Ferry on Bluemull Sound
Shetland Islands were once linked by small ferries with bus connections
Ferries link the
main cluster of islands that form the core of the hundred or so that
make up the set that we know as the Shetland Islands. This cluster of
islands is located north of Scotland, geographically above the
islands of Orkney. The Shetland Islands are scattered from Foula to
the west; the Out Skerries to the east; Fair Isle to the south; and
Unst to the north. The cliché is that Shetland has 'the most
northerly island' in Britain, Unst, with the 'most northerly' of
everything else too. Unlike its near neighbour, Norway on the east,
and the more distant Faroe Islands, the first stop west of Shetland,
there are no tunnels in Shetland: they have been thought about. A few
minor bridges link land masses, and a some natural land bridges too,
tombolos, those narrow strips of land that stretch so tenuously
between arcs that divide the waters, like the tensed neck of a
balloon.
Tombolo at St Ninian's Isle, Shetland
The treasure was found at the chapel site on the right of the photo near the coast
Boats have always
been used for inter-island journeys. Years ago, in the 1960's and
before, the ferries were more like the flit boats that for years
serviced the islands, carrying everything required from the larger
vessels anchored off the coast to land, including animals, vehicles,
and general and sundry boxes, barrels and bags. On these older
ferries, one could sit along the side of the
half-cabin boat close to the water and, on a fine day, enjoy the
bright sky, the light breeze, the birds, the seals and the distant vistas. These vessels
were replaced by small, basic steel-fabricated vehicular RoRo
ferries in November 1973: roll on, roll off. Today these small
ferries are slowly being replaced by ever-larger RoRo ships. These
bigger vessels are made of steel too, with a opening bows to allow easy access for all vehicles, buses, trucks,
cranes, cars, vans, trailers - everything than needs to cross between
the islands. One does not even have to leave the vehicle. Not only
are the newer ferries significantly larger than the first car
ferries, but they have also been designed symmetrically, opening up
identically at each end around a central bridge that likewise
addresses each alternate direction, a mirroring that overcomes the
requirement for any physical turning and awkward reversing. The
smaller RoRo boats had a bow and a folding ramp 'tray' at the stern.
Smaller RoRo ferry
One is reminded of
the story in Two Hundred Years of Farming in Sutherland The Story
of my Family by Reay D. G. Clarke, published by the Islands Book
Trust, Isle of Lewis in 2014.+ This extraordinary story of a
remarkable farming dynasty – it is a genealogy, a history, and a
family narrative - tells of the life on Eriboll, a 35000 acre
property in northeast Sutherland, that carried over 5000 sheep and
other animals. On page 77 it is told how, under the new ownership of
the Marquis of Stafford, 'At the Hope River, a chain ferry was
installed with a sloping ramp on each bank whereby horses and
carriage could be driven on board, carried over the river and
discharged on the far side, all without unyoking the horses.' Along
with road improvements, this meant that 'A carriage could then be
driven, without the passengers ever disembarking, from the Kyle of
Tongue to the Kyle of Durness.'
The largest RoRo ferry working in Yell Sound
The largest RoRo arriving at Toft, Mainland
This is exactly what
the RoRo ferries allow today. One can travel from Skaw to Sumburgh,
from the very top of Shetland to the bottom of Mainland, without
having to get out of the car. The RoRo ferries offer a seamless
journey in Shetland, if one chooses to indulge in this easy comfort.
While getting out of the car when on the ferries might have its
discomforts, with the wind, rain, sleet, snow, gales and rough seas
that this region experiences, there are many delights to be enjoyed.
As throughout all of Shetland, the varying vistas astonish: the land, sea and sky intertwine in a land/seascape wonder
enmeshed in light and shadow. One should add for the record that this
is the 'pre-turbine' experience of Shetland that might soon be
changed. The promise of fortunes from energy companies seems to make
these monsters agreeable to some, in spite of the impact on the
landscape. Shetlanders have become too used to the easy life of 'oil'
handouts and generous grants to become critical of 'progress' if it
means savings and/or an income. It will be a sad day if the wind
turbines are constructed as has been planned and approved: see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/shetland-wind-farming-quiet-and-distant.html
Today these mysteriously naked, layered distances that glow and
sparkle in the soft haze can be truly loved as they are enhanced by
the play of soft light and velvet shade over land, water, and sky to
transform them into a sequence of ever-changing, surprising
astonishments. Shetland is truly a place to be enjoyed; it amazes. As
has been said of traditional art, (by Martin Lings), these vistas
cannot be admired enough, such is their wonder: 'one cannot marvel
enough.' It is a photographer's dream.
