Volume One:Prologue
If asked to briefly sum up my practice I would describe it in the following way.
Exploring the many interactions (social, physical, virtual & more I have yet to realise) that occur with the man made environment.
My practice to date has always considered the matters I mentioned above; often though I haven’t had the clarity I currently view my practice with. I possess somewhat of an understanding of my interests which is a feeling that is often far too fleeting. With this understanding in mind this prologue will be a discussion of my practice to date.
I shall begin by setting the scene. Currently I find myself adrift in an ocean of possibilities; Which way do you head when all directions are possible? I will also set myself one simple rule that I will refer to throughout my journey; Art (great art) is an act of simplicity. However many possibilities there may be, the most beautiful act is a simple one.
There are a few constants within my practice, those being Architecture and Drawing. Drawing is my method for exploration of concepts, Architecture is the motif I employ to mediate the exploration. Drawing is a repetitive and somewhat arduous practice for myself, but this allows me a much more in-depth exploration. I am beginning to push myself to change the constraints on the places I create. I often find it useful to remind myself of David Lynch films such as Mulholland Drive where the world defies rational exploration or Borges texts such as Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Works that break the paradigm, for in this I believe lies understanding.
Architecture which I briefly brushed passed in the previous paragraph is hugely important to my way of thinking. Architecture is far more than just mere buildings, it defines and influences interactions on many different spaces. I would describe a text as having an architecture for instance. Architecture defines so many of our interactions, it is the space around us both physical, social and psychological. Architecture is all about interactions, I use it to create/consider constructs in which interactions occur. It is one of the most important concepts within our existence, it defines so many aspects of our lives.
For the moment I will leave this prologue as it stands, but I do view this as a live text. In the following chapters I will be discussing my practice going forwards, investingating my ideas and those of others that I find interesting.
Beyond the Real
Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of ‘real’ America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social; in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral).
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (1983)
It is ever so apt that it is Disney are the backers of the Celebration development near Orlando, Florida. Baudrillard described Disneyland as being
Presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.
Disney Imagineers have manufactured another hyperreality, Celebration. Celebration is a development built upon New Urbanist principles is a wonderfully seductive manufactured simulation of an ideal Americana. It is an illusion of the ‘perfect town’; we are presented with a hyperreal environment akin to those presented to us by Buena Vista.
The US is awash with the hyperreal; it is constantly presenting the world with ‘wonderful’ new fantasies. The US, like new urbanism is built upon great fantastical ideals of being a land of equality and opportunity. These ideals though, are Utopian ones and are by definition are unobtainable. Here is where my love of this subject and country lies; we are presented with something that is so impossibly beautiful that it cannot possibly exist but we are seduced by the beauty of its siren song.
New Urbanism
The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.
We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.
We recognize that physical solutions by themselves will not solve social and economic problems, but neither can economic vitality, community stability, and environmental health be sustained without a coherent and supportive physical framework.
We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.
We represent a broad-based citizenry, composed of public and private sector leaders, community activists, and multidisciplinary professionals. We are committed to reestablishing the relationship between the art of building and the making of community, through citizen-based participatory planning and design.
We dedicate ourselves to reclaiming our homes, blocks, streets, parks, neighborhoods, districts, towns, cities, regions, and environment.
Copyright 1996, Congress for the New Urbanism.
New Urbanism is a movement within town planning that believes in designing on a ‘human scale’. Its principals describe the sacrificing of the ruthless efficiency of modernism for a community oriented and diverse ‘nearly perfect town’.
A couple of examples of New Urbanist towns are the Disney sponsored Celebration, Florida (pictured above) and the DPZ designed Seaside, Florida. These towns are fascinating as they seem hyper-real, they are manufactured chocolate box Americana.
‘A nearly perfect town’
A perfect town is made up of all elements. It has affluence, symbolised by is grand architectural monolithic shrines to business. It also has poverty, the subways housing the homeless and slums full of people looking for the better life in the town where the streets are paved with gold. A perfect town is a melting pot.
