Archive of Atmosphere

Archive Project Published in Interstices 12

2011-11-16T17:03:00.001-08:00

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

Christopher Wren; St Stephen, Walbrook

2011-11-15T16:54:00.001-08:00

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

2011-08-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

Concept models for a house for my parents at Langs Beach. A couple of versions below, the differences mostly played out in the roof:

1. a folded / crystalline roof form, and

2. Pitch-o-rama...

Book Review in BLOCK

2011-05-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-17T02:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

On Data Visualisation… Two instances of visual images 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 changed so many viewers perception of the Earth, they immediately comprehended it as fragile, finite, tiny, 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

2011-03-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-05T23:36:00.001-08:00

Tom Rohm, Iain Guyenne and Emma Whemmer 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 STATE:

Site Plan of Wellington Area

Finally 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'

2011-02-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

'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

2011-02-01T01:14:00.001-08:00

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

2011-01-11T01:32:00.000-08:00

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

Two Houses by Tom Locke

2010-11-21T00:40:00.001-08:00

Driving back from Northland, after navigating one lane bridges, three consecutive funpark bridges and other modern gems of State Highway One, Tom shared his thoughts behind the design of two houses recently built in Waimate.

People often, Tom observed, once they buy a piece of land, will chuck up a quick shed or park caravan on the site; then they will slowly add to it, and slowly build towards the view.

He elaborates: The first thing they put on the site won’t be at the spot of the best view, but they will gradually start building up around the shed or caravan, maybe putting in a long drop or a workshop, building towards this one point they have already identified that’s got this ‘killer view’.

Both the Waimate houses he designed use this observation as the organisational strategy for the development of the site. The intention of both houses was that first placing of the ‘caravan’ on the site, that initial utilitarian building, a minimum requirement to enable the owner to function on the site.

This initial building anchors an outdoor communal setting, a courtyard or garden which future buildings can congregate around.

Tom proposes this fascination with the view is closely linked with the cycle of life and death. Achieving this ultimate view parallels the culmination of somebody’s life. Throughout one's life you work hard, working and struggling through the phases of life, building towards the view, when you get there and the all the activity finishes, you can finally sit back in front of that picture window, watch the change of seasons, contemplate, surrender...

This concern with the view is manifested right up the East Coast, where beaches are overlooked by glassy picture windows gleaming from retirement homes.

Therefore the Waimate houses are essentially ‘flash caravans’; designed without eaves, nestled into the ground as if the wheels have been taken off and they’re going nowhere.

The exterior is inspired by woolsheds - such as the sliding barn door above, which is decorated with a motif from Le Corbusier's nunnery at Ronchamp. The interior is inspired by the spatial economy of apartment living.

Kitchen & dining, the offset windows from within.

Headboard of concrete block and plywood

Clear corrugated panels over windows blur the light.

The following photographs are of the second Waimate house, the same 'flash caravan' prototype is slightly modified to account for differences in site, and orientation and materials as selected by the clients.

Clerestories in the bedroom, from the bed the clients tell us they can watch the moon travel from one opening to another.

Below is the mountain Te Ahu Ahu from the 'point of the killer view' on the first site.

The Waimate site strategy is a metaphor for a living process, a slow accretion of material and geometric forms, a time-based building process that parallels life growth and struggle, guided by a final framing of the horizon.

Sketches show potential site development, the shaded area is the 'caravan'. The strategy also allows the client time to pause and consider what future building is necessary, this can change when the client is actually able to inhabit the site.

Anna's Mandala Barbeque

2010-11-15T23:29:00.000-08:00

This concrete crop circle enclosing a rotating barbeque is located in a suburban sliver of green named Harry Dansey park, the semi-private backyard of our resident archivist Anna.

The pure geometrical forms revealed in plan suggest a higher destiny for the ubiquitous barbeque, the design invokes the ancient Egyptian symbol of the sun, Aztec zodiacs and old Chinese coins.

Props to all involved in recent sacrificial chicken barbie to reawaken the fire within.

Architecture and Puppetry

2010-11-02T01:27:00.000-07:00

A Conversation with Oliver Smart, Puppeteer

An established puppeteer, Oliver Smart is ever inventive and surprising. I visited Oliver while he was rehearsing for ‘Life Still’, a ‘science fiction in wartime’, which recently premiered in Paris.

Oliver lives in a converted warehouse that is immediately theatrical, a large concreted open area under tall rooflights, with ropes hanging from the ceiling, stage lighting on rigs, black curtains framing the ‘stage’, stairs running up into high loft spaces.

A bedroom constructed in the triangular rooflight opens onto an inclined plane of corrugated iron covered in a growth of mosses, which as Oliver notes is like a forest of kanuka, if you squint. There’s a small timber deck, floor to ceiling fire-glass insulated with bubble wrap - altogether an interesting bricolage of found materials.

As Oliver introduces me to his puppets, he describes his art using a language familiar to architecture, ‘every object has textures which describe the whole object, movement-texture, sound-texture, light-texture’. To my mind these words describe a spatial experience, and the changes in sound and light when moving through the space.

Oliver talks about the parallel between puppeteers and architects. Both ‘orchestrate’ an event – a performance or an architecture, which ‘lives’ or operates independently of the designer. There is an effacement of the presence of the puppeteer / architect once the event begins.

Both choreograph puppets, objects or materials, structures, forms and space, whilst also being controlled by other forces beyond their remit. Both attempt to express an experience beyond the materiality of the object, and use a similar techniques: suspension of belief, illusion, assemblage and detailing, transformation of found object, found materials, found stories, meanings and memory.

Oliver’s puppets start their formation from found objects. The objects arrive with a history, memories, and associations. Over time, Oliver says, their ‘personality’ emerges.

The above photo is of the ‘chicken’, created from down pillows with leather mechanisms and two stick-like legs. Through minimal intervention and precise detailing Oliver plays with the illusion of ‘giving life’ to this inanimate object. The viewer’s mind recognises the movements and shape of the pillow as a chicken, yet without obvious anthropomorphic cues such as eyes or a beak, ‘there is still some pillow in the chicken’.

Oliver creates spatial conditions on stage using the puppets, for example the choreography between the ‘tank’ (above) and ‘moth’. The tank is an assemblage of found objects, a Super 16 film projector mounted on a deckchair on a piano trolley. It projects a rectangle of white light that attracts a ‘moth’, made from an old umbrella.

An ever-changing, flickering space is created on stage as the tank follows the moth and in turn the moth follows the projected light from the tank.

Another puppet based on Hieronymus Bosch is a piece of fabric and two pegs which unpack from a small set of wooden drawers. The puppet continues to unpack haberdashery objects from the drawers onto his workspace on top of the cabinet. He assembles a church, which gets destroyed, a city scape, which also gets destroyed by a Victorian plant waterer slowly squirting feathers. Oliver plays with the quality of the objects and their function, ‘You can’t be violent with feathers, they absorb all violence’.

