Written by Stephen Mulhall on 22-01-11 | Categories: Building Material
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Theme: mapping.
Building Material, the journal of the Architectural Association of Ireland, is seeking submissions for an image-based project to appear online, in advance of the next issue on the theme of mapping.
The project seeks to explore mapping as a means of analysing and understanding the effects of our current position in the economic cycle on architecture and the built environment.
We are looking for submissions from all disciplines including anthropologists, archaeologists, artists, cartographers, geographers, illustrators, sociologists, scientists, surveyors... and architects.
All images are to be a minimum of 300 PPI. The deadline is Monday the 28th of February. This project will go online in March 2011.
Building Material is the journal of the Architecture Association of Ireland. If you are interested in contributing to this online project please contact: buildingmaterialeditor@gmail.com
Written by Stephen Mulhall on 19-01-11 | Categories: Building Material
By Hugh Campbell
Dr Hugh Campbell is Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture,Landscape & Civil Engineering in UCD. In 2002, he and a group of UCD students spent a month based in the University of Western Australia working on a mapping project for the goldfields region. His account of development predicated on the whims of international markets is as resonant now as it was when first published in Building Material 14, Boom and Bust.
Western Australia is largely empty. 1.5 million people live in a state of 2.5 million sqkm, with 1.2 million of those living in the state capital, Perth. This vast, sparsely populated region seems to epitomise the enduring conception of Australia as the terra nullius - a blank land, free of the marks of settlement or development, a place which might be seen on the one hand as harsh, unforgiving, inimical to inhabitation and on the other, as a huge untapped resource with the potential to produce great wealth.
It was the challenge offered by the former interpretation, combined with the promise of the latter, which led explorers into the vast desert interior of Western Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Early accounts of these adventures, like that of Ernest Giles in his classic Australia Twice Traversed tended to emphasise the extremity of the landscape and the hardships it induces... For several years previous to my taking the field, I had desired to be the first to penetrate into this unknown region where, for a thousand miles in a straight line, no white man's foot had ever wandered, or, if it had, its owner had never brought it back, nor told the tale... But towards the end of the century it became apparent that there was indeed a great resource which might make it worthwhile venturing into this inhospitable wilderness: gold.
Initial discoveries of gold were made in the Kimberleys in the north in 1885, then a few years later gold was found further south in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. On June 14th 1893, an Irishman, Paddy Hannan, pegged out the first claim in Kalgoorlie. What followed was an extraordinarily rapid period of speculation and development in the region. The population increased exponentially - from 35,000 in 1885 to 101,000 in 1895 and to 239,000 by the end of 1904 - as people from all over the world arrived to make their fortunes. An extensive network of gold-mining settlements quickly sprang up, and along with them, the infrastructure necessary to support the industry and transform this barren region into a profitable, inhabitable landscape. From the coast at Perth came the railway, followed by a water pipeline which ran more or less in a straight line for 350 miles from Mundaring reservoir near Perth as far as Kalgoorlie. The pipe still follows the path of the main road west from Perth. By 1903 the goldfields of Western Australia were producing 2 million ounces of gold a year - a total which has not been exceeded in the century since. Production was centred on Kalgoorlie, its so called 'Golden Mile' of poppet heads and cyanaide treatment plants reputedly the most valuable land in the world.
Photographs from the period portray a society founded on the rapid growth of a precarious industry. While below ground a vast network of shafts and tunnels relentlessly expands, above ground great efforts are being made to sound a note of stability and permanence. Over the course of a decade Kalgoorlie moves from the makeshift character of a works camp to the solid certainties of brick buildings, verandahs, bicycles and afternoon tea. All the trappings of Edwardian civilisation have been translated directly into the Australian outback. Although Kalgoorlie is thought to be the first major Australian settlement created out of sight of any 'western' landscape feature, its architecture provides familiar reference points.
The speed of development in the region is even more evident from a pair of photographs of a smaller settlement in the goldfields, Kookynie. Between 1899 and 1901, the place has been transformed from a basic encampment to a fully functioning town of 2500 people. The brick-built, tin-roofed buildings include hotels, post offices, town halls and clubs. And while the flatness and expansiveness of the landscape make the establishment of towns easy - they can go anywhere, extend in any direction - these same features tend to emphasise the very thinness of the veneer of civilisation that has been drawn across the land. Raw nature is only ever one layer away.
This thinness was soon confirmed as, as quickly as it had risen, the tide of development began to recede in the wake of falling gold prices and lessening yields. The industry became focussed on a few major seams - at Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie, Leonora etc - and the scores of smaller mining towns were quickly abandoned. In most cases, the buildings were taken down and removed, so that almost no trace was left of the original settlement. This is certainly the case in Kookynie, By the early 1920s, almost everyone had left. Today the town has a population of ten, most of whom spend their evenings in the bar of the Grand Hotel, one of the few remaining buildings. It is difficult to get any sense that this remote outpost was once a thriving town. Besides piles of bricks and a fragment of building here and there, nothing remains. Former streets have reverted to bush, unpopulated apart from the occasional kangaroo. The abandoned adit attests to the existence of another, equally abandoned realm of shafts and tunnels underground. There is still gold to be found here, and prospectors still come seeking their fortune.
Nowadays, the shafts have been replaced by open-cast mining. Most of these modern operations now operate like oil-rigs, with workers being flown in for two-week stints followed by a spell back in 'civilisation' on the coast. Kalgoorlie, though, continues to thrive, thanks to the existence of the so-called 'Superpit', a vast operation which has engulfed the whole territory onf the Golden Mile. Wealth keeps coming out of the ground, but it is much more hard-won than a century ago and the profit margins on an average yield of a gram of gold per ton of rock are slim. Existence in this remote town is still precarious, reliant on supplies of water and produce from the coast. At the central crossroads, an LED monitor constantly displays the price of gold. If it dips too low, the whole settlement might yet disappear.
Written by Douglas on 13-12-10 | Categories: AAI Lectures
Lecture sketch of O'Donnell & Tuomey Architect's LSE proposal, Neil Mathews
John Tuomey delivered a great lecture in Belfast. He'd taken time from out from the nearing completion Lyric Theatre project to talk in the grand surroundings of Belfast City Hall. Michael Heggarty of PLACE, Northern Ireland's Architecture Centre introduced the speaker.
John gathered a selection of schemes from the recently completed Timber yard in the Liberties to the ‘about to begin on site’ London School of Economics Student’s Centre. Other projects discussed were the An Gaelaras Irish Language Centre in Derry/Londonderry and the newly won competition for the library in Coleraine.
The talk described their journey of appreciation of form in building. Where one could look further away for international pieces to enjoy, John and Shelia also took comprehensive note of a distilled series of details and materials in Ireland. He talked about recording a farm or a shed, a wall of stone or a roof of slate or tin. Applied to the urban fabric of the liberties, the Timber yard’s response to family or individual, formal to informal both have a say in this carefully prepared ‘way of seeing’.
Derry is a project of inflected concrete intrigue and an invitation to explore: a theatre of sociable moments in light and sound. A consistent theme of the talk was of the essential trust and respect between the disciplines of architect and builder. John spoke fondly of the enthusiasm of craft in the Derry project and also of the arrival of their white carved model in Venice.
On the Lyric John spoke of ‘loosening up the fixed parts of the building’. The three parts or volumes of bar, studio and theatre all find an appropriate expression of scale relative to the city and the river. John spoke of the dramatic chimney topography of Stranmillis, the ‘no-nonsense’ harsh brick, and the lazy meander of the Lagan.