Closer by, there is
more to entrance. When out of the car on the ferry's deck, the
marvellous details of the shipbuilders who invent and make everything
needed out of their favourite material, steel, assemble as an array
of surprise and intrigue, everywhere. Steel can be cut, shaped and
welded to make anything and everything that is needed on the ferry
that becomes a host of wonderful inventions. Whatever the shape, it
is possible; any function can be accommodated. The mind of the
designer's thinking eye can be seen everywhere, and can be
appreciated. One can see how these forms and this intelligent
reasoning changed architecture; how they inspired architects like le
Corbusier. Corbusier wrote about these things in his seminal Towards a
New Architecture. His 'hand' can be seen everywhere, his
inspiration. There is a beautiful logic here, a remarkable rigour. A
vent is needed; it is made. The heavy seas need to be kept out:;a
flap is made. The opening has to be sealed; a seal is incorporated.
The flap has to be fixed open; a device is detailed and made. It has
to be fixed shut; the device is adapted. The detailing and design are
a tour-de-force of itemised, rational clarity responding to necessity
with an unpretentious, efficient rigour. Balustrades are needed; they
are made. The balustrade needs to return, to terminate; it is done. A
ladder is needed, but it must not protrude; a recessed ladder is
invented – done.
One could go on and
on. The issues are all addressed with a remarkably lucid reasoning,
all without any preconception. The pieces create their own aesthetic that could be called 'elemental' design, because each element attends to its own particular concerns, nothing else.
The whole becomes a complex conglomerate of the boilermakers' careful
practical steel solutions: door hinges, locks, riser vents too, for
water and fuel tanks, lower accommodation spaces, and motors are
needed, and, like everything else, they are made to operate exactly as required, collected
within the composition that becomes the boat. All the particular
pieces are made using the one technique, the one material,
the one type of welding rod; everything is painted. Welding styles can be recognised; the
variations in skill and technique can be compared by the eye. These
are like fingerprints, as it were, the markings left by different
hands, for the ship is handmade. Everything is clear in its intent
and function. The making of the whole and all of the parts is explicit,
everywhere. The sheets of steel welded to make the ten-metre high
walls around the parking deck can all be seen. Every piece, curved, radiused, and/or angled as required, moulded
with the flexibility and adaptability of clay, is defined by its weld. Here one is reminded
of John James who researched Chartres Cathedral for many years, and
could recognise the various hands that had made it so precisely that
he drew up a chronology based on his identification of the handiwork
of those involved. Rather than identifying the master masons with
names, he called them colours; a wonderful inspiration: see – The
Master Masons of Chartres and his other excellent publications.
The ledge with the yellow nosing and deck-green tread is literally the door step, not just a 'pretty' decorative addition
But there is more in
these steel ship walls too. The 'shadows' - the weld stressing - from
the assemblies on the other side can be seen as ghostings. One
realises that the walls are all sheet-steel thick. The angle of the
concealed stair stringer and the fixings of the hand rail can be
deciphered; and much more too. Each part is made in the same steel;
all have the same welding connections. The ferry is almost
monolithic. All the pieces are there without apology, being just as
required in order to achieve the function being accommodated, nothing
more or less. No wonder Corbusier was enthusiastic about ship
detailing: see below. It was here that modernism gained its inspiration, its
origins, roots, along with other utilitarian structures like silos:
one a model in steel, the other in concrete; both materials that
revolutionised architecture. There was no applied aesthetic here; no
self-conscious distortion; no esoteric manipulation: there was
nothing of the 'Gehry' or 'Hadid' ambition here, just simple, honest
rigour. Only the necessities that need to be attended to, solved, are
provided for, all within the rules of the materials, the logic of the
operation, and the making. Here form and function interact in an
integral purity and straightforward simplicity, juxtaposed
nonchalantly, without any compositional attention or intention. There
is no decoration here; Adolf Loos would be pleased.*
But there was still
more to be discovered on the RoRo ferries. As the larger ferry at the
Mainland crossing to Yell, from Toft to Ulsta, pulled into the
terminal, the bow was raised to slowly block out the sky and reveal
the land. As the radial rigour in the array of ribs, the cross
pattern of the walkway and its rail, and the drainage holes in the detailing of the
huge form were being admired, the association was made - this is the
Sydney Opera House shell. The familiar form stood large and clear,
high and proud, heavy but light, and right in its integral logic of
making and shaping. Utzon was a Dane. He must have seen the raised
bow form many times as ferries link Denmark to many other
destinations in Europe. Over the years, the commentaries on the opera
house all speak of sails, and record how Utzon was sailor, suggesting
that these white billowing forms on water were the inspiration. They
might have been, but Utzon must also have been a passenger on a RoRo
ferry too. More recently the Sydney Opera House concept has been
spoken of with greater abstraction, as 'boat design': see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/the-nordic-architecture-symposium-aalto.html
Here it is noted that Utzon's father was a boat designer and that
the young Utzon was brought up in his studio. Utzon must have seen
many bow forms in all manner of ways in this environment, even
inverted as the boats were being built or transported.#
A massing of sails
Giacomo Balla Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
Utzon's sketch embodies movement
Seeing the opera
house as a series of raised bows makes more coherent sense of this
land-locked structure than other interpretations. The ferry only
raises the bow when coming into the terminal. Sails billow only when sailing freely on open, breezy water. The opera house can be seen as a
being like Futurist's motion picture, c.f. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, and
the Muybridge motion studies, with the shells reading as a sequence of
images fixed in time as the bow opens, to give the classic image we
know today, complete with the reversal in form where the shells
mirror each other as sets. This is the RoRo essence; the large
ferries are symmetrically organised around a high, central bridge,
literally a bridge over the car deck, with each bow fore and aft
being identical. The Sydney Opera House is a RoRo ferry at its
terminal, with each bow rising in a welcoming motion, inviting the
land to the water, the water to the land, as the bows gesture to the
sky in all of their massive grandeur that is captured in stop motion
frames forever.