Oliver describes puppets as having a complete connection to the puppeteer. The action to move the puppet becomes automatic and the puppet an extension of the puppeteers mind. This description reminds me of the system created between a person drawing and the drawing, how one can become immersed in a drawing so that progression into the drawing is like moving through ones mind, controlling the drawing yet allowing the process to be led by the drawing. The drawing emerges like the puppets are slowly infused with life and their qualities emerge.

As a collection, or collective, the puppets have a museum-like quality, found objects with a history and memory. In the curative hands of the puppeteer a new narrative emerges.

The puppeteer sets up a magical alter-reality, and as the audience starts to believe in this strange emergence of life, as all the ‘dead things’ are finding their identity, the puppeteer’s ego dissolves.

I find it inspiring to consider architecture through the puppeteers language, an architecture that can suspend belief. Transformation of space is alchemical, everyday objects transformed in unexpected ways into strange and beautiful scenes. Architecture of magic realism, where we start to believe that the inanimate can become alive, can ‘remember’, and can express ideas about the human condition.

For clips from the Paris show check out:

www.foldedfeather.com

Tank makes itself useful when not working - it also plays Felix the Cat movies.

Alvar Aalto (1898 – 1976)

2010-10-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

On the side of the road on Muuratsalo Island, Finland, we wait for a tour to start at Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s Experimental House. At precisely 1.30, a lithe elfin-like creature emerges from the forest to lead us down the path to the lake. The forest is autumnal and quiet, the path meanders past the boat shed, the sauna, and eventually to the summer house.

During the tour she mentions that one question she is often asked is why Aalto designed one of the external courtyard walls with a large window-like opening in the middle of it. Her answer is that Aalto designed the wall as if it were a ruin. I found this answer intriguing and in this following post have sought to identify other aspects of this idea of constructing a ruin in Aalto’s work.

The idea of the ruin has been raised by George Baird (1970) who argues that all Alvar Aalto’s ‘buildings after Paimo give the impression of having been aged in advance’. (p.12)

The buildings can be viewed as ‘metaphors of ruins’ in three ways; Aalto’s selection and assemblage of materials, his philosophy towards nature, and design of architectural form. These techniques will be investigated in three buildings visited in September 2010.

Aalto chose building materials that weathered predictably into an aesthetic ruin. He preferred copper, brick and timber, over concrete, steel and vast amounts of glazing, at a time where the latter materials were increasingly used as a Modernist aesthetic. Additionally, materials were selected and assembled to encourage plant and moss growth to gradually overtake the building. Over time surfaces and crevices become impregnated with new life.

A symbiotic relationship between the synthetic artifice and ‘nature’ was part of Aalto’s utopian philosophy. Ray (2005) notes: ‘he believed that architecture needed to be conceived in harmony with nature, and that landscape design should in turn aim to reconcile the artificial with the natural’. (Ray, 2005: p.150) Whilst acknowledging that nature is not untouched by humans, Aalto advocated humans would be happiest in a building that works in harmony with laws of nature and biology.

The profoundest property of architecture is a variety and growth reminiscent of natural organic life (Aalto, 1938 lecture, Ruusuvuori, 1978: p.34)

Consideration of both growth and decay extended to Aalto’s treatment of form, which tended towards fragmentation, or a distortion of a geometric ideal. Monolithic walls are often designed as if in a state of dissolution, such as the aforementioned courtyard wall at the Experimental House; as though it has eroded away and continues to, thus recognising the time-bound nature of architecture. Baird (1970) writes ‘it is as though the final victory of nature over the vulnerable creations of mankind, had already been conceded in Aalto’s works at their inception.’ (p.13)

Interestingly enough, by acknowledging the vulnerability of these ‘creations of mankind’, the pervading impression of Aalto’s buildings is a carefully considered humanist architecture.

Chapter One:

Photo Credits: Nina Morris, Tom Locke

Aalto’s home and office is located in a suburb west of central Helsinki in Munkkiniemi. One enters through the front guest door into a small vestibule, buys a ticket for the tour, and ascends a few steps into the office space.

On the back of the ticket is printed a quote by Aalto, ‘but if you want my blessing for your home, it should have one further characteristic: you must give yourself away in some little detail. Your home should purposely show up some weakness of yours. This may seem to be a field in which the architect’s authority ceases, but no architectural creation is complete without some such trait: it will not be alive.’

This intriguing quote prompts us to search for this detail in Aalto’s own home, we’ll make a suggestion on later – to keep the poor reader engaged in this long blog post.

But firstly; on the construction of a ruin.

The front elevation shows the material palette of a dark timber cladding, a lighter timber for doors, and whitewashed brick walls. The timber is a material which weathers visibly by changing hue over the seasons. There is a plant growth leaping over the wall that separates the formal entrance from the private family one.

At the rear of the house rods run up the face of the walls to encourage plant growth to overtake the facades. Paving is of irregular form and laid loosely to allow grass to grow through.

The application of whitewash over the brick walls allows the texture of the brick to emerge through the paint, giving emphasis to the rich materiality of the wall, and revealing the craft of the bricklayer. The wall is presented as an organic construction, as opposed to the ‘house as a machine’ aesthetic.

On the roof deck wildflowers grow in organically shaped planters, and grass sprouts between pavers.

In the living and dining rooms plants in timber boxes alongside the large windows visually connect with the external foliage surrounding the windows.

Upstairs, wood slats are used to delineate space to shield the bathroom door from the central living area, an example of the ‘dissolution’ of the courtyard wall used on a larger scale at the Experimental House.

Returning to the characteristic detail in which Aalto suggests ‘you must give yourself away in’, is this the small ladder that runs from Aalto’s private office up to the family roof deck?

One can imagine the architect excusing himself to his office, pulling the dividing curtain, and scaling the ladder straight up to the roof deck with his employees none the wiser. Aalto designed-in to the house from its inception a means of escape without needing to explain his withdrawal to his office staff.

Chapter Two:

Muuratsalo Experimental House (1952-54), on Muuratsalo Island in Säynätsalo, was built to be Elissa and Alvar Aalto´s summer house.

The house was designed to experiment with materials, craft and construction methods. Aalto, returning over subsequent summers, was able to observe the gradual ‘ruin’ of the house. The simultaneous re-growth of living things and decay of the building was an intentional design strategy. Aalto created architectural conditions to allow nature to advance and impregnate the building.

The house is arranged in an L shape around a courtyard. The courtyard is like a large external room: it contains the hearth of the house, the firepit, the central feature and the heart of the house. The external walls of the courtyard are taller then necessary to simply enclose an external space, as they extend the pitched line of the roof, and are also capped in roof tiles, to continue the roofing material.

