 


Percy played with juxtaposition and incongruity to create unpredictable and inventive situations. Like a ‘procession of stage-like sets’, he succinctly captured small narratives set in place and time. The drawing series Imagined Histories places aristocrats in a pre-colonial New Zealand. Here Percy not only plays with grafting the Old World onto the New World but questions this perceived hierarchy. 


Percy inserts Kiwi birds throughout history, and embraces the odd association between the NZ citizen and this flightless bird; Kiwi Ophelia (2004) has a wonderful depth and tragedy, yet it makes you laugh. The drawing of Two Kiwis in Paris (2004) took me straight back to standing on a Parisian balcony overlooking the street scene below, at once immersed in the city and the culture, yet always at a distance. 


The book is witty and moving, chapters are short well-written muses on particular scenes in the artist’s life, and there are an abundance of illustrations to lose oneself in. The author Gregory O'Brien reminds us 'A sheet of drawing paper can become a meeting place for all the books of a library, the events of a life, and the music of this or any other world'. Graham Percy has left us a wonderous world within which New Zealanders can recognise themselves, and in which any child will feel at home.


The exhibition The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy will be showing at the Gus Fisher Gallery, opening at 5.30pm on Friday 6th May until 25th June 2011. A concurrent exhibition of photographs by Graham Percy's second wife, established photographer Mari Mahr, will be shown in G2 of the Gus Fisher.

Aalto Article Published

My Aalto article from a Sept '10 post has been distilled and decanted for the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) newsletter. 

Olivier Jean: Movement Series

On Data Visualisation… Two instances of a visual image that changed the thinking of the world come to mind. My tutor once recounted an exhibition he saw as a child, of the first landing on the moon. The young Simon walked into the gallery, on the wall in front of him was a vast image of space, with the Earth in the centre, and he could hold out his thumb so that it eclipsed the planet earth. He remembers the power of that photograph, and the shift in consciousness, which ultimately changed society's perception of the Earth. Earth could be comprehended as a fragile, finite, solitary, thumb-sized dot.

The second powerful image is the graphic visualisation of the ozone hole in the atmosphere, which prompted changes in regulations restricting CHC’s and a global awareness of greenhouse gases. 

One can argue that visualisation of information can change our perception and therefore our thinking in both a personal and a collective manner.

I would like to present some images from Olivier Jean's recent work on data visualisation.

The first two images reveal data on New Zealand and Japanese earthquakes from January to March 2011. Olivier sources data from the internet, collects the variables into a spreadsheet format, and uses an open source software ‘Processing’ to transform the data. ‘Processing’ passes the values through a series of algorithms to create forms, which Oliver then brings into Illustrator using the ‘Scriptographer’ plug-in to modify and edit the drawing. 

The forms are therefore both aesthetic and functional, drawn from information, for the purpose of communication, they seek to ‘find meaning’ in ‘a bunch of numbers’.

The drawings produced allow the viewer to see and understand large amounts of information at once in an intuitive and accessible way. Olivier likens the process to that of long exposure photography, that it makes manifest a time-based collection of events. 

The third image is created from sensors built into the Macbook, this is a drawing of Olivier crossing the road to get a coffee. 

Data visualisation is a trans-disciplinary mode of working, which channels a select stream of variables from the immense databank of the web, and processes these numbers to visualise what was previously invisible. 

On Forensics

During a conversation with ESR forensic scientist Douglas Elliot, three areas of forensic science emerge which can be related to architectural design.

1. Reconstruction of Event

2. The Laboratory

3. Archiving / Databank

1. Reconstruction of Event

After the event, the forensic team arrives at the ‘scene of the crime’ as quickly as possible.

Through careful collection and observation of objects and their relative positions on the site, a past event, or narrative, is reconstructed by the scientists. Invisible traces and residues of bodies and actions are made visible or made explicit through techniques of chemical staining.

The scene is divided into ‘hot, warm and cold’ areas, the spatial framework of a laboratory and auxiliary functions are overlaid onto the scene.

Hot is the area of investigation & examination, this is the ‘laboratory’, warm is for storage of equipment, cold is for discussion and eating etc.

2. The Laboratory

In the laboratory, it’s auxiliary rooms and circulation spaces, a strict order of control and safety is adhered to because of the sensitive, mobile nature of the evidence, DNA.

The analysis of the evidence, not only can be interpreted in plan as an architectural layout of rooms and circulation, but also the techniques of analysis can be transferred to the process of design.

For example, analysis of evidence to obtain a DNA profile, is a way of visualising DNA in an abstracted manner, here in a graph format. The person can be identified through matching this graph to the DNA profiles in the archive. One could say the invisible (person) is made present though the drawing – here the drawing is the computer generated graph.

