voussoirs: WHO OR WHAT IS AN ARCHITECT?

Wednesday 16 May 2012

WHO OR WHAT IS AN ARCHITECT?

ar·chi·tect (är

-t

) n.

1. One who designs and supervises the construction of buildings or other large structures.

2. One that plans or devises: a country considered to be the chief architect of war in the Middle East.

[Latin architectus, from Greek arkhitekt

n : arkhi-, archi- + tekt

n, builder; see teks- in Indo-European roots.]

architect [ˈɑːkɪˌtɛkt] n

1. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Architecture) (Business / Professions) a person qualified to design buildings and to superintend their erection

2. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Architecture) (Business / Professions) a person similarly qualified in another form of construction a naval architect

3. any planner or creator the architect of the expedition

[from French architecte, from Latin architectus, from Greek arkhitektōn director of works, from archi- + tektōn workman; related to tekhnē art, skill]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Noun

1. architect - someone who creates plans to be used in making something (such as buildings)

designer

creator - a person who grows or makes or invents things

landscape architect, landscape gardener, landscaper, landscapist - someone who arranges features of the landscape or garden attractively

Ithiel Town, Town - United States architect who was noted for his design and construction of truss bridges (1784-1844)

architect

noun

1. designer, planner, draughtsman, master builder. Employ an architect to make sure the plans comply with regulations.

2. creator, father, shaper, engineer, author, maker, designer, founder, deviser, planner, inventor, contriver, originator, prime mover, instigator, initiator the country's chief architect of economic reform

Quotations
"architect: one who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money" [Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary]

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

Select a language:

architect

n architect [ˈaːkitekt]

a person who designs buildings etc.

n architecture [-tʃə]

the art of designing buildings He's studying architecture; modern architecture.

adj archiˈtectural

architect →

Multilingual Translator © HarperCollins Publishers 2009

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/architect

One of the main objects of the Architects Act of Queensland is: imposing obligations on persons about the practice of architecture by establishing a Board of Architects to undertake this task along with the associated roles it has been allocated.

The question is: if the Board of Architects of Queensland is controlling ‘architects,’ is it controlling one who ‘plans, devises and creates’ things other than buildings – like the architect of war or economic reform, as exampled above? Why not? Where in the Act does it define an architect in relation to building or any related activity? A search of the Act reveals two uses of the word ‘building’ in the context of ‘building and construction’ – on page 48, section 82, parts (e) and (f). This section relates to the membership of the Board. One lawyer and one construction contractor ‘with at least 10 years experience in the building and construction industry’ shall be members of the Board. Even so, the further question is raised: what is ‘building industry’? Does this encompass theoretical ponderings or actual building design, documentation and supervision? The official CPD form asks for activities to be scheduled under four titles: ‘Design; Documentation; Project Mgmt.; Practice Mgmt.’ This suggests building activity to those involved in this industry, but why can this list not refer to the design, documentation, and management of a war, or an economy? How can this scheduling embody teaching, tutoring, research, as it seeks to do, if it is supposedly so intimately associated with ‘normal’ architectural office practice? What about theorising and writing that might not be too different an activity to the efforts of generals and bankers? Is it a useful set of headings?

The definitions in the Act seek to clarify the meaning of ‘architect’ and ‘architectural services.’ In the typical circular obscurification of dictionaries, the Act defines a practicing architect as one who carries out, or is responsible for the carrying out of, architectural services. It then notes that architectural services means services about architecture ordinarily provided by an architect. An architect means a person registered as an architect under this Act. The Act defines a practicing architect as one who carries out. . . etc.

Strangely the Board also has the task of controlling non-practicing architects. The Board must be satisfied that the applicant will not carry out, or be responsible for the carrying out of, architectural services. This is a tricky one to think through. If one seeks registration as a non-practicing architect and pays the annual fee for this privilege - apparently to use the label ‘architect’ - the obligation placed on this person is to never practice. Gosh, why pay to be policed to do nothing? One would be similarly regulated if one practiced without being registered - for no fee. The outcome would be much the same. Indeed, what stops one being an ‘architect’ in the ‘plan, devise, create’ sense that everyday language is allowed to engage us in? Perhaps one might call oneself a ‘creative’ architect in this sense, and qualify the word as ‘landscape architect’ does? Why not? ‘Building’ does not have any relationship with the definition of architect, only with two of those appointed to be members of the Board. So what is an architect?