This courtyard can be read like a story. In this imaginary narrative this courtyard that was once a grand internal room, that has been externalised by the weather, the roof to this room has collapsed and part of the largest wall has fallen away, leaving long vertical slats in the gaping window.

This ‘dissolution’ of a monumental building form is used here again to design a ruin in advance. Nature advances: a large vine grows up the inside of the slats, and the tall forest trees leaning into the opening.

The firepit is a square form, reminiscent of carved stones from the ruins of Angkor Wat, an ancient geometrically ideal form, symmetrical, centred, an organisational principle that anchors the volumes of the house.

The construction drawings for the courtyard elevations and paving plan show how the planes were divided into sections of different types of bricks and methods of assembly. The ways in which mosses grow over the various protruding surfaces could therefore be compared.

Chapter Three:

For me “the rising town” has become a religion, a disease, a madness, call it what you will: the city of hills, that curving, living, unpredictable

line which runs in dimensions unknown to mathematicians, is for me the incarnation of everything that forms a contrast in the modern world between brutal mechanicalness and religious beauty in life. (Aalto, 1926, quoted in Schilt, 1986: p.12)

Aalto refers to the hill towns of Tuscany, which he visited and sketched early in his career. The hill towns represent a synthesis of urban and ‘natural’ conditions, and a reconciliation of public and private political realms, the combination of which form a vision of human happiness through harmony with nature and a balance of power.

Saynatsalo Town Hall embodies this utopian vision. The visitor approaches the Town Hall – the urban condition - through a forested site.

it is implied that to establish unequivocal urban space of any real

intensity would pose far too provocative a challenge to the ravages of

time. Instead, the buildings are always set in natural contexts in such a way as to ensure a distinct, albeit ironic, dematerialization of any urban space that might tend to crystallize there.’ (Baird, 1970: p.13)

Stairs of granite gently ascend through an opening in the building mass, leading the visitor upwards onto an external grassy courtyard. Like an Italian piazza, this courtyard is a public forum, a ‘symbol of public power’. (Baird, 1970: p.20) Located in the courtyard is a symbolic ‘water source’, a rectangular pool with a small fountain.

The plan of Saynatsalo Town Hall is roughly a square layout of various functions gathered around the courtyard. Ray (2005) describes the plan as based on the ‘ideal geometry’ of the square, which is then ‘subjected to distortion’. (p.117) The symmetrical form of the square is ‘eroded’ through setbacks and cantilevers, to produce a variety of forms, a ‘fragmentation of volumetric integrity of building.’ (Baird, 1970: p14)

This dissolution of form is further emphasised by the small strips of recessed brick above the window head (which coincide with timber trusses within), and the use of timber and metal louvers over windows. These details fragment the monumentality of the building mass whilst maintaining a balance between solidity of form and erosion of form.

On the opposite side of the courtyard to the granite stairs are stairs to the west, which Ray notes, ‘is not really a staircase at all, but is formed of planted earth retained by strips of timber, and seems to flow like a river over a series of weirs down from the court’ (Ray, 2005: p.112)

This ‘stair’ clearly reinforces the idea of the ruin, a stair that is designed from the outset as if it has deteriorated, where grasses and pine trees have found a footing, and it gradually has become part of the hill again.

Plants are encouraged to creep up over the exterior of the building, by the way of rods installed between glazed windows and overhead pergolas.

In the courtyard various paving layouts have been chosen to allow mosses and grass to grow in the gaps.

The gallery has timber planter boxes nourished by a south facing glazed wall, warmed by the thermal mass of the brick benches.

After entering the main doors to the Town Hall, the ascent up the ‘hill town’ continues, culminating in the council chamber, the private political forum.

The council chamber emerges as the highest volume of the building mass, granted a symbolic place of authority, yet balanced by the courtyard / public forum, which remains the central organising principle.

Baird (1970) has critiqued Aalto’s stairways as ‘potent’ enclosures, the stair at Saynatsalo a ‘promontory’. The stairs rise slowly ‘as the earth itself might.’ (Baird, 1970: p.16)

Contrasting to the slow ‘timebound’ erosion of form suggested by the metaphor of the ruin, the stairs involve another time-based experience. The moments where the body comes in contact with the architecture, to grasp the handrail, and extended duration when the hand holds and moves along a balustrade are dealt with sensitively. The section of the handrail traces the human hand. The handrails ‘extend far beyond their function as related to stairs’ and ‘form elaborate networks of touch.’ (Baird, 1970)

In the ascent to the council chamber both natural and artificial light comes from high windows, so one has the feeling of moving towards the light. Aalto is careful to follow his principle of shielding and diffusing the direct glare from a tungsten light, using fine timber slats.

The council chamber is constructed of brick and timber, materials that lend a pleasant scent to the room. In the high ceilings are two fan-like timber trusses, which have been likened to natural forms, to branches spreading. Thus within the inward-looking, austere council chamber one discovers a reminder of nature.

Aalto has long been considered a ‘humanist’ architect, and upon visiting his architecture one can experience how this humanism in architecture is manifested. Certainly humanism relates to the idea of constructing a ruin, a building designed to recognise the ‘inescapably timebound character of built-form.’ (Baird, 1970: p.11)

The 'ruin' connects architecture to the distortion of form, weathering of materials, and the advance of nature over the artifice. The ‘ruin’ imbues architecture with a sense of memory and history. The ‘ruin’ embodies a utopian ideal; Aalto believed ‘people will be happier if their environment is designed in harmony with nature.’ (Ray, 2005: p.156)

The relevance of Aalto today is obvious when we consider that the ‘humanising of modernism’ and the relationship between ecology and building are still pertinent issues of this post-digital age. Architects continue to envision future utopias, be it motivated by a sustainable, technological or humanist force.

In a recent lecture at the Bartlett, Dawn Ades (2009) quoted Georg Simmel:

the ruins of a construction mean that, in the vanished and destroyed parts of the work of art, other forces and forms, those of nature, have grown back and thus, from whatever art still lives in it and the nature already

living in it again, a new whole, a characteristic unity, has arisen.’

This ‘new whole’ is Aalto’s utopian vision, he unifies technology and humanism, cultural memory and internationalism, the synthetic artifice and biological growth. Aalto is a heroic figure for architects, his buildings continue to be imbued with a deep sense of life and humanism.

Bibliography:

Ades, Dawn (2009) Surrealism and the Ruin, Lecture at Bartlett, UCL, London

Baird, George (1970) Alvar Aalto; introduction and notes by George Baird, with photography by Yukio Futagawa, Thames and Hudson, London

Ray, Nicholas (2005) Alvar Aalto; Yale University Press New Haven and London

Ruusuvuori, Aarno, ed (1978) Alvar Aalto 1898 – 1976; The Museum of Finnish Architecture

Schilt, Goran (1986) Alvar Aalto, The Decisive Years; Rizzoli New York

Photos of Experimental House sourced from internet

Wall Drawings

2010-09-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

Using the installation, a 3-D drawing in space, now as an instrument to generate 2-D drawings. Projections of the installation onto the walls were traced in pencil.

