Architecture is predicting the future

When an architect is asked to design something, part of the challenge is to anticipate the effect that this usually large built and immovable object will have on the many people that will see, use and possibly inhabit it.

Conceptual art approaches can help, for example making a building evoke an idea, or using an idea to start a design, but they are never enough. That my building is 1776 feet high may help get sponsorship, but in it will hardly be perceived.

Fame or notoriety help. Celebrity architects draw buzz and crowds. One can invest genius in a built object and the aura of the famous designer creates a culture around the space.

The inescapable challenge of architecture however is to be present in time and space in a significant way.

Here is an example of how things can go wrong:

In my little town, the well-meaning heritage preservation committee got involved in the review of a design for a pump house that would sit along the waterfront. The building would need to have the volume of a large two storey house.

The committee looked around "for context" and found a nearby older shed that had two stone gable ends and a very symmetrical sloped roof, a kind of 19th century shed. So they strongly suggested that the utility's architect (or most likely engineer), take the cue.

The intention was to reflect the heritage of the industrial waterfront area.

The result was a large, white stucco covered imitation of an old shed, like an over sized paper model of it, sitting there contrasting against the dark water and sky.

I don't think that was the intention. I also think that any architect would have easily anticipated this and informed the client of the danger. Unfortunately, the heritage preservation committee is wedded to form and mimesis (a pompous architect term meaning copycatting). Unfortunately, it is an easy notion to sell, a concept that seems to make sense, reflect shapes, and if you are lucky materials.

An aside:
I agree with many of my colleagues who say that if you are going to do some restoration work or add to an older building, choose one: re-use material or re-use form and proportion, but don't do both, at the risk of getting some half-assed mimesis.

Ok, so back to the story. This thing now sits on the waterfront, annoying, out of place, and a reminder of industrial sheds we lost, but bigger and worse.

So instead of learning a lesson, this heritage committee moves on, job well done, and is now addressing the problem of our train station. Again, mimesis is being suggested, but this time there is no proximate context, so they looked in the pattern books for old train stations with huge eaves, and came up with some hybrid Frank Lloyd Wrightish stone bunker, because they wanted the stone of course.

What is galling is that the railway people had proposed a very nice, airy design, with proper functional overhangs to protect people on the platform, but with nice glass, and curves and a good light feel to it, considering the barren context of the area, a jewel that may have lightened the oppression of the district.

I don't think it will be realized, because no-one thinks that architects can predict the future, especially when the heritage preservation committee is locked in the past.

The Guardian and Harry Potter

The Alps at New Year seen from the northwest Swiss side - Copyright 2003-2008 A. Barake

I wrote earlier about a Nick Lezard Guardian posting that strongly criticises JK Rowling's prose. Recently, there has been another Guardian article about the prevalence of Oxford and Cambridge graduates in English public life. There may be a link between the two. JK Rowling did not attend these prestigious schools, yet she writes about them in the Potter books - in fact King's College at Oxford was used as a setting in some of the earlier films. So is Lezard unconsciously chaffing at the gall of it all? She is successful, very successful, and yet she does not come from the rank of the elite, she did not attend Oxbridge.

I like the Guardian, I think they are very balanced and fair, but there is a snobbery factor there, which, I am guessing, comes from this elitist attitude that is probably part of the legacy of such a prestigious education. The few graduates (less than 10) of these schools that I have met have been overly dismissive and difficult when their opinions and statements have been challenged in a social context such as a meeting or workshop. A lot of clever sophistry has been put on display to discredit their interlocutors during such occasions. Debating skill is a good thing, but taken to excess can be quite offputting. So I will probably remain prejudiced until I gain further experience in the matter.

Joseph Conrad

A wonderful article on Conrad in the Guardian, which contains this quote from the man:

"Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation. The only legitimate basis of creative work lies in the courageous recognition of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous - so full of hope."

An enlightened grade 10 teacher made us read Heart of Darkness - and it was way beyond us - yet how could we not feel the depth of his style, his circling of the story and the way the words were like ruminations of the subconscious. Re-read it several times since, and it never ceases to bring forth strong emotion. And this is not a sensual book, but almost a pure intellectual one - wrapped around a journey - a river trip.

And don't miss - in the same issue - an interview with Richard Ford.

Skin tone deaf

Before the ferry - Copyright 2007 A. Barake

I have been reading some NYC art critics' blogs recently, and one asked the old question about relevance of figurative art (again). He was using some classic Robert Longo works as a case study, saying that there was a subtext of yuppie critique in those writhing suit-clad black and white figures, and that gave the art some value, but that it had dissipated now that the era has passed. Well maybe... But what about the argument that the figurative arts are really about looking at figures. Simple as that. We are wired to seek the attraction of beautiful bodies. Can figurative art not just be about finding new ways to do this? Nothing else? I think the rest is justification for the existence of those who are beauty-deaf.

Dylan and Drake - Ego spectra

(Picture copyright A. Barake, 2007)

Have been reading a book of interviews with Dylan. I also mentioned here that I read and recommend Joe Boyd's memoirs. I "discovered" Nick Drake through these, and subsequently listened to some of his music. The stuff I like most is him singing to his own guitar accompaniment, sparse but deeply moving. It is full of melancholy. the ego struggling to emerge but battling emotion. Drake committed suicide.

Dylan's interviews and songs reveal a different type of ego, one that is dominant, defining of a reality. The person is re-invented with every appearance, and is making us consider adopting some of this vision.

