« To the past
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May 27, 2012
120527_Thought for the Day
Growing, expanding, tangling and climbing hedges can reinvigorate the physical appearance and sociability of Almere New Town. These drawings are by Gert-Jan Wisse as part of his project ‘Good Fences Make Good Neighbours’ for Ghanascapes teaching programme at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam. See Living Landscapes.
May 15, 2012
120515_Thought for the Day
This room in the former convent of ‘Zusters Franciscanessen Mariadal’ in Roosendaal (NL) is full of atmosphere. When asked, one of the sisters gave the Cuypers designed chapel as the holiest of places. The attic rooms were for her the least holy.
May 12, 2012
120512_Thought for the Day
Robert Bresson describes the players in his film not as ‘actors’ but as ‘models’. In ‘Notes on the Cinematographer’ he writes;
‘Models. Their way of being the people of your film is by being themselves, by remaining what they are. (Even in contradiction with what you had imagined.)’
If the material components of a building can be said to be equivalent to Bresson’s models, then we as architects must let materials be themselves and ‘remain as they are’, even when brought into play with other materials, if we want to touch upon a dimension of authenticity within our work.
May 11, 2012
120511_Thought for the Day
‘The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they hide from me and, above all, what they do not suspect is in them.’
The cinematographer or film maker Robert Bresson on actors or ‘models’ as he calls them. I like to think that buildings are to the architect what models are to Bresson.
May 10, 2012
120510_Thought for the Day
In his recent talk at the Royal Academy of Arts in Den Haag, Juhani Pallasmaa quoted the following by Ian MacGilchrist:
We are not sure, and could never be sure, if mind, or even body, is a thing at all. Mind has the characteristics of a process more than a thing; a becoming, a way of being, more than an entity. Every individual mind is a process of interaction with whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves according to its own private history.
Apr 24, 2012
120424_Thought for the Day
The following are words taken from Robert Bresson’s ‘Notes on The Cinematographer’. They can act as reminders for the architect when thinking of sound and buildings.
The soundtrack invented silence. (Page 48)
Absolute silence and silence obtained by a pianissimo of noises. (Page 49)
Rhythmic value of a noise,
noise of a door opening and shutting, noise of footsteps, etc. for the sake of rhythm. (Page 52)
Reorganize the unorganized noises (what you think you hear is not what you hear) of a street, a railroad station, an airport…play them back one by one in silence and adjust the blend. (Page 53)
To know thoroughly what business that sound (or that image) has there. (Page 60)
What is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear. (Page 61)
To have discernment (precision in perception). (Page 80)
The eye (in general) superficial, the ear profound and inventive. A locomotive’s whistle imprints in us a whole railroad station. (Page 81)
Apr 23, 2012
120423_Thought for the Day
The organizers of a series of talks called ‘Intelligence Squared, the World of Debate’ invite all to what will be ‘an enthralling account of the ghosts and voices that haunt old tracks, of songlines and their singers, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of rights of way and rites of way’.
The introduction reads,
How do the landscapes we love shape the people we are? Why do we walk? Join celebrated travel writer Robert Macfarlane for an evening exploring geography, memory, pilgrimage and adventure. For several years and more than a thousand miles, Macfarlane has been following the vast network of old paths and routes that criss-cross Britain and its waters, and connect them to countries and continents beyond. His journeys have taken him from the chalk downs of southern England to the remote bird-islands of the Scottish north-west, from the disputed territories of Palestine to the pilgrimage routes of Spain and the sacred landscapes of the eastern Himalayas. Along the way – along the ways – he has walked stride for stride with a 5,000-year-old man near Liverpool, followed the ‘deadliest path in Britain’, sailed an open boat far out into the Atlantic along an ancient sea-road, and crossed paths with walkers of many kinds: wanderers, wayfarers, shamans, trespassers, poets, devouts, ghosts and dawdlers.
Apr 22, 2012
120422_Thought for the Day
A group of ‘woodlanders’ came together yesterday and sat in a tippee in a clearing in the middle of the woods of the Hoge Veluwe. Inspired by The Bothy Project thoughts were shared, on how the making of artists’ cabins or sheds may give new insights into the changing relationship between Nature and culture. The roles of the initiators of the project, the architect, the craftsman and the inhabitants also found itself in this ‘inbetween’ space and open for new insights. In order to do this which of these would have to play a deterministic, steering or facilitating role and when in the making of such a project?
Amongst the thoughts that were shared were the invitation of artists to use the sheds to register the bigger changes in the physical landscape such as the shifting edge between wood and heath, to use the shed as a celestial observatory to record the movement of stars or the use of the shed as registration of root, trunk and canopy of tree.
It is through creating an overlap with artists and architects that new insights into the meaning of place can be gained, and a new definition of architecture found where the relationship between inhabitation and Nature is entwined.
Apr 9, 2012
120409_Thought for the Day
The Bothy Project, http://www.thebothyproject.org/
A cross-disciplinary art project that aims to develop a network of small-scale art residency spaces in distinct and diverse locations around Scotland and beyond.
A platform for artists to journey and explore the peculiarities of Scotland’s history, mythology, ecology, landscape and people.
An opportunity to inhabit existing buildings and create purpose built structures.
Apr 6, 2012
120406_Thought for the Day
As an architect I work at essentially two opposing scales: the close up intimate scale of building and the more objective analytical scale used in mapping walks made across vast and marginally inhabited territories.
By doing this I aim to draw out from those walks, building designs that are extensions to my walks, part of my being in those places along those lines and part place itself.
The shed is taken as the simplest inhabited structure found in these landscapes. It is less the form and shape of the shed and more its material and construction that I am investigating. Also, it is the way the shed ‘behaves’ in it’s ongoing adaptation to changing circumstance that I seek to draw out. These can sometimes be very slow changes in the landscape, often beyond perception and hardly visible to the eye. Other shifts in the landscape are more alive, quick and capable of being grasped.
It is in these ways in which I can begin to understand a spiritual binding between inhabitant and landscape, between walking and perception, and between the fixity of material and the impermanence of walk and flow.
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