“……….My architectural education when it came, served me well.  ……….The work I had done for my final year project in the school had been successful; I had won the RIBA Design prize (previously and latterly the President’s Silver Medal) but though rewarding it had all been intuitive, and I was no more able to articulate a criticism of the architectural world that I now inhabited, than I had been able to do as a teenage rookie.  Architectural criticism needed to be more than a subjective response; it had to be more informed.  Having won my spurs I now had the freedom to pursue the questions independently.  Living in London I started to attend each and every lecture that I could find on the subject of architecture or related discipline, I was reading avidly, borrowing books from five or six different libraries at the same time and searching to formulate a coherent viable position in architecture.  My inner teenage pendulum was the only armature against which I was able to measure the ideas on offer, an armature I later understood to have been forged largely in childhood play; demanding adventurous play within Nature.  Every spare hour as a child I had been out in the fields digging traps, making huts, cutting trees or building dams, though unaware of this at the time, this close engagement with Nature would be a guide in my search for this new direction.  These early years of research were to be important and laid solid foundations for the future but it would be many years before I would start to clearly articulate a wholly coherent position. 

Raindrops on Nasturtium Leaves:

In those early days I was pursuing one simple question, ….what constituted good design?  The contemporary architectural world in the late sixties, early seventies was breaking up into a variety of seemingly disparate strands.  Modernism was seen to have failed and post modernism was being heralded as the new way forward.  This must surely be the answer that I had been searching for, but the more I explored the post modern as presented in those early days within the world of architecture the emptier it seemed, it had let go of the reductive certainty of modernism but replaced it with a philosophy that ‘anything goes’.  Wobbly technology, the new vernacular or classical elements were being layered into modern designs, it was presented as a potpourri of form which rendered any piece of work as valid as the next.  Of course in the art world the same thing was happening, bricks could be piled in a variety of configurations in the Tate, bed’s could be unmade and paper screwed up to make art.  In theory everything could be art and everybody an artist, just as any builder could pile up some bricks and call it architecture, could this post-modern direction really be sustainable?  By what means could one piece be distinguished from another?  In this situation the high priests of the art world assumed positions of extreme importance, as they became the final arbiters, just as the tailors and courtiers within the Emperor’s Court judged his invisible suit to be the most beautiful in the land.  Fortunately the child inside me, like the child at the Emperor’s parade saw that the post modern package did not offer an answer to my question, certain buildings done in the post modern language were successful but too few to validate the movement, for the answers to my question I would have to look deeper. 

My hunger reluctantly drove me back into the universities and to my first great teacher.  I was introduced to Geoffrey Baker and for four or five years we were to work together in a perfect creative relationship.  We shared a passion for design.  Geoffrey had developed a way of examining buildings that opened up the complexities of a contemporary building without destroying its integrity or layering it with superfluous historical interpretations.  The building was allowed to stand alone within its own context and the analyses explored it within the building’s own terms.  In this sense the methodology accommodated a post-modern posture at a much deeper level than that described above.  Within this methodology the building could be examined against its own criteria and if necessary against those of the building’s context.  For me this became the perfect tool, I felt like one of Galileo assistant’s must have felt when he invented the telescope, suddenly I was able to open up the delights of a building, exploring how one set of ideas could be reinforced in innumerable ways within a design, finding layers of consistencies supportive of the whole.  This way of working led beyond the superficial ‘image’ of glossy magazines and into the integrated reality of the building.  The methodology became the tool that took me back to my primary quest; my desire to understand the basis of good design.

  Cream Squirls in Barszcz: Tasty and Visually Delicious

After I had been on this task for some months and after I given up the day job for a 50% cut in salary, it dawned on me that my question … “What is Good Design?” was not dissimilar to the perennial question that had preoccupied philosophers for millennia  “What is Beauty?”  Feeling very foolish, I was immediately tempted to give up, if philosophers could devote years to this question, why should I be spending my time stumbling around in this area.  Was this not one of the great mysteries of life?  Had I not burnt my bridges, I would have run back onto firmer ground but then some days later a simple observation struck me?  A good building and a bad building could stand in front of me with equal reality; I could bang my head on a beautiful building just as easily as I could bang my head on a bad one.  They were both very real yet one could leave me cold and the other move me to tears.  This thought kept me going, how could you bump your head against a mystery.  If the building in front of me is beautiful, then beauty cannot be magic or mystery, it must be present in the very fabric of the building.  ………”

Silent Lion

I am attaching another section of the piece I wrote about Henryk Skolimowski’s influence on my work.  In this section I am describing the early days of the ‘Humane Architecture’ programme that I created at the University of Plymouth, School of Architecture.  The photographs are of Henryk and his wife Juanita on one of the occasions they visited the school, and some of the student work that was done on the programme.  The ideas developed in the ‘Humane Architecture’ programme went on to influence the philosophy of my architectural practice.