This spectrum of ego - from the struggling and disappearing one to the inventive, playful and somewhat monstrous one is particularly interesting given that these are solo artists, both very original, defining themselves in the difficult music business. The support of others is limited, until you break through. Your belief system is mostly held near your heart.

In Dylan's case, the media circus and controversy tried to take hold, and he built a humorous shield to deflect the ego distorting forces and to maintain his creative force.

Drake was trying to break through and seems to have been struggling against his handlers as well as himself. He was more alone, in a sense, than Dylan, or at least not ego maniacal enough.

As ego is questioned, depression sets in. An argument can be made that depression in a loss of ego, a flattening of it that leads to inability to make the future for oneself. A strong ego influences destiny (character is destiny) by changing the perceptual environment. Management types would call it "selling yourself", missing the underlying irony.

It is easy to sell a template ego, for example the "MBA persona", or the jock persona, but in the arts, individuality and novelty are the goal, so the frame of reference gets pretty narrow, the market too. Success means enlarging that frame, creating the market. Dylan did it through force of character, strong confident performances, new poetic lyrical modes, and hubris. Drake did it too, but with his music and style. It took longer.

For most of us, the ego is sustained by our family, our friends and to some extent our peers at work. We adapt to these micro-cultures (or not) when we interact. Depression can occur when there is indifference or forced adaptation that violates beliefs and upbringing.

It is therefore important not to let any erosion of the ego occur through lack of self-respect. Unfortunately, our ape behaviour is all about climbing the ego ladder, and this erosion is all too common in groups.

Solitary artists, like writers and the afore-mentioned performers sustain the ego through their art. The songs are externalizations of the ego, and provide a hedge against the erosion. Criticism of the songs can be destructive for that reason. I think Drake was very susceptible to this (from my reading of Boyd's memoir of him). Dylan would be too, but then the songs are held up by all the fans and many have become classics - he is immunized.

Wim Wenders' Notebook on Cities and Clothes

(picture by mistermeta)

To follow-up on yesterday's post about criticism, here is my critique of Wim Wenders' 1990 documentary on fashion.

He was commissioned by Le Centre Pompidou to do a film about the fashion industry, and he initially thought it too shallow a subject, but went ahead, and found depth. In fact there are so many layers here that it opens up all kinds of cultural avenues for exploration.

On one level, he covers the Paris show of Yohji Yamamoto's fashion design firm, from his workshop in Tokyo to the courtyard of the Louvre where the runway is set up. On another level, he explores the ephemerality of video versus film, the film uses both media, sometimes simultaneously. On another level, he does a character study of Yohji through interview and observation. He draws out his attitude towards women, his father, the 2nd War, creativity, death, aging, cities, and most importantly identity.

The theme of the movie is Identity. Clothes are one way to begin to address the subject, but it goes far beyond this, into history and the moment of design, and why we strive to capture things that are in decay - as in film. Wenders makes analogies between film making and fashion design as well, and throughout, this jamming with ideas resonates into a coherent whole.

Wenders has said that he is not an intellectual, and I think this means that he is concerned with the surface of things, uses them to draw out emotion. He is sensual, and the themes, although abstract, are not part of the rational discourse we associate with intellectual thought. I have a feeling he said that as a subtle boast.

Wenders seeks harmony. This makes this subject - Yohji - particularly suitable for his vision. He draws out the deep value of doing with the senses, using material and images to make identity. In the end, he captures a place in the imagination, a stake of humanity.

His idea emerged while making the film I think, and the editing is subtle. The DVD I have shows outtakes, and he left out some central stuff, like Yohji's mother, who plays an important thematic role in the interviews. The omissions are not gaps, because the rest of the film makes these ideas emerge more powerfully than if they were explicit.

There is a sense of melancholy mixed-in with deep harmony and longing in this film, a present that cannot be captured, but that is somehow being put into the clothes and vision of this designer, in a subtle and gentle way. His history as a war orphan, his urge to recapture the comfort of his childhood surrounded by women, his perfectionism all merge and are captured in one of the scenes where we see the models' shoes walking along the runway, back and forth, and in the obsessive cutting and drawing of patterns before the show.


The rapport established is Wenders' achievement, his usual seeking of harmony, like a comfortable couch that he is compared to by Yohji.

The Critics

(Image by Mistermeta)

I recently read a comment by Doris Lessing where she criticises critics. She notes that the creative process is about developing an idea and expressing it through the filter of the artist's vision, whereas a critic is usually there to break things down into the components that the culture can understand, an inherently destructive process.

So what about critics who are artists? There are many, like John Updike who reviews books for the New Yorker, and the invited writers in the Guardian, what about their approach? Is it necessarily a destructive process when one tries to re-interpret another's work? Here is what my ideal critical approach would be:

1. Begin by deciding whether the work in question is a development of an idea, or an exploitation. By that I mean try to make a distinction between a formula and an inspiration. If it is a formula, then review it accordingly, does it bring anything to the genre, how does it relate to its antecedents etc. This would avoid the kind of lopsided blindside that people complain about when, say, Nicholas Lezard reviews Harry Potter books as if they were literature.
2. If the work is deemed a development of an inspired idea, then let's run with it. Let's try to dig out that idea and reconstruct the process through its results, and gauge its success that way. This is what the much maligned deconstructivists talk about I think. The questions to ask become: "Is the idea developed in a way that can transcend the vision of the one artist?", "Does the work add anything new to the idea, anything that most of us could not have added after 3 minutes of thought?".

You get my drift, criticise constructively by deconstructing.