A second technique is the re-staging of possible actions which may have caused patterns at the crime scene. The restaging is captured by slow motion camera, and ‘splatter’ patterns observed. Time-based methods document the dynamic patterns of the event.

3. DNA Databank

ESR is the custodian of the National DNA Databank. This is an electronic archive of DNA profiles, collected from individuals.

Is there a near-future possibility of storing information on DNA? DNA is the most compact format onto which one can to write and store information. It can survive for long periods of time without special climatic requirements. DNA will not have to undergo reformatting as technology changes, DNA will never become obsolete.

Future practice may be a Mobile Laboratory, where DNA profiles can be revealed on site. DNA may soon be analysed to determine where in the body the blood came from, and potentially reveal characteristics of the individual – race, height, hair colour.

Reconstruction of an event is a feature of forensics, archaeology, performance, and architecture. It evokes the ‘archival impulse’ identified by Hal Foster (2002).

Michael Shanks, Professor of Archaeology at Stanford, describes archaeology as ‘an ecology of mobilizing resources, managing, organizing, persuading, of practices like collecting, walking, and intervening in the land.’ (Shanks, 2001: p.50)

He states:

‘So archaeologists do not happen upon or discover the past… archaeologists … take up and make something of what is left of the past. Archaeology may be seen as a mode of cultural production.’ (p.50)

An argument which brings us close to the interpretive and creative process of architectural design.

Shanks utilizes performance as a method to investigate the past: ‘Performance and archaeology favour body, object and place, activity and context… Both performance and archaeology work with fragment and with trace.’ (p.55) Additionally, he notes the ‘Plurality of event. Many different, sometimes contradictory and divergent, narratives are generated’ (p.60)

The connections between the disciplines is evident in etymological roots, Michael Shanks also writes:

‘archive - architecture - archaeology

The prefix arche (found in archive and architecture and archaeology) is Greek for beginning, origin, foundation, source, first principle, first place of power, authority, sovereignty. It represents a starting point or founding act in both an ontological sense ("this is whence it began") and a nomological sense ("this is whence it derives its authority").

Archives are all about narratives of origin, identity and belonging, and the politics of ownership, organization, access and use.’

From http://michaelshanks.org/

The analogies between forensic science and architecture prompt us to speculate, what would a Mobile Laboratory for Architecture be, and what new instruments could it contain for investigation of site? What forensic methods can architects draw on to expand their definition of site analysis and what kind of time-based documentation will be required? How can architects, like archaeologists, make visible an invisible narrative?

Reference:

Theatre/Archaeology by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks (Apr 27, 2001)

http://www.mshanks.com/figure-and-ground/

Wainuiomata Kaleidoscope

Tom, Iain and myself completed a 24 hour competition entry hosted by the Architectural Centre in Wellington.

The brief was to write a 'counterfactual history', to propose what may have happened to an uncompleted tunnel, running between Wainuiomata and Lower Hutt, in the decade of the 1980s.

WE HEREBY PROPOSE:

Site Plan of Wellington Area

Completed in 1980, the tunnel was converted into the world's Largest Kaleidoscope. The people of Wainuiomata viewed the events of the 80's through the lens of the Kaleidoscope and rebuilt their urban plan based on the euphoric visions they saw.

The rebuilt urban plan of Wainuiomata based on Kaleidoscopic images of 1980s

"kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλ(ός) (beauty, beautiful), είδο(ς) (form, shape) and -σκόπιο (tool for examination) – hence "observer of beautiful forms."

Long and cross - section through tunnel / kaleidoscope.

"The 1980's look so beautiful viewed from Wainuiomata"

Bill Wilson 'Real House'

'All activities occur in space. All life is movement in space. Beneath our lives there is a discoverable pattern of coming and going, of moving in this space. The pattern of movement becomes the plan of the house - it is the plan of the lives of the people. The architect does not invent plans - he discovers them.

Space is one, indivisible. You can't divide it up into little parcels. When you try, space is lost. Volumes result. If you plan volumes (boxes) in which activities are to occur, you have to put them together in such a way that the people can get from one to another. You are forcing people into packages, however well designed they may be'.


Bill Wilson 'The Small House' (1948) Annual Magazine of the Students Association of Auckland University College

From: Shaw, Peter (2003) A History of New Zealand Architecture, Rev 3rd Ed. Hodder Moa Beckett

Bill Barton, Mathematician

On Mathematics and Architecture.