The Coleraine Market yard and library promises more movement, framed and free. The anticipated arrival of the LSE Student’s Centre will give a new expression of city habitation, a careful composition of light and space in brick and glass.
Written by Amy OConnor on 30-11-10 | Categories: Fun!
The first year architecture students from UCD embarked on a class trip to London last week. Although the trip was only for one night, the excitement at the airport was palpable. Many of the students had never been to London and those who had been were looking forward to seeing some familiar sites as well as some new ones.
The trip started off shakily when the pre-booked coach didn't show up to the airport. Despite this little mishap the group piled onto a train and headed into the city enthusiastic nonetheless. On arrival at the impressive Liverpool Street Station (designed by engineer Edward Wilson) we divided and went to find our hostels. That afternoon we met at the British Museum for a short look-around. We were all thoroughly impressed with Norman Foster's glass-roofed 'Great Court' and spent the time sketching and photographing the glazed roof and reading room in the centre. After this we walked to the John Soane Museum where we were booked in for the next two hours.
If I was to advise on one must-see London building for architecture enthusiasts it would have to be the Soane House. The house is an incredible maze through the three houses John Soane bought and the numerous extensions and refurbishments that he designed and commissioned throughout his lifetime. Highlights include the 'Dome Room' which is full of plaster casts and models that Soane collected, the gallery room in which the walls open out to display concealed paintings, and the candle-lit crypt below which houses the sarcophagus. Overall the building is full of nooks and crannies, narrow passageways and complex methods of illuminating the spaces. It was an amazing experience and I would definitely go again if given the opportunity.
Having seen the building we came to see the group went on a walking tour down through the city. We stopped briefly at Covent Gardens, Leicester Square and the National Portrait Gallery Situated there, and Trafalgar Square before meeting the rest of our class at the National Theatre. Here, among the array of restaurants and bars, we had dinner and a few drinks before going out for the night.
The next day we arrived bright and early to the Tate Modern art gallery. For me this was the highlight of the trip. There was a Gauguin exhibition going on, as well as Ai Weiwei's Unilever Series which includes the piece 'Sunflower Seeds 2010'. This piece encompasses a large part of the room by filling it with ceramic seeds that the artist made. An unusual moment occurred when a man hopped over the small wire barricade to sit in the middle of the vast pit of seeds whilst ranting about art being not being accessible to the public (the piece was deemed unfit for the public to walk on due to the dust that arises from the ceramic). In addition to this we visited some of the permanent collections and saw (among others) artists such as Dali and Warhol. All in all a brilliant morning.
Before we made the trip back to the airport, we took a walk through the Barbican. This is an area of London which was designed with a view to urban planning. The thousands of residents have in their vicinity schools, shops, an art gallery, a library, a theatre and impressive gardens to name but a few amenities. The centre was designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in the Brutalist style and is an impressive area to visit. It was voted "London's ugliest building" in a poll in 2003 and it's not hard to see why.
So finally we returned to Ireland, exhausted, with empty stomachs and full notebooks.
Written by Erl Johnston on 21-11-10 | Categories: Site Visits
For architecture students in the North of Ireland, the opportunity to visit the site of the new Lyric Theatre was a significant one. Doubly so for students at Queen's University, as the site is less than 300m from the architecture studios where such designs are always aspired to, but maybe only seldom approached. Also of great significance was to have the tour led by Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey, with John providing a wealth of information, anecdotes and insights into the building's conception and construction.
For Queen's students the construction process has been a continuous, and constantly elaborated, tutorial on building technology. The daily identification of changes, the puzzling over form & detail and the appreciation of how such things are constructed have been valuable and free lessons carried out on our doorstep. But what had maybe been a mainly technical appreciation of the building changed very markedly during the site visit, with the real character and subtlety of its design coming into clear focus.
Following a route dictated by the necessary continuation of construction works the visit was nevertheless able to cover all of the significant areas of the building. In the spring of 2011 it will be possible to experience the processional route from street to auditorium in the way that the architects intend, but even mid-construction the powerful spatial qualities of this route are quite striking and appropriately theatrical.
It would be wrong of course to assume the design only presents its qualities on this large scale - at each level of inspection it reveals an attention to detail that highlights great care and much thought. John Tuomey spoke about the choice and detailing of the brickwork in the building, making reference to the rich heritage that Belfast possesses in this area. The student's eye will no doubt be drawn to this aspect of the detail design, learning much as it focusses closer and closer on the design.
Back at the macroscopic level the continuation of the tour illustrated how the building's brickwork is as defining an element of its interior as its exterior. Never oppressive, it manages to simultaneously divide the bulk of the building into human scaled elements whilst drawing the whole architectural composition closer together. For those of us students at Queen's who are strong advocates of traditional Belfast materials and construction methods it is a powerful lesson, and one that loses none of its strength by virtue of being delivered from a Dublin-based office.
Moving through the Directors' boardroom, bar and upper foyer we arrive at the main auditorium itself. Described by John Tuomey as being almost like another full design project in its own right due to the complexities involved, it is still in the throes of construction. Yet, its essential qualities are evident at this stage. For a venue with a 450 seat capacity it is surprisingly intimate - an impression only reinforced when we later reach the stage and view the auditorium from the perspective of the performer. With the careful positioning of audience access routes, the auditorium presents no unoccupied axes of view to the performer, and will surely be as pleasant a space to perform in as to spectate.
Of further interest to the architecture student was the ability of the architects to engage with the client on the definition of the building programme, and the obviously collaborative relationship that allowed them to introduce and exploit new concepts. The first of these described by John Tuomey was the visual connection provided between the performers' rehearsal space and the auditorium lobby. A previously unthinkable connection, it is handled with a discretion that will no doubt permit both performers and audience to value it greatly. Similarly surprising, though in hindsight eminently sensible, is the introduction of a substantial picture-window to the studio space. Capable of being quickly and seamlessly shuttered to create a black-box environment, when opened it creates a space of very different character and utility. It will surely become an important venue in its own right.
If the architects had to work hard for these changes to the programme, then for the upper meeting room that overlooks Ridgeway Street and beyond they were eclipsed by their client. Perhaps unremarkable in its dimensions, its positioning and the outlook it provides over the local and greater environment of South Belfast make it a very significant space in the building. To paraphrase John Tuomey - when they experienced it the client dismissed their preconceptions of its use and were seized with a new imagination of what might and could happen there. That, perhaps, is the most succinct analysis of the whole building - that ultimately it is a product of and supporter of great imagination and creativity.
Written by Hugo on 16-11-10 | Categories: Site Visits
Project: Bessborough House Child & Adult Psychiatric Unit
Led by: Valerie Mulvin of McCullough Mulvin Architects
Date: 23 October 2010
The Child and Adult Psychiatric Unit at Bessboro House will, when completed in the near future, be the first of four similar institutions to open in the state. It is a particularly challenging brief, which brings together a 20-bed residential care unit with a small school and group therapy facilities for children and young adults from the ages of eight to sixteen.
As the architects state on their website, “Bessboro House and its demesne has been a therapeutic campus for many years under the auspices of the Sacred Heart Sisters, who still live in the 18th century house.” The campus is certainly restful and well-shielded from intrusive passers-by, lying at the end of a long avenue bordered on one site by mature trees and on the other side by a field of cuds well inspected by curious ruminants.