2.5m X 1.5m

The Pitch

2010-09-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

The project uses the analogy of an ice core as a 'natural archive' of information, as an organisational premise for this slightly absurd scientific endeavour. In Panamerenko-style one can don the protective clothing and enter the 'laboratory', operate the system, and attempt to observe the results whilst trying to stay clean and dry.

Room Transformation

2010-09-13T14:42:00.001-07:00

Installation

2010-08-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Through collecting, a dense immersive environment is generated.

With the addition of an energetic fluid-based system and controlled chemical reactions, a micro-ecology is created.

Installation

2010-08-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

The archive is a machine-for-remembering. It is a chemical computer. The archive collects and records air particles in crystalline structures.

Photo Credit Nina Morris

Movement through Installation

2010-08-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

These images of steel wire forms investigate movement of the viewer through and around the installation. They also intend to suggest the growth of crystalline structure over time.

Non-Site Diorama

2010-08-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

Photo Credit to Nina Morris

Site Diorama

2010-08-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

Constructing a diorama of the architectural 'event', the accretion of crystals, underpinned by the thermodynamic system.

The diorama was photographed on-site, with the intent of achieving an analogue method of superimposition of the model on site.

This exercise was a stepping stone to moving the diorama to the 'non-site' space of the gallery (reference Richard Smithson).

Particle Drawings

2010-08-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

Drawing is used to analyse and dissect particles. The particles are from canal water samples, photographed by Angela Hay under a microscope in her lab. After careful analysis, I concluded that the particles were most likely dust from the Icelandic volcano eruption in October 2009.

The archive collects and records atmospheric events.

Growies in the Canal

2010-08-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Collecting phosphorus around the old Bryant and May factory, Bow.

Dioramas

2010-07-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

The collecting stations, forming ice and preserving data.

Conversation with Tom Weaver, Editor.

2010-06-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

Tom kindly agreed to complete some lists for me:

List One:

Most Admired Architectural Historians (in no order)

Banham, Summerson, Evans, Vidler, Rowe, even Sorkin (cheekiest critic).

List Two:

Top Journals

1. AA Files, and then in brackets, ‘by a million miles’.

2. Arch+, nice mix of the contemporary and historical and never following the herd.

3. Criticat, low-tech, polemical French journal, produced by the great Françoise Fromonot. The buildings are shot guerrilla-style, photographers jumping over fences, blurry shots … they show architecture the way you actually see a building.

List Three:

The criteria for work accepted in AA Files:

1. Absolutely no projects. The writing is always a comment on something else – the ‘exact opposite of a project’.

2. Lots of good stories.

3. Avoid usual suspects.

4. Essays not papers, and try and get rid of footnotes (except for Georges Teyssot’s texts – where the best stuff is the footnotes).

5. Encourage younger writers, who write specifically for the journal, rather than older, established writers who send in lectures they have presented a million times before.

List Four:

Top Teachers (in no particular order):

Adrian Forty

Georges Teyssot

Peter Eisenman

List Five:

Favourite Architectural Encounters:

1. A conversation with Swiss art and architectural historians Karin Gimmi and Martino Stierli, discussing Max Bill and Max Frisch while swimming across Lake Zurich.

2. Leon Krier in Poundbury for AA Files – architecture’s pantomime villain; scary but engaging.

3. Berthold Lubetkin – at the Bartlett School in June 1990, just a few months before he died.

And a statement:

There is no architecture in the US only buildings – ‘Jesus, I’m sounding like Pevsner here’ – this is why US architecture schools are built around architectural theory, because that is all that architecture is in the US. In Europe and the UK it is the opposite. Everything is architecture; this is why all schools here are dominated by practice, and architectural history becomes this little bit of inconsequential salad dressing on the side.

Architecture as a Thermodynamic System

2010-06-01T03:40:00.000-07:00

The drawing above is a diagram of a heat exchanger, with the functions of the Archive overlaid.

Architecture can be described as a thermodynamic system, a system which channels or transfers energy flows, and a system that is time-based, a ‘continuous process’.

Architecture can be viewed as an event that occurs in the space of energy transfers. Energy is required to extract and prepare raw material for use in construction. Energy is required to construct the building, and energy is required by building users to control the building conditions, and to maintain the building from disrepair and disintegration.

Luis Fernandez-Galiano in Fire and Memory (2000) seeks to place architecture in the ‘field of processes and time’. After making the distinction between matter and energy at the scale of habitable architecture, he describes architecture as ‘a material organization that regulates and brings order to energy flows; and, simultaneously and inseparably, as an energetic organization that stabilizes and maintains material forms’ (p 6).

In the Archive, forms are constructed and maintained through the thermodynamic system – the forms are a function of the energy flow and heat transfer through the system. It is an open system, exposed to seasonal changes in climate – the heat from the sun, wind direction, conditions that affect the conformation of the archive.

The Archive occurs in the ‘space’ of phase change, part of this thermodynamic system. Phase change is a function of time, and temperature. Phase change creates form and dissolves form. Phase change is temporal, an event, a spectacle.

The Water-Reservoir Library

2010-05-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Library at Barcelona's University Pompeu Fabra is a converted water reservoir¹.

The reservoir, the ‘Diposit de les Aigues’, was constructed in 1874. It is unusual in that the volume of water was held high off the ground, supported by a dense grid of brick columns. Arches span the columns to create a rhythmic and soaring canopy above the readers.

The structure contains reading tables, shelving, precast concrete platforms and lighting, which barely touch the existing brick.

At certain points towers penetrate the vaulted ceiling, to emerge above the pool of water. Inverted mirrored pyramids have been installed at the top of the towers, to reflect the rippling sunlit water inside onto the bricks².

The library is a repository for water, which has traveled and passed through many states and bodies. And in a strange and incompatible manner, underneath the water the library is a repository for books, with their fragile and irreparable nature.

Notes:

¹Renovation by Architects Lluis Clotet and lgnacio Paricio Ansuategui

²Or at least one could imagine this ripple effect if the water hadn’t been drained when I visited. Perhaps the thought of coming into a floating library one morning, the shelves reflected perfectly in a displaced plane of water, was too much for the maintenance team to bear.

Maps of the Archive

2010-05-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

Phase change graphs above. Phase change transforms the object as it is received into the Library.

A Map of the Archive based on the Periodic Table. The librarians use the Periodic Table to catalogue the objects. The Periodic Table attempts to describe the universe, yet there are gaps and flaws through which some particles pass right on by.