Muybridge's study of a horse running
There is another
observation to make: the bow shells open up to the land as though one
was on board the ferry, waiting to leave the land as though on a
boat; and to the water, likewise. It is the reverse of the reading of
the bow of the ferry at the terminal when waiting to board. The
inference is that one is being asked, invited, requested to approach,
such is the power of the gesture. One is drawn into the centre of the
opera house, into its core, its axis mundi that anchors the genius
loci of this place. The inference is so potent that this location,
this point, becomes the heart of the city, its axis, its marker of
place, which it has indeed become and is. This ferry is going
nowhere. It is doubly anchored at its mooring by having both bows
open for all to exit through and into, to enter this place of power
and magic, the heart of Sydney. It is stationary. Sailing boats must
move to maintain their authoritative billowing and be well away from
land to express their free-flowing motions. Likening the shell forms
to sails is a poor metaphor. RoRo ferries only become elevated bow
shells when pulled into land. Here at Central Quay, the heart and
home of Sydney's ferries, stands another place waiting to ferry
everyone away into the magic world of opera, from the land and the
sea, into the Opera House interior.
Yes, the opera house
does have nautical roots, but these are RoRo ferries not sailing
boats. This is its origin: the opera house is at the terminal waiting
for patrons to come on board as though leaving the transience of a
ship, to share the trip into another more anchored world of theatre
and magic, as it invites the great harbour in too, to be transported
into the joys of opera. The form transforms the permanence of place,
water and land, into transitory zones like the ferry boat that is
always moving in-between; only the Opera House is permanent: life is short; art is enduring. But it
is easy to be assertive with concepts and origins because they always
seem so clear in their associations. They never are or should be.
Origins are ambiguous, multifaceted. Good work always embodies such
powerful complexities that should never be curtailed or limited or
belittled. Each interpretation can become just another layer of
understanding in the effort to comprehend the immutable, the
ephemeral, the mythic, the magical; indeed the spiritual.
Rationalisations should never make things black and white with such
demanding, blind, dead-end certainty, finality. The story of the
spiritual journey tells that if one should find the Buddha, one
should kill him. The dance, the search must continue in the limitless
richness of associations, in the equivocal experience of delight.
Sails? Yes they look and feel like that; a RoRo bow and all that this
might mean? - indeed, it is, they are: they say 'Welcome to the opera
house,' as they become Sydney's axis mundi defining its genius loci.^
NOTES
+
It is interesting to
read on page 68 of Clarke's book:
His (Patrick Sellar)
third recommendation was to sow with grass all the land that was
then in tillage at
Eriboll. He says that oats, potatoes and turnips can be bought in
from
Caithness,
Sutherland or Ross, cheaper than can be grown at Eriboll.
This report was
prepared in 1832 - and we think of this kind of thinking as
Thatcherism,
now modern economic
rationalism that drives the world today. It is the logic behind the use of brands that make a quality product anywhere and promote it as being genuine. It seems to have been just basic conservatism, the
search for profits. It was, after all, this desire to maximise profits that made the lairds clear
the crofts from the quality
land and replace them with sheep from the south. Sheep were doing very well then, but
prices fell once the Napoleonic wars stopped and cheaper wool was imported from
Australia.