A chapel and maternity hospital on site date from the 1920s, and it was the architects’ brief that these buildings, combined with the existing farm buildings, form the basis for a ‘therapeutic campus’. With recent exposés of the involvement of the Catholic Church in institutional care, particularly the Ryan Report, it is a hugely charged brief and site; attempting to downplay the traditional mixed institutionally religious/religiously institutional language of the buildings, without either offending the order that granted the facilities or negatively altering the fabric of them in order to fall in line with some politically correct ideal, is a delicate path to tread.
Beyond that, and far more immediately relevant, are the impositions placed by building regulations and best-practice documents on the design and fit-out of institutions dealing with people in danger of harming themselves or others. As reported by Valerie Mulvin of McCullough Mulvin Architects, one of the care workers described the user base as describing “the whole spectrum, from the mad to the bad”. The architects intensely felt the burden to “safeguard the safety of the people who are here, once they’re here”; professionally, it was reflected in a massive detailing task that focused on eliminating ligature points and considering at every turn the potential for self-harm that the building could possibly provide.
Vital to remember though, is that this isn’t a prison facility: those people who spend time here are patients, not criminals. It is first and foremost a medical institution, and the architects were keen to address issues that they felt were a major factor in the design of hospitals. Foremost among these, was the fact that “[one] never gets a sense of the inside or the outside as a whole being” in typical hospitals, that there is always a disconnect between the ill and the rest of the world which isn’t necessarily healthy or a positive factor in recovery.
Thus, in terms of both a conceptual idea behind the design and as an initial move with regard to site strategy, Valerie Mulvin described the approach as “gathering the space and making a relationship with the relationship”. The new buildings would engulf the existing buildings, “reversing patterns of use and expectation”. Something fundamental to the execution of both sets of buildings, the entirely new and the converted existing, was the intention to ‘de-institutionalise the corridor’; in the upper corridors, this is done by introducing rooflights to pull light down into an otherwise standard double-loaded corridor, in the lower by allowing visual links between the corridor and the rooms off it.
Perhaps the most successful element of the scheme is the newly created courtyard garden. Split in two by a curiously Niemeyer-esque curved cast-concrete wall, punctured by variously sized portholes and topped with a deep-sectioned canopy, the garden on one side opens to views of the fields and on the other acts as a secure outdoor space between the two elements of the scheme. The landscape side has a cleverly created mound that rises in front of a fence that skirts the avenue, visually shielding this potentially upsetting security measure from the patients. It’s a thoughtful and effective touch.
The design and execution of a project like Bessboro House is a severe and serious challenge. It’s fair to say that it is a case where architecture has the chance to change lives, and there is no doubt that it is a facility that deals with some of the most vulnerable people in society. In such briefs, the duty of care and the burden of any potential failure weighs heavily on the architect, and it is vital both to accept these professional responsibilities and not to let them unnecessarily outweigh the importance of creating an architecture and environment which are beneficial in their own right.
Furthermore, in dealing with two government agencies, in this case the HSE and the Dept of Education, as well as a non-state institution in the Sacred Heart Sisters, the ability to effectively analyse the brief and refine the instructions given is paramount. In Bessboro House, McCullough Mulvin have worked with a restricted budget on an extremely difficult brief, to create a vital and new piece of architecture which hopefully can have a positive impact on many childrens’ lives for years to come.
Written by Hugo on 15-11-10 | Categories: AAI Lectures
Title: Investigating Materiality: Re-restoring Mies' Villa Tugendhat in Brno
Speaker: Iveta Cerna
Venue: Synge Theatre, Trinity College Dublin
Date:10 November 2010
Edward R Ford wrote "There have always been two Mies ... the European Mies, who did many projects and built little, and ... the American Mies, who built one major building a year from 1950 until his death. The European buildings were irregular,assymmetrical, fragmented and touched by expressionism and De Stijl; the American buildings were regular, symmetrical, complete and recalled the work of Schinkel."
The Villa Tugendhat in Brno is one of the former, and occupies a position in the Mies canon that is worthy of discussion. The great bluffer's standard criticism of art is that, when in doubt, the labelling of something as a "transitional piece" is relatively hard to dispute and implies a knowledge of the artist's entire oeuvre; and yet, there is a good argument to say that the Villa at Brno is just that.
Ford's quote regarding the European and American Mies is perhaps most aptly embodied by two different projects separated by twenty eight years: the Brick Country House project of 1923 and the Farnsworth House of 1951.
The Brick Country House embodies many of Ford's descriptions: irregular, assymmetrical ... and unbuilt. Composed of freestanding brick walls, and with a plan that Colin Davies compares to Theo van Doesburg's Rhythm of a Russian Dance, the Brick Country House is the clear progenitor of Mies' Wolfe House in Gubin [1927] and has a notable material influence on the Lange and Ester Houses in Krefeld [1928].
Against this material similarity with the Brick Country House, the Lange House's construction method - finished just two years before Villa Tugendhat, it should be remembered - is more of a hybrid than one would originally suspect, given its monolithic brick walls. The structure of the floors and roof is composed of steel beams, which support a deck of tiles and concrete; there is even an interesting steel X-brace concealed in the set-back wall of the second floor.
The bookending Farnsworth House, in comparison, is incredibly resolved and still. There are no structural tricks; the dignity and the rigour of the project come before inventiveness.
Between Mies's European brick houses and the Farnsworth House, and yet on both timeline and geography heavily loaded to the European end of the scale, come three projects whose composition and approach attest to there existing a certain 'transitional period' as referred to above: the German pavilion at Barcelona, the Villa Tugendhat at Brno and the Villa Hubbe [unbuilt].
There are certain similarities in these three projects which mark them as siblings, yet there's also a marked difference - a progression? - in terms of their planning. The Villa Tugendhat is particularly noteworthy, as it takes up the material extravagance preluded in Barcelona with a more static plan than the exploded right-angles of the pavilion. That the Tugendhat plan is inarguably more prosaic than Barcelona reflects that the latter never really had any program to house; Tugendhat was, on the other hand, a family home, as Iveta Cerna's lecture was able to prove.
The beauty of the lecture came from the fact that it dealt with one building; to be able to focus on just one project, and a project that many – if not most – of the audience were familiar with, was enthralling.
The wealth of hitherto unseen images – the colour images which gave a glimpse of the opulence and luxury of the materials used by Mies, the family shots of the Tugendhat children sitting with their feet on the radiator pipes, later photographs taken from the period when the house was used as a school of dance – were revelatory in a small way; most people are used to a familiar black and white view of the house taken from the garden. Certainly, most images of Mies’ houses are absolutely bereft of human figures, and it was delightful to see photographs of the house not just inhabited, but absolutely filled ... and with children, rather than self-conscious adults.
The way that the history of the house and its owners was sketched out by Ms Cerna went far beyond an architectural case study: we were told how the Tugendhats used their Swiss connections to escape from Czechoslovakia and avoid the German invasion, and how Russian Cavalry units used the house as a stables while they were sweeping across the country towards Berlin in the closing days of the war.
In the aftermath of the war the house underwent many changes of use, something that marks a building, even to those who have no knowledge of its design or history, as worthwhile and well-built. Charmingly, it hosted a school of dance, and later on became a clinic for children with spinal problems. The adoption of the Villa Tugendhat as home by these institutions, and especially the photographs shown by Ms Cerna from these eras, for once allowed the building to exist in the background, rather than the foreground.