The Art of Memory, a Machine-for-thinking, and Merzbau.

2010-04-24T00:20:00.001-07:00

‘ The library

seeks its meaning within’

(Zeller)

The ‘Art of Memory’ by Francis Yates (1966) is a history of mnemonic devices, systems of ‘artificial memory’, aides to ‘retain vast stores of knowledge without the help of the printed page’.

Yates writes ‘the first step was the imprint on the memory a series of loci or places. The commonest, though not the only, type of mnemonic place system used was the architectural type.’

I’ll mention two examples from the book below that directly link an architectural space to memory.

The first is Guilio Camillo’s memory theatre at the beginning of the Renaissance, The second is Robert Fludd’s memory theatre at the end. They both use the internal layout of a Theatre as a virtual repository to store, or remember, knowledge.

Yates unlocks at least two systems within the mnemonic devices – on one level one can relate ideas that one wishes to remember to a specific feature in the Theatre, thus relating place to the memory. On another level the overall geometry of the theatre references ideas of the Renaissance man’s perception of self and universe.

In Camillo’s memory theatre, the interior of the memory theatre also acted as a repository in which Camillo had ambitions ‘to store up eternally the eternal nature of all things which can be expressed in speech’ and assigning to them ‘eternal places’.

One could assign ideas to specific locations within the theatre, so that the idea can be easily remembered. ‘This high and incomparable placing not only performs the office of conserving for us the things, words, and arts which we confide to it, so that we may find them at once whenever we need them, but also gives us true wisdom from whose founts we come to the knowledge of things from their causes and not from their effects’.

The overall geometry of the theatre references Vitruvius’s description of a Roman amphitheatre, through similar encoding of geometrical shapes and layout of the stage, seating, and gates in plan.

In the second example, Fludd uses architectural elements of the stage as places to store knowledge. The five entrances to the stage are the most prominent, ‘…five doors to be used as five memory places is the leading motif of the whole system’. Following the doors, positions on the stage, columns on the stage, colours, and materials of the stage set, can be used to encode information one wishes to remember, just as one may store information in a repository.

Yates finds encoded in Fludd’s text and etchings ‘as a secret hidden within it, factual information about the Globe theatre.’ (Yates). If so, these would be the only existing drawings of Shakespeare’s original Globe. Fludd uses a real architectural building to hang the structure of his memory theatre.

The theatre’s overall geometry also attempts to link the ‘round arts’ (the macrocosm, cosmos and ephemeral forms) to the ‘square arts’ (the microcosm, man and the corporeal). Fludd exerts ‘terrific effort towards a detailed attempt to use the principles of the art of memory in association with the heavens to form a total world-reflecting system’ (Yates).

The library is a place of communal memory. It is a repository of information that contains our attempts to describe the universe and the self. The Dewey Decimal catalogues all subjects known and leaves room for the unknown.

As the memory theatres use architecture as mnemonic devices, it is not much more of a leap to perceive the library capable of not only storing memory in its repositories and electronic archives, but also encoding information about the universe at the scale of the building. A hermetic seal placed on the architectural vessel.

Jorge Borges reminds us of another Renaissance memory system, that of Raymond Lull. Borges relates it to the contemporary ‘machine-for-thinking’, the computer.

‘… a man of genius, Raymond Lulio (Llull)… conceived a sort of machine-for-thinking made up of concentric circles in wood covered with symbols of the divine predicates. This mechanism, set in motion by the systematic investigator, would yield an indefinite and almost infinite number of concepts of a theological order. He did the same as regards the faculties of the soul and the qualities of everything in the world. As was to be expected, all these combinatory mechanisms served no purpose whatsoever.

… the experimental science prophesied by Francis Bacon has now given us cybernetics, which has allowed man to set foot on the moon and whose computers are - if the phrase is acceptable - belated sisters of Llull’s ambitious circles.’ (Borges, 1984,)

A Machine-for-thinking is also a memory device, a machine-for-remembering. Computing and ‘Unconventional Computing’ is the contemporary art of memory.

Another leap: the library is a form of ‘unconventional computing’ or computing using materials (a term from the recent Spiller/Armstrong/Hanczyc conference, 2010). Ice is the protocell tool, which can be seen as the hardware, the software is the process (phase change) that embeds the information into the ice archive.

As the Library’s repository expands or contracts over time due to changes of the collection, of formatting and storage, the memory devices are also set in motion. The building is living, it grows with the collection, the architectural mnemonic device changes over time with its contained memory.

Kurt Schwitters Merzbau is an example of a growing living archive.

‘…up until 1923, Kurt Schwitters’ studio only served as an artistically inspired storage space for Dadaist works of art… found objects…and other collage materials. It was only after 1923 that Schwitters gradually began to transform his studio into an architectonic, sculptural structure, his Merzbau… as the Merzbau grew, the original architecture disappeared’. (Meyer-Buser, p274)

The creation and the collection of art starts to transform the studio space. The spatial environment became forged, not only part of the artwork but part of an all-encompassing life-work.

'The installation forced the visitor, both mentally and physically, to enter into the work and to succumb with all their senses to the rules of the game that were in operation there. Thus the Merzbau demonstrates a radical change in the modern understanding of art. The recipient had to relinquish his/her safe distance if he/she wanted to meet the challenge of modern works...' (Meyer-Buser)

There are parallels to Guilio Camillo’s memory theatre, the obsessive nature of collecting and the immersion into an interior space that has its own rules of operation, that engages with the senses of the visitor. Viglius describes entering a ‘mock-up’ of Camillo’s memory theatre:

‘All things…after being collected together by diligent meditation may be expressed by certain corporeal signs in such a way that the beholder may at once perceive with his eyes everything that is otherwise hidden in the depths of the human mind. And it is because of this corporeal looking that he calls it a theatre’. (Yates, pg 132)

Thus the art of memory systems, a machine-for-thinking, unconventional computing, and the Merzbau, are tools to investigate the potential of a library-repository. They are tools to unlock a library that both contains memory and represents a universal system, and that is living and growing over time.

References:

Atlas, Jorge Luis Borges (1984) Editorial Sudamericana quote from Ars Magna, pg 72

The Art of Memory, Frances Yates (1966)

Beatriz Zeller, poem from Comay, Rebecca, ed, (2002) Lost in the Archives, Alphabet City Media Inc.

Meyer-Buser, Susanne 'On Disappearing in Space, Walk in Collages from Schwitters to the Present Day’.

Essay from: In the Beginning Was MERZ - From Kurt Schwitters to the Present Day, (2000) Edited by Susanne Meyer-Buser and Karin Orchard, Hatje Cantz Publishers

Cornelia Parker 'Avoided Object'

2010-04-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

Cornelia Parker uses processes of destruction to transform found objects.