This all begs a question: with our language using the word ‘architect’ more frequently in a variety of ways with the sense of one who ‘plans, devises and creates,’ has the time come for the Act to be more explicit, or for it to be abandoned? The word ‘architecture’ has similarly become a fashionable way to describe things that have a specific organization or inherent structure, e.g. the architecture of a computer or of a corporation/society - even of desire and doom. Why? A humble object - the body - can have an ‘architecture’ - and an ‘architect’? Gosh, Federal budgets have ‘chief architects,’ suggesting a hierarchy of architectural involvement. How does the Board decide when to draw the line on the use of the word ‘architect’? If I chose to label myself a ‘hair architect’ (hairdresser) or similar (one has), why is the Board so careless about this? What is this latent understanding that buildings are - have to be - involved? The definition in the Act sees practice as being ‘about architecture’ but this word has lost any direct or necessary link to building. Indeed, the specific reference to building is becoming the odd one out in our current usage, turning it into the anachronism that architects, as traditionally understood, seem to have become. Why not drop everything? If the Board sees one of its roles as ‘protecting the public,’ then surely it has the obligation to clarify the use of the word ‘architect’ and ‘architecture’ and insist on this? Its’ proclaimed role in educating would seem to mean that it should be doing more about the different use of these words in modern language.

But no. New usage is ignored and things are managed in much the same manner as they were one hundred years ago when an architect was an architect, and architecture had to do with building. While it might not have been clear just how this relationship could be adequately described to everyone’s satisfaction, (see Pevsner’s and Ruskin’s struggles), architecture in Victorian times meant something to do with a building or buildings. An architect was one who was involved in the, yes, design, documentation, project management and practice management of architecture. Today, things are far more complex, not only in language, but also within the practice of architecture itself and its associated fields that are accommodating an ever-broadening range of specific roles within the varieties of experience in offices and elsewhere.

The board makes more complications for itself by trying to include under the term ‘architect,’ those who teach, tutor, research, manage staff, act in legal cases, advise corporations and governments, and more, as well as controlling those who do get involved in aspects of what we traditionally understand as practice - and those who don’t. It seeks to treat all architects as one, irrespective of the task, skill or experience involved – a novice graduate; a skilled, experienced practitioner; a college lecturer in architecture. It is a troublesome task because each, apart from the non-practicing group, is asked to select a CPD programme, (without the Board giving accreditation to any provider or specific guidance to the ‘applicant’), as might be best suited to the tasks and roles undertaken by the separate individuals, with everything being assessed by the Board to allow it to offer the registration applied for.

This diversity is so great that it seems almost impossible to manage with one standard chart and a formal set of broad guidelines. Who will overview this? What happens if one fails to impress the adjudicator? Do it all again - and again? Punishment? Is there a right answer? Can there ever be? Deregistration? Well, that’s a big one. Will the Board deny one the right to work - to earn a living with one’s training and experience, just because of - what? Where are the processes made explicit? How are the requirements for this diversity defined? Just what is right when one is asked to make one’s own assessments? What is the point of checking any involvement when each set of criteria to guide choices will be different? Consider the mature architect and the recently registered youth; the theoretical researcher and the specification writer; the professor and the office project co-ordinator.

The whole concept looks very ill-considered and naïve. It seems to lack true substance. Think of the academic who seeks registration under the experience and activity of, say, lecturing, also being the same person who is able to give seminars to other members of the profession to allow them to gain hours for their CPD chart. There is something strange and irrational here - out of control; self-referencing in the ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ sense: ‘I’ll teach/test you if you, or your mates, test/teach me.’