[As an aside, these photographs and the evidence they offered of a mass inhabitation of the house, made one realize just how vast and spacious the villa really was. One of the criticisms of the Tugendhat house at the time was that it cost roughly twenty times the amount a normal house in Brno would have cost to construct – the temptation to blame that on Mies’ lavish taste in materials can be indulged, but it is also worth remembering that the clients were an incredibly rich family used to living at the highest of standards.]
The ongoing renovation and refurbishment of the Villa Tugendhat formed the final part of the lecture. As an UNESCO World Heritage Site, the restoration is being painstakingly documented, and one of the compliments offered to Ms Cerna’s team was that they are not reticent about revealing where they have mis-stepped, so that future efforts can learn from, rather than repeat, their mistakes.
Written by Stephen Mulhall on 15-11-10 | Categories: Building Material
The following article by Eoghan O’Shea appeared in Building Material 12: Morality and Architecture.
INDENTURE
Indenture was the contract used to bond apprentice to master. It outlined the duties of the apprentice, the length of time for which they were tied to such duties and the conditions under which he or she was entitled to leave. The term itself derives from the method used to ensure that the two copies of the contract (one for the master and the other for the parents of the apprentice) replicated each other. After the copies were drafted they were held tightly together and a strip was torn, ensuring a matching indenture on both. The duties and responsibilities could be severe but the agreement was legally binding and unquestionable.
In modern times such severity in working conditions cannot be enforced and employees are pampered with certain statutory rights. For instance, the maximum average working week is forty-eight hours, balanced out over a four-month period. While this allows bouts of productivity within an office, it will also force periods of calm in between. Employees are also entitled to eleven consecutive hours rest in a twenty-four hour period and, if work takes place on a Sunday, then premium payment or paid time in lieu are due. However, there is great value in the ability to drive one’s workforce to extremes and to do so economically, without emptying the purse into employees’ pockets. The twin rewards of education and experience can be offered instead and history has shown both the evidence and benefits of such a practice.
MORE TO LIFE THAN MONEY
Education as a reward for work was instituted at least 4,000 years ago amongst Egyptian scribes, when rules governing apprenticeships were included in the Code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi’s laws were placed in the Temple of Shamash in 2,100 BC and the sacred quality of this early legislation suggests how, within a modern architectural practice, the commitment demanded of ancient apprentices can be expected from today’s staff. Religions are often based around a cult figure about whom a mythos arises, which, in turn, creates a sense of awe. In the case of the Master Architect, the delicious wisdom held and potentially offered by this figure can draw hungry and tireless staff irresistibly towards it. The young and inexperienced best ingest this mythos; stories, whether true or fabricated, of the achievements and formative experiences of the Master Architect, can feed this sense of awe and leave a necessary distance between employer and workforce. Suggestions as to how staff should apply themselves to their work can thus be received with due reverence.
RECYCLING WASTE TIME
Nights full of sleep and mornings full of wake are comforts easily forfeited with no evident result beyond sunken eyes and throbbing head. An excess of free time can often lead to a deceleration in tempo. It is thus unproductive to offer rest periods of eleven hours to one’s employees. Sixty hours or more at a sitting are possible, although this can lead to episodes of hallucination. To get workers to perform for such periods can be difficult, given the frivolous pursuits with which many choose to fill their time and their tendency to extend their sleeping hours well beyond what is strictly necessary. The drive to encourage such efforts, however, is very much worth it and can create a reinforcing cycle; once one begins to chip away at the spare hours of one’s staff, their goals and aims in life become their goals and aims at work. Abraham Maslow’s pronouncement, given in his hierarchy of human needs, to ‘[A]ssume in all people the impulse for achievement,’ begins, therefore, to work for the employer. Slowly, the employees’ valuation of their own needs will change.
BOUNDARIES OF THE NEW WORLD
During the Middle Ages, the apprenticeship system became widespread across Europe as the skills and tools required in craft became more complex. Parents could not teach their children enough to guarantee them a living so they paid a fee to have them apprenticed to Master-artisans. The children received no pay during the lengthy period of apprenticeship - often between two and seven years - but were given basic food and lodging, often beneath the shop counter. They effectively lived their work for the period of indenture. It might be considered a cruelty, but to be trapped so tightly within the universe of work is not as restrictive as it might first appear. Indeed, a life spent solely within an office need not necessarily be an isolated or disadvantaged existence. Essential needs are easily satisfied; food can be prepared in well-equipped office kitchens or be delivered ready-made. Highly stacked libraries are full of reading: periodicals, monographs, weighty books of theory - therein lie all the merits of the world, carefully filtered for all conditions of human habitation. Exercise can be maintained by placing plotters a good distance from the main working area. Having their operation needlessly complicated maintains frantic movement.
As we have seen, spirituality is also accommodated within these walls. The Master Architect at the centre of this work/life cult - he who provides work and thus gives life - can be admired as a true deity. The Master Architect becomes the demiurge, the Ein Sof, the Alpha, from whose genius emerges this mechanistic office and from which in turn, whole worlds can emerge: a city, visible but unseen, will burst forth. Devotion to this deity can be most efficiently expressed through labour, according to the maxim advocated by St. Bernard, ‘Laborare est orare’: to work is to pray. Echoes of religion can also be heard in the sequence of the design project which begins its life within the office then disappears into the increasingly abstract outside world, before finally achieving resurrection in the Architectural Periodical as flesh once again becomes word.
BLIND FAITH
Medieval Arab artists copied landscapes onto grains of rice, even detailing each leaf on each tree because they believed Allah read the world like a flat page with all things perceived at once. These miniaturists give example in terms of commitment, even to the indentured apprentice. According to the master Seyyit Mirek, the blindness that all in his profession feared, and most succumbed to, was a blessing. The art of illustrating was the miniaturist’s search for Allah’s vision of his earthly realm and could only be attained through recollection after the colourless veil of darkness had descended; only, in other words, after both eyes of the miniaturist had been expended. When he could see the world solely through memory and darkness, then he would realise his destiny.
Likewise, the young architect can, from memory of the world foregone, seek to improve it. And, he can draw on that memory day and night in a quest for a type of blindness. The designs created can be intricately represented and detailed, even if the worth of this work isn’t apparent to client or contractor. No hour will be wasted in the infinity of time the staff can offer. Each drawing can be requested as a microcosm of every other on the project, with the beauty of the whole scheme screaming from every single page. More detail than the eye can see can be demanded. When the feeling and sense of the design does not talk directly to the soul and if a single contradiction can be felt - even if not observed - then the work must be re-done.
THE NEW BABYLON
When apprentices were taken from house to workshop, which became their home, the boundary between work and home-life was dissolved. The collapse of this boundary in a new age would modify Le Corbusier’s claim. It is not the house but the office that is the machine for living in, where life is honed to precise and continuous production. Think of it. Our humming offices filled day and night with toiling employees. The need for housing will pass; our offices will fill cities and factories their peripheries; shops will remain open twenty-four hours in support, with tireless workers and fleets of delivery vehicles; the new apprentices with indentured souls will sign away their lives with pens sharpened to compass points to draw blood from their own veins and will work tirelessly through the new working day which now becomes a beginningless and endless mélange of successive periods of light and dark – a day broken solely by the music of the dawn chorus, when birdsong is drowned by the drumming of the Kango hammers prophesying new edifices; the trumpet of traffic delivering potential clients and the deep bass notes of trucks filled with building material to create potential photographs in magazines.