Downtown and Uptown
Depot, market, factories, warehouses, slum - these features, combined with the fascination of the riverbank and stockyards and the assorted public of railroaders and Latinos and occational ranch hands - have all given South Main a very definite character: easy-going, loud, colorful, and perhaps during fair week or at shipping time a little disreputable. Boys on the Cougar football squad have specific orders to stay away from South Main, but they don’t. Actually the whole of Optimo looks on the section with indulgence and pride; it makes the townspeople feel that they understand metropolitan problems when they can compare South Main with the New York waterfront.
North Main, up on the heights beyond the courthouse square and past the two or three blocks of retail stores, is (on the other hand) the very finest part of Optimo. The northwestern section of town, with its tree-shaded streets, its view over the river and the prairie, its summer breezes, has always been identified with wealth and fashion as Optimo understands them. Colonel Ephraim Powell (Confederate Army, Ret., owner of some of the best ranch country in the region) built his bride a handsome limestone house with a slate roof and a tower, and Walter Slymaker, proprietor of Slymaker’s Mercantile and of the grain elevator, not to be outdone, built an even larger house farther up main; so did Hooperson, first president of the bank. There are a dozen such houses in all, stone or Milwaukee brick with piazzas (or galleries, as the old timers still call them) and large, untidy gardens around them. It is worth noting, by the way, that the brightest claim to aristocratic heritage is this: grandfather came out West for his health. New England may have its “Mayflower” and “Arabella,” east Texas its Three Hundred Founding Families, New Mexico its Conquistadores; but Optimo is loyal to is loyal to the image of the delicate young college graduate who arrived by train with his law books, his set of Dickens, his taste for wine, and the custom of dressing for dinner. This legendary figure has about seen his day in the small talk of Optimo society, and the younger generation frankly doubt his having ever existed; but he (or his ghost) had a definite effect on local manners and ways of living. At all events, because of this memory Optimo looks down on those western mining towns where Sarah Bernhardt and de Reszke and Oscar Wilde seem to have played so many one-night stands in now-vanished opera houses.
Brinckerhoff Jackson, J. (1952). “The Almost Perfect Town” from Landscapes. Univ of Massachusetts Press.
The essay which I quoted from is a criticism of post WWII developments in town planning, which looked to rip the heart out of towns through re-development.
For further information;
Le Gates, R T (ed.) & Stout, F (ed.). (2007). The City Reader. Fourth Edition. Oxon. Routledge Page 184.
Giorgio Sadotti, Flower SSnake, 2010
Sadotti is known for an art practice that “celebrates the power of the nothing”.
In not decorating the tree, the artist said he wanted people to recognise its “natural elegance” and think about the potential of the objects - of the tree held in time until its potential is fulfilled and of the whip waiting to be used.
Fiona Tan - Cloud Island, 2010
This is possibly the most beautiful thing I have seen. My friend Sam has written a good piece about this film which can be found here.
Tatiana Trouve.
I saw her exhibition at the South London Gallery a few weeks ago. This was on the recommendation of one of my former tutors. Although not all of the exhibition captured my imagination, the drawings really did catch my eye. I was seduced by the level of depth the images had. The use of Matt and glossy mediums seemed to really enhance the perspective. It felt as if you could enter into the architectural space depicted, the only shame is that the objects didn’t hit the same heights.
This is the most recent completed image I have created. It explores some of the ideas I have about urban space.
Unsolicited
What is the point in waiting round to be asked to do something needs to be done, Why not go and do it?
The recent economic changes have brought about some interesting changes and opportunities. For example Castle and Elephant, here you have a gallery that exists in empty spaces. It works with the fractures that have occurred, it explores these spaces to a certain extent. Unsolicited might be a bit of a stretch for the gallery, but it is something that was necessary that was allowed to exist by these fractures. It is an example of showing those around what needs to be done.
The Bucky Bar is an example of unsolicited architecture that I really love. It was a spontanious architectural intervention that occurred in Rotterdam. It is another example of the unsolicited showing the way by bringing people together. It is also a beautiful piece of architecture. The unsolicited has a social conscience it is about exploring the possibilities that could lead to a better environment.
For more info on the bucky bar click here
What are the possibilities for the unsolicited?
How could it change the environment in we live in?
How will it affect the culture and architecture?