She steamrollers (silverware), explodes (a garden shed), lets degrade and turn poisonous (wine in glass flasks), and presents the remains of the object.

She collects tarnish, dust, stains, traces of the object… as an archive may store the trace or residue of an event.

How is memory attached to the object, does it become unstuck during the process? Does the object continue to embody its past in its morphed and rearranged construction? And how is this past still present, through the viewers’ projection of their readings, through clues given in the ‘found’ titles of the artwork?

Of the collected silverware, all with different stories, Parker says she wanted to ‘give them one story’, by flattening them with a steamroller.

Parker seems to also enjoy the unexpected stories- when the reader projects something new onto the artwork or interesting things are discovered within the ‘blow up’. For example, she was asked by a curator at the Tate if the Pornographic prints were made by a human body, which is the curators reading into the Rorschach inkblots. Einstein’s formulae on a blackboard, when photographed under a microscope resemble ‘sea creatures’, Parker suggests nature under the mathematics. She also photographs under a microscope dust collected from Donald Judd’s work, and describes the emerging imagery as ‘Gothic’.

The aspect of deterioration and destruction has an analogy to the brief life of the Canal at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The Canal worked towards its own ‘destruction’ of its intended life’s purpose, by transporting materials for the railways. The railways then surpassed the canal in speed, efficiency and quantity of goods transported, thus rendering the technology of the canal obsolescent.

Reference: ‘Avoided Object’ Lecture by Cornelia Parker at the Bartlett January 2007, London.

Plan & Section of Site

2010-04-13T14:16:00.001-07:00

A Collection of Found Objects

2010-04-09T04:18:00.000-07:00

The collection of objects is intended to represent the elements which are collected in the Library.

The object is categorised in the library by identifying the first chemical element of its chemical formula, and ordering it by atomic mass, ie the Periodic Table.

The objects are embedded into the Library using the phase change process, melting and casting, and burning and dripping, an investigation into how these mundane objects could transform.

An example: Tin (Sn) from one object melted and poured into the cast of another object - a matchbox (Ph). There is a story relating the chemicals and the canal - up until 1888 white phosphorus was used on the tips of the matches at the Bryant and May match factory, which severely affected the health of the women employees. The factory was located at Bow along the River Lea, part of London's canal system. The 'match girls' organised into a union and striked, and were eventually successful in bettering their conditions.

Sections of Basin

2010-04-09T03:40:00.000-07:00

This drawing is of sections through the Kingsland basin and the adjacent industrial wharf, and seeks to reveal through sectioning the mesh of information within the canal.

Information in the form of materials and elements, which could be attached to a history of the canal.

It is these elements that I wish to collect in the Library’s Archive.

The elements are drawn as crystallized forms, imagined frozen in the Archive. The crystals are of Hay, Limestone, Clay, Iron, Manure, Brick, sourced from the uses of the former wharves and warehouses.

The crystals represent residues of building and industry, and seek to create a new method of building technology.

2010-03-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

The drawings above attempt to spread the growth over a graph of time. At the centre is the archived object and the seed crystal. This internal point is frozen, yet drifts and accretes more raw material from the canal.

Ice is the Envelope, Section

2010-02-20T07:32:00.001-08:00

'Extending outwards for two or three yards from the bank were the long splinters of what appeared to be crystallizing water, the angular facets emitting a blue and prismatic light washed by the wake from their craft. The splinters were growing in the water like crystals in a chemical solution, accreting more and more material to themselves, so that along the bank there was a congested mass of rhomboidal spears like the barbs of a reef, sharp enough to slit the hull of their craft.'

(J G Ballard's The Crystal World, 1966, Jonathon Cape Ltd, UK)

In 'The Crystal World' the crystal growth like a virus spreads through the West African jungle. As it comes into contact with trees, buildings, rivers, bodies, the subject undergoes a crystallization process that begins like an icy frost which spreads until it engulfs the whole body. The body is both frozen in time and yet proliferates and grows as a crystal does.

Ballard explains this phenomenom using the relationship between matter and time. As time 'leaks' away, molecules produce 'spatial replicas of themselves'.

'It's as if a sequence of displaced but identical images of the same object were being produced through refraction through a prism, but with the element of time replacing the role of light.'

The analogy between leprosy and the crystallization are drawn, '... the virus, with its semi-animate, crystalline existence, half in and half out of our own time-stream, as if intersecting it at an angle...'.

There are parallels between the crystallized forest, with the trees, birds, plants, beasts, and people frozen within it, and the Archive, where time has been suspended and deterioration and death arrested.

The protagonist Dr Sauders writes 'Here we have always associated movement with life and the passage of time, but from my experience within the forest near Mont Royal I know that all motion leads inevitably to death, and that time is its servant.'

The drawing above tries to represent the dark heart where the object may be embedded, the idea of refraction, light and the prism.

Site Plan

2010-02-20T07:23:00.001-08:00

Above is a sketch of London waterways and detail plans of the Battlebridge Basin and Kingsland Basin. The basins are potential containers or constraints for crystalline growth.

This growth or accretion is represented by the red construction lines.

Computational Model

2010-02-14T02:26:00.000-08:00

As a computational model, if Ice is the 'hardware', the 'software' is the system by which the 'information' is embedded into the ice. The software is a series of switches, a regulatory system not unlike proteins or enzymes in a cell.

Conversation with Paul Dyer, Archivist

2010-01-24T04:14:00.000-08:00

On The Personal Archive & The Archive of a Publishing House

Three Collections from his Personal Archive:

1. Jewellery & Jewellery-esque Objects.

2. 'Street Sweets' Photographs.

3. Betting Shop Pens.

The collections are of objects that have been lost or discarded on the street. The object found is transformed by re-framing, through the frame of the photograph or the container of the archive.

Street Sweet [Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

The photograph transforms the scale and context of the object. The archival container allows the object to reconfigure itself in relationship to adjacent objects; the object is 'free' to be whatever is it, wander around the box, attach itself to other objects.

Jewellery [Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

The collections inform a collective memory. The objects tell a story about the person who dropped it, and about the condition of the society it exists in. There is a 'forensic aspect', the object can be analysed and identified, there may be traces of the last person who touched it.

Street Sweet [Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

As topographical traces, an increased frequency of betting pens on the ground signifies the presence of a betting shop, an increase in sweets signifies the presence of a corner store or a bus stop approaching.

Street Sweet [Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

The categorisation method is a photograph of the object, a micro-plan of object on the site.

Storage is by zip-lock bags (sealed, transparent, exhibited), and boxes (protective, opaque, masked).

Betting Pens Bagged [Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

The Archive of a Publishing House.

The flow chart above shows the process of archiving and the process of retrieval of this Publishing House. The archival system has evolved with changing technology of the both the artwork and means of categorisation. Within this system there also exist offshoot archives, which capture an archival impulse in time.