At the time of writing, Eoghan-Conor O’ Shea lived in Dublin and worked part of the day as an architect.
Written by Hugo on 01-11-10 | Categories: Site Visits
Site Visit to Cork Institute of Technology,
led by Shane de Blacam of de Blacam and Meagher Architects, Cork, 23 October 2010
The timing of the recent site visit to de Blacam and Meagher Architects’ Cork Institute of Technology buildings, the week before the AAI Awards Adjudication, prompts once again the serious issue of the validity of an awards scheme where the jurors never visit the buildings in contention.
The coherency, the scale, the vision, the clarity of the architects’ intentions, the significance of the buildings to the prestige and place of the institution, the rigour, the fastidious attention to detail over a decade of construction: none of these attributes of the North Campus Development can be adequately conveyed over a pair of A1 boards.
The AAI is proud of its awards, and believes that there is substantial worth in not altering the agenda for its jurors, nor changing the entry regulations for its members. The jurors change on an annual basis; the rules do not.
That doesn’t mean that it’s a faultless system, nor that the awards handed out by its juries haven’t been flawed.
That the AAI did not recognize the CIT North Campus with its highest award, the Downes Medal, is to me a grievous and egregious error. That the error came about largely from the limitations imposed by the AAI Awards entry regulations is embarrassing.
The CIT North Campus buildings are a massive architectural achievement. They bring a dignity and a prestige to the institution that both affirms its role as a seat of learning and reaffirms the power of architecture to create a sense of place and an atmosphere on a grand scale.
It is an architecture of permanence and solidity, and an architecture that reflects the skills and attributes not only of its designers but of its builders. Andrea Deplazes talks about the ‘pathos of masonry’ in his book Constructing Architecture, and there is an inherent solemnity to this campus, both through its materiality and its formal layout. That the language is borrowed from Kahn may be a sticking point for some critics; then again, everything is borrowed from someone, and few results are this pressing and impressive.
The American poet Jack Gilbert called poetry a ‘witnessing to magnitude’. I’ve always felt that much of what he wrote about poetry could just as easily have applied to architecture. It’s a fantastic phrase, this ‘witnessing to magnitude’, and in this instance it is particularly appropriate. The sheer weight of the walls, the countless bricks laid, the scale and peace of the spaces, the obvious immovable nature of the masonry … it is a series of buildings of great magnitude, and a campus that establishes its institution as an important piece of the academic fabric of the country.
The tour itself was given by Shane de Blacam; he was full of insight, anecdote and reminiscences. It was a marvelous, three-dimensional relation of the history of the design and construction of the institute. From the initial success of the library, which paved the way for the rest of the scheme –“Independent student study was not on the [Institute’s] agenda … but we wanted something permanent and academic, and it is very rewarding to see something so well-used” – we were given an off-hand summation of the pros and cons of its precast concrete soffit [‘People hate it, architects like it, and I think it’s okay’] and a tribute to the joiner Eric Pierce for his work on the beech furniture.
De Blacam talked plainly of the propositions that they had made, and the negotiations the architects had engaged in with the academic authorities who held the institute’s purse-strings. Some were won [“We wanted … an aula maxima, a big hall covered in brick, albeit full of columns … we didn’t want it as a shopping mall”] while others, notably the debate over a teaching kitchen arrayed in the round with one extraction hood in the centre rather than one for every separate cooker in a traditional class-room layout, were lost: “I didn’t get a look in!”
Perhaps most satisfying was the fact that the architect was willing to make clear the relationships between the various aspects of the work: the site strategy, the initial design of each component part, the professional aspects of the job, the negotiations with contractors and clients.
Nowhere is the holistic nature of architecture – as a profession and as an art form – more clear than on site; there are many ways in which the process of construction can strip a project of its academic sheen, its subtleties and its pretensions.
It takes persuasion, determination and the ability to accept small defeats to successfully complete a project. One of the most telling remarks that de Blacam made was on leaving the stunning Demonstration Kitchen in the Tourism and Catering Building: “The fatal mistake is to touch the concrete: you strike it, and then you live with it.” There’s a real profundity in this remark. However, it wasn’t a series of profundities; we were also privy to the dry aside, “There a dignity of the academic environment which is not to do with gloss paint” as well as throwaways like the construction of the teaching kitchens engaging “the full whack of Arups M&E department!”
The work of de Blacam and Meagher Architects at Cork Institute of Technology is solemn and dignified. There’s a sense of timelessness than belongs to well-made buildings of a certain scale which restrict their material pallets to those with which traditional craftsmen and builders are most familiar – concrete, brick, and wood.
But beyond the building itself, it is encouraging to think that an Irish practice can earn the trust and respect of its clients and be afforded the time and capital to build something which has this timeless quality. The design of the first phase of the library started in 1992; the body of the rest of the campus was finished in 2007. To bring something of this scale to fruition, with all the hundreds of people who have worked on it over two decades, is really the most inspiring thing of all.
Shane de Blacam in the CIT Library, 23 October 2010
Written by Douglas on 01-11-10 | Categories: AAI Lectures
I confess. I do not own a copy of 'Modern Architecture since 1900'. According to our President, Hugo Lamont, during his introduction to last night's lecture, that put me amongst 5% of the audience. This morning, looking for reassurance in our bookshelves I feel as though I may be missing out on a significant source of reference to the Modern Movement. While I can recall and refer to battered college photocopies of individual chapters from that canonical book: Mies:(nature and the machine...), Aalto (..scandinavian development), Le Corbusier (form and meaning..), our own collection of books on the history of 20th Century Architecture seems, at times, heavy with the impassioned ideology, relentless categorisation or questionable selections of other writers. To take one case in point: Kostof's termination of the otherwise magnificent 'A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals' with his choice of Meier, Krier, Libeskind and Eisenmann still leaves me with a sense of.......anti-climax?
During William Curtis's lecture, given as the Annual AAI Critics Lecture for 2010 in the Arts Building of Trinity College, the critical approaches taken by some of those writers was reopened to review and clarification. Or perhaps I should say, going by the tone of the lecture itself, 'torpedoed' mercilessly, with its main sails shredded and its crew left for dead in shark invested waters. The lecture's emphasis, supported by a series of personal photographs and drawings, drew on human experience itself; light, shadow, music, materiality and movement as opposed to an Architecture of direct ideological expression or one that required a philosophical text for support.
William Curtis opened the lecture with a genuine appreciation for the opportunity to return to Ireland after 44 years, recalling an enjoyable three hours in 1966 discussing poetry with the Professor of English at Trinity during an interview for a position he subsequently turned down. For him this felt like a homecoming of sorts and throughout the lecture it was clear there was much affection for Dublin both in his admiration of its finest works: "the neutral abstraction and repitition" of our Georgian terraces, and his sharp, witty and virulent attacks on some of the city's recent development. While he acknowledged his engagement with criticism and gave a valuable and hugely entertaining insight as to the perils and responsibilities of that role within contemporary society, he considers himself as someone with many involvements: whether it be as an historian, photographer, artist or as an active and experienced juror.