On the poor land
that the crofters were moved to, Clarke reports on pages 128-129 on a
discussion the
crofters were having on the pressing problem of what should be done
with Adold Hitler,
were he to fall alive into the hands of the advancing allies. 'He
should
be hanged,' someone
said. There was no dissent but someone thought hanging was not
sufficient a
punishment for one whose crimes were so monstrous. 'Perhaps he should
be tortured first,'
it was suggested. 'No! No! No!' said an old woman, who had so far not
taken any part in
the discussion, 'He deserves much worse than that. He should be
given a croft in
Laid.'
Clarke had
previously described Laid as - p.128 - Laid, that exposed strip of
peat hags,
acid soil and rocks
. . . a poor site for establishing a crofting community. Yet it was
here
that those whom Lord
Reay had cleared from the lands of Eriboll on the fertile eastern
shore of Lock
Eribill and elsewhere were allowed to settle.
Such were the
clearances. The enduring drive for profit remains today, as does the
cynically critical humour of folk.
Lad, described today as 'a straggling village'
^The opera house can be seen as being shaped around an axis mundi a little like that at Ronchamp, in le Corbusier's chapel:
see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/ronchamp-windsock-of-spirit.html
Here the proposition is that the axis plays a subtle but core role
in the whole form. Unlike the grand pagodas that hold a certain,
vertical centrality in its form to mark the axis, the chapel at
Ronchamp has a dominant edge that plays this role. At Sydney, the
mirroring of the massing marks a centre from which the 'bow' forms
define the entrance and a welcome. In the general assembly of the shells, it is the core pyramidal form from which all the shells/bows reach out.
The Egyptian pyramids mark the axis mundi similarly, but with a
different and more singular scale and intent. The Sydney Opera House
can be seen as Sydney's great pyramid, such is its iconic image for
which sails become too variable, perhaps too playful, too loose an
explanation/inspiration.
In the making of the
opera house, the nautical connections again raise their head as a
reference. Utzon has treated each challenge in the design with the
rigour and rationalism of the shipbuilder working in steel. There
appears to be nothing of an 'aesthetic' that has been applied,
brought to intervene in this process.
Like the Egyptian
pyramids, the Sydney Opera House has been listed as a World Heritage
site: see - http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/the_building/world_heritage.aspx
'Sydney Opera House
was formally recognised as one of the most outstanding places on
Earth with its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List under the
World Heritage Convention on 28 June 2007.
Sydney Opera House
is now listed alongside other universally treasured places such as
the Taj Mahal, the ancient Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China
and the Great Barrier Reef.'
“The sun did
not know how beautiful its light was, until it was reflected off this
building.” Louis Kahn
*
On steel framing,
rationalism and logic, compare the shipbuilder's thinking with that
in Hadid's London Olympic Swimming Pool: see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/pairs-5-1956-2012-olympic-pools.html
and in Gehry's work too. The philosophy here seems to be whatever it
takes to create the preferred image/form.
Modernism's 'form
follows function' revolutionary approach grew out of the protest
against Victorian formal and decorative exuberance for its own
indulgence. Can one predict a new resurgence against the aimless, ad
hoc expression of the current approach?
Gehry framing
The order of the cathedral framing/forming
Hadid framing
lLe Corbusier's steel detailing on the Heidi Weber Museum, Zurich
#
One can speculate
further on the origin of the Sydney Opera House form. The history of
the Shetland boat, the four-a-reen and the six-a-reen, is that the
boats originated in Norway. The first boats were imported fully
constructed. They were stacked and loaded onto cargo boats for the
journey west - (lecture on the Shetland boat given by Marc Chivers, 15 May 2015 at the Shetland Museum & Archives). Subsequently the boats were sent in pieces to be built
in the Shetland Islands. The point is that boats are stacked. Utzon must have seen boats stacked in Denmark. The
stacking of bows can be seen as the Sydney Opera House model. The reference holds an inherent sense, but the forms lack any hinges or sense of pivoting. Still, like the RoRo recognition, the analogy enriches, expands.
More images of the rigour of the shipbuilder:
The 'ship's door to the chapel' at le Corbusier's La Tourette
Like a ship's door, the threshold is raised
Le Corbusier's door at the Heidi Weber Museum, Zurich
Door handle at le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp
The nautical balustrade of le Corbusier's Villa Savoye
Le Corbusier's church at Firminy comes to mind
Le Corbusier's Parliament Building at Chandigarh is recalled
The thinness of the funnel form surprises, like that of the Firth of Forth bridge
'Elemental' design
A RoRo bow-and-rear ramp ferry pulling into Gutcher, North Yell
The largest Shetland RoRo operating between Mainland and Yell (at Ulsta, South Yell)
Bow of a traditional Shetland wooden boat
Interior of Sydney Opera House shell, looking up
17 NOVEMBER 2015
A few more images to ponder:
The Thames Barrier
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