Bound Volumes [Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

The Archive houses hand drawn illustrations, transparencies, prints, occasionally fabric samples, digital photography, bound volumes, and mark-up copies of magazines.

The Mark-up copies of the magazines are like a map of the archive, encoding directions to where the original artwork can be located.

Original artwork is stored in archival standard containers: plastic sleeves, glassine bags, envelopes, boxes.

The Archive is ordered chronologically by magazine name, month, year.

There are also offshoot or auxillary archives within the overall archive which follow their own logic. Hidden within the stacks are curious card index drawers and filing cabinets of prints by a particular photographer. The archival impulse here is where the artwork has been pulled from the main archive for republishing at some point in the past, and then retained as a group in an auxillary sub-collection.

There are the 'Personality Files', photographic prints of notable persons, filed in alphabetical order by name of person captured. These original prints have a beautiful weathered quality, marked with old tape and torn corners. Other filing cabinets contain the 'Contributors Records', early typed contracts and letters

[Photo Credit Paul Dyer]

Conversation with Bopha Chhay, Editor, Arts Researcher, Book Pusher.

2010-01-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

...On conceptual art.

Is all art equal?

Bopha likes the work of Christoph Buchel, a Swiss artist who reconstructs 'labyrinthine' spaces within spaces, art at a massive scale and vision. The audience walks, crawls or climbs through the installation. Through this audience involvement the art becomes accessible.

Photo copyright Paul Dyer

Every art form has codes. Paintings carry codes of symbols, religion, colour... with conceptual art the meaning can come later as you carry the art around with you, and make connections with other art you see.

The more challenging the art is, the better, art that makes you want to investigate more. Not a decorative piece. Conceptual art - you can't use it as a decorative piece.

'Nothing is new'. Conceptual art is a code of reference. Different types of media are used to forge new pathways and channels of understanding.

Gabrielle Orozco, a Mexican artist, works with the everyday, how it can become transformative.

Orozco intervenes in everyday situations to draw attention to what happens in the margins.

Photocredit DanPhiffer : flickr

'Art exists in a different dimension'. Art collectives are autonomously run, small scale, and not controlled by art market forces. It frees the artists reliance on dealer galleries, which in turn rely on the large institutions to purchase work.

Italo Calvino and Borges 'Labyrinthine': He structures chapters in a way that may resemble natural / scientific processes such as 'crystallisation'. Or sometimes ... it's kind of like a mathematical equation. Concepts upon concepts = formula.

Text that appears random and unplanned, like the everyday, or like conceptual art, and you choose the information you wish to keep, and carry with you.

The Ice Archive

2009-12-31T07:27:00.000-08:00

These drawings are about the crystallisation of water to create an Archive for things which may be lost in the future.

The archival information is embedded and released through phase change.

The site is the Regents Canal, a fluid pathway along which the crystals form a gradual accretion through their growth and self assembly.

The Archive can store personal memories, which can take the form of smells, images, sounds.

There is a 'Reading Room', analogous to Haruki Murakami's library in the 'End of the World' (Hard Boiled Wonderland), a personal space where there is enacted the future release of information through phase change.

The crystals are a synthetic molecular construction, similar to Vonnegut's 'Ice-Nine', an ice which is stable at room temperature, with a high melting point.

Conversation with Anna Boyer, Librarian.

2009-12-20T06:28:00.000-08:00

1. A Book Graph

2. Public libraries vs Archives

3. Categorisation

4. What will we need to collect that may disappear?

5. The future architecture of Libraries: Futurists vs Architects.

1. Book Graph - Value against Time

This graph shows how the perceived value of a book changes over time, from the point of view of a Library and an Archive.

A book is first published - the origin point on the time line. It has a high value for the library, it's new and it attracts users. The value then declines over time as it's newness wears off, and quantity of the book increases. The curve can bottom out and turn upwards over time, as copies of the book become scarce and book attains a collectors or archival value. At the low point on the curve, the public library may need to make the decision whether to retain or discard the book. The decision may depend on the libraries need to attract users with newly releases, or pressure on shelving space, weighed up against the predicted value of the book for the library in the future. For example a book may be retained as it has particular history about the local community.

2. Public Libraries operate at the beginning of the time line, Archives tend to operate towards the end of the time line when the book has become scarce and collectable.

Important to archivists is the provenance of the information - where it came from - and how it makes connections to other archives. Archivists draw parallels from one collection to another.

3. Thus categorisation of archive material is multilayered to enable these connections to be found. Archival categorisation is able to locate specific information within a larger document, for example a statement minuted and transcribed on a particular date, by a particular committee, within a certain council.... as opposed to Library categorisation for a book, where a book is more of a stand alone item, identified by author, subject, and keyword.

4. The Berlin Library is both a public library and a repository. These two co-existing states are therefore concerned with the acquisition of the New and of Everything, and hoarding and collecting Everything. The Library / Repository needs to ask the question, what will we need to collect for the future?

Formatting of information, ie music, is a challenge for the two states of the Library / Repository, as the format of information is constantly outdated. To access the information the user needs technology which may be obsolete, or the information needs to be reformatted. Reformatting each time the technology shifts is expensive and there is a change in quality of the information. For example, the original format of some of the music collection is on vinyl. Digitalisation makes them more accessible and proofs against deterioration, yet there is a loss in quality of sound. By preserving the original format the library is also preserving a quality and depth of sound from the past, that the future may not have access to.

How would a library preserve smells which may disappear - artic air, fresh air, the smell of a forest which disappears, a plant which disappears?

5. What is the future architecture of the library? In the 1990s the phenomena of monumental libraries paralleled the rise of digitalisation of information, a seeming contradiction as digitalisation means millions of books can be contained in hundreds of CDs, accessed from anyplace.

What is the significance of the library in the future, does it exist as a civic institution, or an archival storage space for digital information?

The Old Operating Theatre

2009-12-06T05:55:00.001-08:00

In the eaves of St Thomas's church in Southwark, is hidden an old operating theatre and herb garret.

This building can be read as a series of internal mutations over the centuries. Originally a church as part of St Thomas's Hospital (which may have been founded in 1173), the church was rebuilt between 1698 and 1701 with the separate roof space used as a herb garrett to store and cure herbs. One end of the garret was converted into an operating theatre circa 1822, and currently the church itself contains offices.

The operating theatre has semi-concentric rings of standing platforms from which young medical students could observe the operations. There is a large skylight above the lonely operating table in centre of the room, which lends a strange sacrificial aspect to this macabre theatre.

The void beneath the theatre floorboards is packed with 3 inches of sawdust to prevent blood leaking into the church below. The building itself is a repository for information on the Victorian English patients, information embedded in the DNA beneath its floorboards.