Curtis himself emphasised the importance of the "building as the primary document" with visitations and direct experience as vital to our understanding and appreciation of Architecture - perhaps an issue the awards system in Ireland might learn from in future years? . Likewise, I hope this brief review encourages those AAI members absent last night to spend some time with the thing itself: this lecture in all its glorious audio entirety is available now for download in MP3 format and 'Modern Architecture since 1900' is now in its third edition, extensively revised.
Written by Hugo on 27-10-10 | Categories: AAI Lectures
AAI Lecture Review – McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects.
14th October, 2010 at Dublin School of Architecture, DIT Bolton Street. Podcast of lecture now available.
McGarry Ní Eanaigh Architects presented five recent projects in a lecture to the AAI in the Large Kinema, Bolton Street DIT, on 14th October 2010.
Siobhán Ní Eanaigh’s introduction concerned not just the practice’s use of colour in their architecture, but rather the very nature of colour. As a framing device, this allowed a certain thread to link the shown projects thematically, rather than programmatically – three schools and two community buildings – or chronologically.
Their choice of imagery for this introduction, almost entirely taken from the works of twentieth century artists, and their specific references to what each piece meant to them in very architectural terms was a revealing primer for what was to come. It’s easy – too easy – to see a direct equivalent in “the yellow interior” of Belfast-born Gerrard Dillon’s paintings in the Ballyfermot Community and Youth centre, for example. Perhaps more interesting a theme is a self-confessed “pre-occupation”: the equivalence of figure and ground, which they equated with the work of the Australian painter and printmaker Sidney Nolan.
Throughout, the stressed message was that colour had depth, that colour had a solid nature. Be it through the work of Josef Albers, William Scott or Anish Kapoor, this sentiment was hammered home again and again.
As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Sauerbruch Hutton, another firm who have an architecture unashamedly rooted in colour, are also based in Berlin, where both Siobhán Ní Eanaigh and Michael McGarry worked in the early 1980s. Of course, it’s probably nothing other than a coincidence, but one wonders if the relentless greyness of communist East Germany [well-depicted in the film The Lives of Others, for those of us who have never been] sparked a polychromatic knee-jerk reaction.
Ballyfermot Leisure and Youth Centre, Dublin
‘That secret wild yellow colour’
That the Ballyfermot project was chosen as a starting point is worth addressing. Firstly, it’s the only project presented that is in Dublin; the four other projects are variously located in Louth, Offaly and Meath. However, Ballyfermot is a part of Dublin that is, in the words of Siobhán Ní Éanaigh “characterized by an awful lot of housing and not too many public buildings”, something which could also be said of their site at Ratoath, Co. Meath.
The concerns of the architects were rooted both in the site, and in the future users relationships to the buildings. Amongst the first issues to be addressed was a site strategy aimed at ‘harnessing the park … so that it becomes a part of the scheme’; something that was readily apparent, however, was the responsibility that the architects felt not so much to the client, but to the future users, rather than to the site or their own predilictions.
“Each building needed its own identity … [they needed] in their own quiet way to have their own personality,” stated Ní Éanaigh, referring to the two distinct elements of the scheme, the Youth Centre and the Leisure Centre. “[It] is about making the building friendly and non-judgmental.” The architects spoke, with obviously fond memories, of the consultative process with locals. Beyond the surefooted decisions as regards siting and orienting the buildings, creating routes and shelter, it was easily seen that there was a deep regard and level of thought given to how the building would be used, and how to make it both more practical and more enjoyable for those to whom it would become a part of their daily lives.
However, this feeling obviously had to be balanced against the need to create a public building. The architects speak of it as ‘externally calm’ – which it certainly is,almost to blandness in comparison to some of the work exhibited later – and tonally ‘natural’, a pointed reference to those who would only see muted colours in nature.
Bush Sports Hall, Louth
‘The sandy, soily colour of Slí Fáil’
The gym at Bush, another commended project in the 2009 AAI Awards, has an entirely different setting to the Ballyfermot project, sitting at the foothills of the Cooley Mountains in County Louth. Succinctly labelled “a rendered erratic” by its architects, Siobhán Ní Eanaigh described the building as an exercise in “how you make something that you want to model and also be continuous”.
What is particularly worth noting about this project is the Jekyll and Hyde traits it possesses: exuberant and stylized externally, rigorous and almost utilitarian internally. The roots of this approach, with regards both to materiality and form, are based in the fact that the building has two important jobs to do. Reflected internally is the fact that it is a hard-wearing gym for a government funded school, with all the budgetary strictures that entails. Externally, it has a vital part to play in forming an edge to the school campus, as well as creating a coherent site strategy.
Ferbane Community College, Offaly [unbuilt]
“A dark rutted thing”
Ferbane was the only unbuilt project which was shown, and by the very fact that no building work had gone ahead, and that the extensive labour that goes into making a building on a site [with all the daily experiences that make up working life] had gone undone, the architects afforded themselves a frank assessment of “an unremarkable town and a compromised site”.
Nonetheless, some powerful and emotive points were made in favour of schoolbuilding. “A school is the first interface that people have with the state,” according to Siobhán Ní Éanaigh. “[They] are formative places, and they are of a particular place.”
It’s worth mentioning that some of the strongest architectural statements of the lecture were made regarding this project; the fact that it hasn’t gone ahead to the construction phase perhaps did away with a degree of sentimentality. “[We were] pre-occupied with making a form which has a scale, which is memorable” said Siobhán Ní Énaiaigh, something which was said in direct reference to the Ferbane project, but has a resonance with all four projects shown.
From the audience’s point of view, it was disappointing that construction never went ahead. The language used to describe the genius loci – ‘the ground lines, gouged by turf cutters … a dark rutted thing’ – speak of a building of rich materiality and an earthy, hard-won and physical plan. In contrast with this language was a particularly Fauvist crayon drawing, which shone with citric, crystalline colours: to see how these two intentions would have juxtaposed – in the exterior and interior treatments, one supposes – would have brought great life to a scheme which seemed something of a cipher.
Ratoath Community College, Meath
‘A lozenge, a sweet in the sky’
Ratoath is another project in the hinterlands, another project that addresses the issues thrown up by the boom – urban sprawl and commuter towns, economic migration, a population boom and a young demographic. Ratoath is a small village, dwarfed by large housing estates that surround it. As the architects put it themselves: “Ratoath College is the first significant new public institution in the community.”
A particularly successful move is one of the very first the architects made, when they decided that “[the scheme] was not about a spine with tentacles and a series of courtyards”, but that it was rather a sinuous, slender form, that proved “impossible to make elevations; [there was] always something that was about a continuous shape.” The scale of the school is frankly massive – accommodation expectations are around 850-900 pupils – and yet the angled, folding form prevents the school from appearing as a ground-scraping fortress.
Height restrictions are both a matter of context, in this case, surrounded by fields and fields of two storey cooki-cutter semi-demitached ‘suburban’ houses, and of programme, and yet the building subtly ducks and raises its scales to break up the monotony of a single eaves-line and to accommodate the various programmatic requirements that a school has. Tellingly, the roof was always considered as a ‘fifth’ [for the sake of convention] elevation, and a lot of emphasis is placed on bringing natural light into communal spaces from overhead, especially through circular coloured ‘lozenges’ in the main entrance space.
Again, colour plays an important role in the scheme, here as an orienting device: ‘the red lab’, ‘the yellow classroom’. This may seem a rather basic, childlike device, but I have no doubt it is extremely practical: 900 children and young adults, many of them from different backgrounds and nationalities, some of them probably not native English-speakers … colour, rather than any linguistic method, is a great shorthand.