Bill Barton is a Math Educator, we discussed the potential of mathematics to enable possibilities for architecture. Bill mentions a salient example of this ‘possibility’ - Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, the ongoing construction of which involves a design team including Mark Burry, an architect, and his wife Jane Burry, a mathematician.

Bill says ‘a lot of people perceive mathematics to be restricted, ordered and non-creative, so rectilinear sets of buildings and ordered things, where identifiable patterns are fairly clear, would be seen as mathematical, but something like the Guggenheim in Bilbao or La Sagrada Familia might not be. And yet in fact it’s exactly that highly designed disorder or highly designed creativity which is more mathematical, so I much rather think about mathematics and architecture as mathematics providing creative opportunities, rather then mathematics providing templates of order.’

Bill suggests that mathematics can act as the enabler, ‘its not fundamentally a source of ideas, it’s something that enables ideas to happen.’ It can be a way ‘to communicate, to activate, to develop it in strange ways, it doesn’t restrict you.’

Mathematics, like architecture, is not pre-determined, one is not learning what has already been decided. Math can enable this opening up of the field of possibilities.

In terms of education this poses an interesting question, how to educate architecture students about the possibilities offered by mathematics?

In the case of La Sagrada Familia, an understanding of mathematical principals enabled Gaudi to revise the catenary arch, the form of the towers. Math is now the mode by which the Burrys describe the lines of Gaudi’s sketches, to seamlessly document the complex geometries to enable fabrication and constructability.

Mathematics is also integrated with architecture at the scale of the detail. Bill talks about the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland, specifically the lalava or lashing around the intersections of the high wooden beams.

The ‘incredibly complicated’ lashing or binding and was installed by an artist Filipe Tohi. On his website Tohi writes ‘I believe lalava patterns were a mnemonic device for representing a life philosophy.’ Tohi also creates large sculptures based on the mathematics behind the lashings.

Photo Credit eventpolynesia.com

Within this lashing detail we have integration between art and sculpture, mathematics and architecture, memory and culture. Bill states ‘when I say its mathematics that creates the opportunities, I refer to this binding as much as I’m referring to the beautiful curved surfaces of Bilbao.’

I ask Bill about the future of maths. He describes an exploratory process that sounds very similar to the creative process identified by Edward de Bono. Bill describes mathematicians working away without necessarily knowing where this activity might suddenly turn out to be useful, but it almost always does. Edward de Bono argues that one cannot with only logic achieve a creative idea, but once you have come up with the idea, it will be logical in hindsight. (This is based on the mathematical premise of asymmetrical patterning behaviour of the brain).

Bill also describes an emergent field within mathematics, whereby its practitioners ‘link the strands’ of mathematics, which have otherwise lost touch with each other, to find solutions.

This ‘linking across the strands’ is a valuable model for architecture, particularly in this interdependent and fragile world. Not one discipline in isolation can resolve the complex problems of our ecological predicament. Architects facilitate the expertise of other consultants during the design process, so are in a position to make lateral connections across disciplines, to collaborate with like-minded people with a vision.

Mathematics is one of these disciplines that can be utilised as an enabler, to integrate source material, to open up design possibilities, and therefore increase the probability of discovering creative solutions to better the environment.


References:

de Bono, Edward (2009) Think, Before It’s Too Late; Vermillion, London

Tohi, Filipe (URL accessed 2011) http://www.lalava.net

A Jane Burry lecture on her book with Mark Burry The New Mathematics of Architecture

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1281

Te Waimate Mission Station

The Mission House at Waimate holds the title of the second oldest standing building in New Zealand (1831). It was built after the Kemp House at nearby Kerikeri Mission Station, which was constructed in 1822.

The Mission house is interesting on account of some slightly odd and quirky architecture, as well as some atmospheric interior moments.

From the front of the house, all seems to be in symmetrical order, however from the side elevation the house seems sliced in half, and from a rather bulky behind project several quite unexpected angular roof forms.

Below is the porch, with exposed shingle canopy.

Inside one is enclosed in beautiful wide Kauri boards, lining the floors, walls and ceilings. The Kauri lining, architraves and door panels were hand adzed by Maori carpenters (Shaw, 2003).

Corridors are not well loved in this age of open floor areas, however I do appreciate a darkly glowing spectral hallway, the light at the end of the ‘tunnel’.

In this house the corridor divides the front rooms of the house from the back rooms, demarcating a change in territory from public to private. The narrow space contributes to the variety of ‘species of spaces’ (Perec).

Rongo pai, the missionaries ‘Good News’ flag under a dormer window.

A form of wall lighting - candles over the stairway.

Reference: Shaw, Peter (2003) A History of New Zealand Architecture, Rev 3rd Ed. Hodder Moa Beckett