The Ice Warehouse

2009-11-28T06:09:00.000-08:00

The Ice Warehouse was built around 1863 at Battlebridge Basin, along the Regents Canal north of Kings Cross. It currently stores the Canal Museum.

Large rectangular blocks of ice were cut and imported by ship from Norway to London, brought along the Thames, transferred to narrow boats at Limehouse Basin and pulled up the canal by Dobbin to the Ice House. Ice was then distributed through Victorian London by horse (Dobbin again) and cart.

The Ice Warehouse had a hybrid function of storing the horses on the first floor.

Below the floor slab of the warehouse two large cylindrical ice wells were built, used to store the ice. They were vast holes, approximately 13m deep and 10m in diameter. The volume of the ice enables it to retain its frozen state.

One of the two wells has been partially excavated to 3 - 4m, the brick lining of the void artifact can be seen. Someone at the museum has placed a large metal tub at the base of the ruin, which has become filled with odd coins. When one is faced with a well, dark, inaccessible, empty, there is a strange compulsion to throw money into it, a hopeful gesture towards fate, but a gesture which inspires a feeling of hopelessness in the face of nothingness.

The above diagram is a block of ice, easily handled by a man and his 'ice dog' for distribution, showing the inherent hexagonal lattice structure of ice. The ice can store information along pathways in a vascular pattern which threads through air gaps in the ice structure.

Dobbin (under the bridge) pulling the narrow boat up the canal - I have only just discovered this word and it's so quaint and appealing - comes from Robin - Robert. Image film still from Barging though London. Below: ice cut and handled in Norway.

Conversation with Angela Hay and Miltos Tsiantis on Biology

2009-11-21T06:45:00.001-08:00

1. Genetics

The diagram above is a representation of the genetic system. DNA stores and transmits information. Genes, comprised of DNA, contain the coded information to make proteins. The proteins are the do-ers, can also be regulators or switches, they can control sets of genes that encode more proteins. As regulators they switch on or switch off specific attributes of the organism, such as colour, structure, material, texture*. Proteins are context specific, for example are expresses only in dark, or only in light, only in head, only in limb... Proteins also 'make' pigment as enzymes.

2. Adaptation

A definition of Life: DNA based, it can adapt, it can replicate itself.

DNA can change by mutation thus providing variation that can be selected for in response to changing environmental conditions.

A designer could harness 'adaptation' from biology.

Evolution is 'bricolage', evolution uses the materials available at hand to create. Evolution does not design to the optimal most efficient solution, it will evolve until it works, then will remain that way until environment radically changes.

3. The Vascular System

The vascular system is formed through 'canalisation'. It is not predetermined, but occurs as water flowing down a bank of soft sand will form pathways, the vascular system forms through cells in a plant. The vascular system, once the 'water' starts flowing down the 'bank', will self-organise into a pattern. Canalisation is conveniently also the term for the production of canals.

The cells die along the path of canalisation to form rigid tubes for water movement.

Thus the pipework has a fixed diameter, to increase flow the number of pipes is increased. Below is a film still of the Islington tunnel along the Regents Canal, reminiscent of a vascular tube...

4. Methodology

Miltos and Angela broke down their research interests for me like so: Miltos's research is how different species have different morphologies, specifically relating to leaf shape, and Angela's research is on mechanisms through which form evolved.

They developed together a framework, or system, for research which is based on genetics, as they required a different system to what already existed to allow them to ask different questions.

Angela described two methodologies she uses: 'Induced Variation' and 'Natural Variation'.

For the question: 'why a particular flower species has fewer petals?', using the first method of 'Induced Variation'

1. she introduces random mutations in the genome, creating an 'artificial evolution'

2. these plants are grown

3. she looks for mutant plants which have gained petals, ie. they have lost the function of the gene to have fewer petals. Therefore the gene lost is the gene required for petal loss.

4. the gene identified leads to identifying the protein expressed by the gene

5. she can work out what this protein does.

Using the second method of 'Natural Variation', Angela would collect plants of this species from all over the world, and look for variations in petal number. She is then able to map the genes responsible for the variation. By sequencing the DNA of these genes she can see what sequence variation evolved by natural selection.

Angela described a method to investigate structural components of cell walls, filming in high speed a seed pod's explosive release. The pod releases its seed in less then 3 milliseconds, an action one cannot see unless it is revealed through high speed film. The film takes 10-15,000 frames per second. The mechanism of the explosion and the residual stresses that build up in the pod to eventually cause explosion can be modelled and related back to the structural properties of cell walls in the pod.

*proteins also 'make' pigment as enzymes.

The Structure of Ice

2009-11-21T06:41:00.001-08:00

This drawing explores the phase change of water from liquid to ice, at a molecular scale.

Liquid water is partially ordered, where hydrogen bonds are constantly being formed and breaking up. Through the phase change, the crystallisation, the molecules assemble into a rigid hexagonal lattice, which is the ice structure. Air spaces are formed within the lattice structure. Interesting: ice is considered a mineral.

The hexagonal lattice structure resembles a container of sorts, a metaphor which parallels the use of ice as a medium to store goods, to transmit goods or to suspend time, suspend the deterioration of resources. The suspension is released through the phase change back to liquid water.

Ice can store information about the past, releasing it upon arrival through a phase change.

Conversation with Nigel Cook

2009-11-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

Nigel is an architect from New Zealand, we had a conversation about various interests, his walks around London, New Zealand architecture, his methodology for design and many other tangents, an assorted selection undermentioned:

1. The Ahipara House, how the scent from the plants hangs in the central courtyard, and the scent creates a distinct space, which one can enter.

2. How the fountains at the Barbican have no guardrail around them and it is suggested that the vision and sound of the water falling alerts the person to the drop.

3. How in the House of Lords, there is the Queen's Robing room, the 'symbolic centre of the British empire'. And this contains large artworks devoted to King Arthur, a fantastical, mythical character. 'Resonant themes for the British imperialist knights'.

4. On the settlement of New Zealand: the US and Australia, going through the same settlement process, were creating their own vernaculars, whereas New Zealand, with a gentle climate and peaceful shores was able to copy and borrow building types from other countries and not be harmed by this... NZ has a culture of copiers and borrowers.

5. Nigel's methodology, based on a diagram from 1977, is a way of embedding his architecture into the country. Later he said: Information - know everything about the site, the costs, the client. Discard the first initial response to site. Depression. Then the architecture... form happens somehow, yet it's not form driven.

6. It has to be beautiful and it has to be architectural.

7. Advice for me: Look at a cross section of a birds nest, one can see the growth of the birds nest, hair and twigs and leaves, formed around the birds body.

8. More advice: Could cellular walls thicken in winter and as warmth came could degrade and die. Can cells possess intelligence about the wind, rain and sun.