Dunshaughlin Culmullen Resource Centre, Meath
‘The making of a form and the idea of hollowing it’
The Resource Centre was the last project and continues many of the themes that are evident in the Bush Sports Hall: a cranked solid which folds its profile, an entrance that turns inside under a solid and weighty overhang, and a range of rectangles carved into the block to cut windows which reveal a depth.
However, this seems a far more assured and satisfying handling of these themes than Bush; the more varied program is certainly a factor, as is the ability to manipulate the plan in response to prescribed areas. There’s no getting around having to house a basketball court on a Department of Education budget in the Bush project, for example – you just have to fit it in and work around it.
Dunshaughlin, on the other hand, seems both more nuanced in its detailing and intrepid in its execution. The folds are sharper, the cuts are deeper, the sculpting is bolder, the colours more dramatic. It’s a well-weighted, well-scaled little cast of a building, more slender and elegant than a nugget, but very much of a single piece.
Conclusion
The five buildings presented by McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects in this lecture have a number of factors in common, even when viewed without the converging lens of colour. The architects are building in areas – Meath, Louth, Ballyfermot, Offaly – which have neither much history, nor trust, of modern architecture. Aside from the vital primary jobs that the buildings are doing, be it school, community centre, or sports facilities, they also have a role to play as architectural outriders in these areas.
It is an important role to play, and the buildings reflect that with their strong rooting in a sense of place, careful detailing and material choice, and the architects' regard both for the opinions of their clients and the future-users. However, the buildings are never overly 'worthy', cautious or mannered: they portray the pre-occupations and interests of the architects, and keep alive a conversation with progressive architects in busier urban areas. These are important buildings.
Written by Hugo on 22-10-10 | Categories: AAI Lectures
AAI Lecture Review
‘Specifications of Construction'
Professor Peter Waldman
Friday, 8th October 2010
The AAI was extremely lucky to have Professor Peter Waldman of the University of Virginia lecture on the 8th October in the Red Room, UCD School of Architecture. This lecture was snuck in on short notice when one of the committee members heard that Professor Waldman was on campus for a workshop, and as such took place on Friday, rather than our more regular Thursday slot.
Those who attended were not disappointed. Professor Waldman’s background includes a CV that many would tie themselves in knots over, but he never traded off these famous names, and indeed wears those experiences lightly and with no shortage of self-deprecation. Eisenman, Graves, Meier – if they were in the New York Five, Peter Waldman probably learnt from them, drew up details for them or fielded angry phonecalls for them.
The lecture was nominally titled Specifications of Construction, a title that would seemingly point towards a dry, academic lecture. It proved anything but.
Something that was immediately evident in Professor Waldman’s lecture was the lack of pretension in how he described his work. Certainly, there was no shortage of reference to art, high or low, nor was there any glossing over the intellectual rigour behind the work; what was missing was the wilful obscurist tendencies of many architects, and the inability to see the potential for joy.
Another particularly noticeable quality of the lecture – well, noticeable in hindsight, perhaps – was Professor Waldman’s seemingly effortless ability to order his remarks in such a way that a clear hierarchy became apparent as the lecture progressed. The same preoccupations in his work would appear again and again, and instead of explaining them outright in the first project, he would gradually add more thoughts, more pieces to the puzzle, as the issue occurred again in another context, or another scale.
Projects that occured wilful or somehow disordered were thus revealed to be a finely balanced collection of ideas, desires and practices; some fundamentals of architecture, such as orientation, were constants factors, whereas other issues, such as the aging of materials, the process of construction [for which he showed deep understanding, even love] traded places in this unremarked hiearchy with symbolism and sustainability, depending on the siting, scale, program and ‘personality’ of the project.
It was revealing, and, as gauche as it may be to say it, educational, to see the layers of thought built up in such a coherent and cogent manner. Basic – or fundamental, depending very much on your viewpoint – moves were put in place, be they in terms of siting, orientation, alignment or construction process, and the projects moved forward on that basis. Nothing arrived fully formed; everything was a considered move, and often considered with very different mindsets.
For example, the structural system of his own house was considered from a theoretical background [with all that Eisenman growing up, who could fail to consider the ordering/disordering possibilties of a grid?] as well as with reference to common practice in the area in terms of contractors, the natural qualities of materials and their performance in various systems, specifications and situations, coupled with a full and thoughtful comprehension of the logistics of transporting materials to a remote site. All of these aspects were addressed and slid into place in a unique hierarchical system based on three elements: the architect’s experience, the site, and the program.
And this was just the structure! Every aspect of the project was dealt with with this sort of combination of intuition, research, logic and experience. Perhaps more relevantly to those attending, the projects were revealed this way; by that I mean that the professor had obviously taken the time to go back over his thought processes when designing, and assemble a narrative compiled of both his ideas, study models, sketches, photographs, drawings and anecdotes. Ideas and decisions were sketched out, rather than harped upon.
It was especially enjoyable and worthwhile then to see the energy and genuine enjoyment with which Professor Waldman addressed the many questions put to him by the audience. He really relished the opportunity to delve deeper into issues which he had brought up, seemingly because he saw a genuine interest in the question. In contrast to some other ‘question & answer’ sessions, Professor Waldman didn’t seem defensive about his work: he welcomed questions, tried to answer them with particular reference with some of the shown work, and then put forward in his characteristically modest way his own thoughts on the matter. He didn’t try to sell his answers as ‘the’ answer, nor did he back off from restating some fundamentals a number of times. Answers weren’t calculated, but considered.
Professor Waldman is a natural teacher and educator, something that is best appreciated by hearing him speak to a modest audience. His lecture, at the end of what was a long, involved week on his part, and on the eve of his return to Virginia, spoke volumes about his enjoyment of teaching, and the depth of his thoughts about architecture.
The following article by Hugh Campbell appeared in Building Material 12: Morality and Architecture.
What’s the problem with Peter Zumthor? He is, after all, one of the most widely revered architects of the last decade: creator of seminal works at Chur, at Vals, at Bregenz, renowned teacher, source of a thousand student projects, deployer of delicious details, transcender of fashion and taste, champion of architecture’s enduring value. Everything about Zumthor exudes an unassailable rectitude. And yet despite all this, and despite the undoubted accomplishment and beauty of the architecture, there remains, for me, something fundamentally unsatisfactory about Zumthor’s work.
After a recent visit to the Kunsthaus at Bregenz, the reasons for this became a little clearer. On a side excursion from a college trip, four of us arrive, slightly bleary-eyed, in Bregenz on a grey Sunday morning. When, replenished by black coffee in the black café, we finally enter the gallery building, a slowly unwinding joke is set in motion. We’re greeted by a scattering of acro-props spanning floor to ceiling. A moment of doubt (is Zumthor falling down?) is followed by a flicker of Schadenfreude (Zumthor has failed!) before it becomes clear that the current exhibition, by the Spanish artist Sebastiao Sierra, is called 300 TONNES, which presumably means there’s something very big and heavy upstairs that needs to be supported down here. Accordingly, as we mount from floor to floor, we find each space disrupted by a field of props. Glass panels from the suspended ceiling are removed and leant against the side walls to allow the props uninterrupted passage. The serenity of the spaces is rudely interrupted. The crude, roughly painted metal of the props jars with the exquisite perfection of the spaces’ finishes - the jointless terrazzo floor, the chromed doorframes. And after this long set-up, on the top floor, the punchline. We emerge from the stairs to find that the whole space is occupied by large stacks of concrete blocks, sitting on plastic sheeting. Builders’ debris is scattered across the floor. In one corner, a table is laden with hardhats, tabloids and teacups. The effect is uncanny – a builders’ yard stacked with the base materials of construction is secreted within a lovingly crafted casket. The raw meets the cooked.