It would seem that to make sense of the idea, the whole concept of CPD should either be dropped or be taken over by the Board to take true responsibility for the profession and education by carefully organising, managing and promoting the sessions for required registration for the diversity that is this profession. Without such rigour, the whole affair is likely to fall into the language game that the word ‘architect’ seems to find itself in. Who will know what, when, where or how about any activity when it seeks to cover such a scope of interest? Who will be the architect of this strategy? Who has been?

But the Architects Act is far more forgiving in its guidelines for renewal registration than this blind drive for CPD recording suggests. Why has it been interpreted in such a restricted manner? Look at the detail. The renewal section, Division 4, Section 16, part (2) spells out:

The requirements (for continuing registration) may include requirements about the following:

(a) the nature, extent and period of practice of architecture by the applicant;

(b) the nature and extent of continuing professional development to be undertaken by the applicant;

(c) the nature and extent of research, study or teaching, relating to architecture, to be undertaken the applicant;

(d) the nature and extent of administrative work, relating to architecture, to be performed the applicant.

This is followed by part (3) which strangely reads like a summary out of context:

The requirements are satisfied by complying with the board’s continuing registration requirements for architecture.

It is pointed out that these are available on the board’s ‘website on the internet’ (where else?): www.boaq.qld.gov.au

Part (3) is indeed a puzzle, because it suddenly states, quiet bluntly, what the specific requirements for registration are, in spite of the four items listed in part (2) as (a), (b), (c), and (d). A re-reading of the published ‘requirements that may be included,’ seems to indicate that an emphasis has been placed on (b), with the demand that 20 hours of specific types of CPD involvement be formally recorded, with some suggestion that an academic involvement, as noted in (c), would be acceptable too, but without defining just how this might be measured. The requirements noted as (a) and (d) do not seem to have been given any recognition in the guidelines published on the internet.

The relevance and significance of the ‘nature, extent and period of practice’ is easy to understand. Its importance is self-evident. Just why this is not identified as having any role in the renewal of registration is an enigma. It is as much a puzzle as item (d) is. A quick check of the dictionary at the end of the Act gives no definition for ‘administrative work.’ What is this? Office filing? The guidelines do not make the concept any clearer, or give it any particular relevance. By ignoring both (a) and (d), large schisms are created in the requirements and processes spelt out for registration renewal that a simple review makes so obvious. ‘Architect’ is a term given to a very broad range of skills and experience within the building and construction industry and outside of it, and to a variety of meanings in numerous different contexts in our ordinary use of language. Seeking to manage registration renewal in such a limited, mechanistic, rational and ill-defined manner - by merely trying to measure CPD activity - can only create problems. Some will be linguistic matters, but others will occur because of the inherent specialisation of the interpretation of the Architects Act and the selectively narrow approach it has defined as being relevant to the renewal of registration. The Board of Architects should do better than this. After all, it is the body that should know who or what is an architect. It should be able to express itself unambiguously on this matter if it is to remain relevant and this must recognise the miscellany that architects and architecture have come to include - or perhaps it should go?

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

8 JULY 2014
See also:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/the-architecture-of-architecture.html

and

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/cell-architecture.html
and

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/architect-of.html

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ON GARDENING

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

MORE IS LESS

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

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

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

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

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

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

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

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

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

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

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

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

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

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

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

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

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

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

HILLS

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

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

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

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

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

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

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

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

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

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

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

ON COMMUNICATION

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

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

ON ART & METHOD

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

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

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

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

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

p.26

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

p.22

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

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

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

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

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

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

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

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

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

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

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

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

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

MENDING WALL

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

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

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

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

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

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

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

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

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

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

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

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

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

ON EDUCATION

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

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

ETHICS

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

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

MODERNITY

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

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

NAMING

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

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

ON BRANDING

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

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

see:

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

PRECONCEPTION

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

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

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

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

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

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

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

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

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

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

Les Murray

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

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

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

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

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

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

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

and

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

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

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

Wednesday 16 May 2012

WHO OR WHAT IS AN ARCHITECT?

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