While most of the impressive roster of artists who have inhabited the Kunsthaus - from James Turrell to Olafur Eliasson – have seemed content to work with its serenely precious atmosphere, Sierra’s witty installation is determined to challenge the architecture’s self-importance. 300 tonnes - the combined weight of the blocks and a maximum 100 visitors (there’s a counter at the entrance, keeping tally) – is apparently the safe limit of the building’s structure, but what Sierra is really testing are the limits of Zumthor’s architectural thinking.
For Zumthor, architecture is fundamentally concerned with making: ‘Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts. Buildings are witnesses to the human ability to construct concrete things. I believe that the real core of all architectural work lies in the act of construction.’i Hence, his buildings are presented as constructs – as elements and components joined together carefully and systematically. The ‘feathered’ glass skin of the Kunsthaus is an obvious example: it reveals its own construction; the constituent parts are evident in the finished product. There is an interest in tectonic truth-telling here which can be traced back through Kahn and Mies to Perret and Viollet-le-Duc. And for Zumthor, as for many of these figures, construction, truth and morality are fundamentally linked. The attention paid to construction and, maybe more importantly, to the presentation of construction allows architecture to become coherent and comprehensible. This comprehensibility in turn begins to acquire - in Zumthor’s view – an ontological status. The constructed object – the made thing – stands as a quiet sentinel of truth in a world devoid of ‘the real’. Here’s a passage that typifies this thinking:
‘Arbitrariness prevails.
Post-modern life could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred and somehow unreal. The world is full of signs and information which stand for things which no-one fully understands because they, too, turn out to be mere signs for other things. The real thing remains hidden. No-one ever gets to see it.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that real things do exist, however endangered they may be. There are earth and water, the light of the sun, landscapes and vegetation; and there are objects, made by man, such as machines, tools or musical instruments which are what they are, which are not mere vehicles for an artistic message, whosepresence is self-evident.
When we look at objects or buildings which seem to be at peace within themselves, our perception becomes calm and dulled. The objects we perceive have no message for us, they are simply there. Our perceptive faculties grow quiet, unprejudiced and unacquisitive. They reach beyond signs and symbols, they are open, empty. Here, in this perceptual vacuum, a memory may surface, a memory which seems to issue from the depths of time. Now, our observation of the object embraces a presentiment of the world in all its whole ness, because there is nothing that cannot be understood.ii
Even as it drifts into mystical obfuscation, the argument here remains clear - clear to the point of banality. Contemporary life bad – confusing, you see. No truth anymore. If only things could just...eh... be what they are. Like in the old days, you know - way back. (Needless to say, the childhood memories of the aunt’s kitchen have already been wheeled out earlier in the essay.) All the usual characteristics of Zumthor’s writing are present: the preachy tone, the peremptory dismissal of contemporary society, the nostalgia for simple, ‘true’ things, the appeal to some prelapsarian state of grace (to be found, presumably, somewhere in ‘the depths of time’.) To the arbitrariness of ‘post-modern life’ is opposed the certainty of the ‘real’ object, the supposed value of the latter completely dependent on the supposed bankruptcy of the former. Well, if postmodernism revealed anything to us, it was precisely the inadequacy of thinking through such binary oppositions. If the achievement of true ‘meaning’ and understanding is made possible only through an outright rejection of the ‘mere signs’ of the contemporary world, then it seems a fairly hollow achievement. But this is exactly the premise embodied in Zumthor’s architecture: it sets itself in opposition to what, for him, are the unmanageable complexities of our contemporary existence. It turns its back on the world and in so doing, actually admits its own weakness. The unalloyed reverence for craft and construction now begins to seem suspiciously like a substitute for any real engagement with the world. Within the bounds of the building, a resplendent perfection reigns. Beyond its limits... well, there’s nothing to be done. There is a joke told in Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame about a man who goes to a tailor for a pair of trousers. After weeks of innumerable fittings, adjustments and refinements, the trousers are still not ready, and the man eventually explodes with exasperation: “‘God damn you to hell, Sir, no, its indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!’ [Tailor’s voice, scandalised] ‘But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look – [disdainful gesture, disgustedly] – at the world – [pause] – and look – [loving gesture, proudly] – at my TROUSERS!’”iii
Of course, caring about tailoring doesn’t mean not caring about the world. Mies van der Rohe, for instance, who pursued purity and perfection in steel for thirty years, always did so out of a desire that his architecture might quietly reconstitute the relationship between people and the world. He quoted Schinkel on the subject: ‘A work of architecture must not stand as a finished and self-sufficient object. True and pure imagination, having once entered the stream of the idea that it expresses, has to expand forever beyond this work, and it must venture out, leading ultimately to the infinite. It must be regarded as the point at which one can make an orderly entry into the unbreakable chain of the universe.’ Architecture is required to open itself out, rather than closing itself off. It should be a point of entry, rather than a dead end.
In very obvious ways, the Kunsthaus at Bregenz epitomises the closed nature of Zumthor’s thinking. From the inside, the outside world is completely absent. There are no views out. Even the light has to be modulated and filtered before being allowed entry. From outside, the building seems an alien presence along the lakefront. It is in the world, but not of it. Its evanescent glass shroud is akin to the transparent mac worn by Gene Hackman in Francis Ford Copolla’s brilliant 1973 film The Conversation. Hackman played Harry Caul, a sound surveillance expert who preferred to experience the world at one remove, who avoided direct engagement at all costs. But if Caul comes across as reticent and withdrawn, he is also remarkably self- absorbed. In Zumthor, we find a similar solipsism. What is most problematic about his work is not really its narrow focus, and certainly not its interest in materials and construction, but rather his conviction of the absolute moral superiority of these concerns. His architecture claims for itself a position outside the relativism and the ‘arbitrariness’ of contemporary society. But in fact Zumthor’s position is just as arbitrary, just as ideologically loaded, just as much a cultural construct as any other. The potency of Sebastiao Sierra’s installation lies in the way it draws attention to this piece of misdirection. The raw power of those dense stacks of rough concrete blocks points up the extreme self-consciousness of the gallery’s construction. It’s the blocks which, to use Zumthor’s words, ‘are not mere vehicles for an artistic message, whose presence is self- evident’, while the building becomes a ‘mere sign for something else.’ This role reversal is then further complicated by the knowledge that the stacks of blocks themselves are, in fact, the vehicle for an artistic message. Suddenly nothing seems absolute or certain; nothing seems pure or simple. By upsetting the insistent equilibrium of Zumthor’s architecture, Sierra reveals the narrowness, and the precariousness, of its ideological foundations.
Dr. Hugh Campbell is Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture, University College Dublin.
Drawing by Catherine de Groot, 3rd Year, School of Architecture, University College Dublin.
References:
i Zumthor, P. - A Way of Looking at Things, Architecture and Urbanism, February 1998 extra edition, p. 8.
ii Ibid., p. 14.
iii Beckett S. - Endgame, in The Complete Dramatic Works, London: Faber and Faber, 1990, p. 103.
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