“………………….In the programme I defined ‘Humane Architecture’ as …. “architecture that displays a reverence for life and the environment.”  Those of you familiar with Henryk Skolimowski’s work will recognise immediately that I had borrowed the word ‘reverence’ from his writing.  I loved the way that he had made this transfer of language across disciplines thereby bringing spiritual values into the secular world without talking about spiritual issues per se.  Henryk’s way of describing the world as a ‘sanctuary’, similarly flavours the discussion; moving it out of a purely scientific ecology into a more spiritually responsible position.  In structuring the new programme Henryk’s work was to feature highly.  Somehow I had managed to incorporate a module entitled ‘Architecture and Self-Awareness’, into the programme and yet another called ‘Eco-philosophy,’ the latter directly designed to address Henryk’s philosophical works.  It proved a popular module and underpinned the work in other parts of the course, the ideas about ‘eco-philosophy’ and ‘participatory mind’ were challenging yet accessible to the students.  We read his books together, ran seminars and wrote lengthy essays about them.  The students were quick to appreciate the ideas and started to learn how to make connections between the philosophical ideas and architecture.  His words gave us a way of making distinctions between humane and inhumane buildings.  The manner by which Henryk had expressed his thoughts presented us with a way to articulate our views about architecture.  Many seeds were planted at this time and many students took an extended responsibility back into the world with them when they left the school.

 

The design studio that ran in parallel with the theoretical modules encouraged the students to apply the humane principles to their own design work; we called it the ‘Zen Studio’.  The ‘Humane Architecture’ programme placed strong emphasis on the tactile and experiential dimensions of architecture which contrasted with the conceptual approach that the old architecture maintained.  Henryk’s philosophy was making the same distinction, condemning the objective and detached view of the world in favour of a committed engagement with it.  Strange as it may seem, the old architecture that to a large extent is still the dominant architecture of today, is more concerned with the idea of the building than with the experience of the building.  For these architects, buildings are seen as pure form uncompromised by the context or even the environment.  The drawings used to represent this sort of architecture will generally speak of those values.  For example they will often be drawn from above in a bird’s eye perspective.  Such drawings detach the building from its experienced context as seen from street level and they will usually be rendered with ethereal finishes that do not define the materials.  People will not normally be displayed on the drawings and few furnishings that indicate use will be shown.  Within this old architecture the face of a building will be seen as a conceptual surface, as such it is its qualities as a concept that are important rather than the materials from which it is made.  As a concept, a surface is there to make a division in absolute space, in its most pure form it extends to infinity and has no need of depth or texture.  For these reasons glass, the immaterial material is often the chosen material for a surface or if it must be opaque, it will be detailed without reveals, overhangs, drips or junctions so that its conceptual reality is not disturbed.  Of course the omission of these construction details leads to the failure of the surface.  There is no such thing as a pure surface, no material can deliver it, all materials must show their age which is why so much of the old architecture ages so badly and after a few years looks like the aged Hollywood star a few months after plastic surgery. 

In contrast with the conceptual approach of the old architecture the application of ‘Humane Architecture’ principles generated projects that celebrated both the formal and conceptual clarity of a design and the building’s materiality.  We encouraged students to make parts of their buildings in the workshop; we even ran projects in which the students made pieces of furniture; very small architecture.   Such projects were purposely chosen to put attention onto the materials and the making of the artefact.  In these projects the students were quick to pick up on Henryk’s concept of frugality to save money within their meagre budgets and would build their tables out of drift wood or recycled found materials.  The projects were so experiential and tactile that by the end of a day in the workshops the students would be physically tired.  I quietly used to take delight in their exhaustion because it pointed so clearly to the fact that they were using their bodies as well as their minds to create their architecture; a feature so different to the one-sided conceptual approach adopted in many schools of architecture.  Such small scale architecture became a characteristic of our work.  The smallness presented an opportunity for the highest attention to be applied to the work.  ‘Care’, became one of the watch words of the ‘Zen Studio’.  By applying care to every act, raised our level of awareness of the work we were doing and such a raising of awareness lifted our own levels of consciousness and seemed to be a way of introducing the spiritual back into architecture. 

 

The students thrived in this environment when they were given the opportunity in Henryk’s words to engage in a ‘Quest for Quality’.  They loved the opportunity to get close to their task and in the process made some really beautiful pieces of work.  Other projects were run with similar intentions, we had the students make measured drawings of some of the best Arts and Crafts buildings that we have in Britain.  These drawings had to be drawn with the utmost care, each student taking just one part of the building.  The drawings were then rendered in watercolour.  We introduced this request because it slowed down the drawing process and contrasted greatly with the instant drawings that at other times they were making on computers.  The students were shown how to stretch watercolour paper on a board and then over a number of days or weeks shown how to build up layers of colour in the painting.  The process again had the effect of introducing care and physicality into the work but also allowed time to be folded into the painting.  This was such an effective technique that it generated some very beautiful pieces of work. 

The shorthand distinctions that I have been making here between the conceptual and the experiential which loosely paralleled Henryk’s contrast between objective detachment and a committed engagement with life can be taken much deeper.  ……………..”

 

Part of the student group on Bodmin Moor: Marcus Toop, John Pace, with Henryk and Juanita Skolimowski, Flora Samuel, Mike Westley and Frank Lyons

 Silent Lion

Some of you may have watched Kevin McCloud Slumming it in Dharvai on Channel Four this week.  It was a very powerful couple of hours television and worth watching the repeats if you missed it.  Earlier this week I had been writing a piece about ‘Humane Architecture’ to be included in a book that was being compiled to celebrate the work of a friend, the philosopher Henryk Skolimowski.  Rather serendipitously I was using Dharvai as an example of the point I was making, so I will attach part of that paper here.

The distinction that I make in this paper between the masculine and feminine world views is of course metaphorical and although men and women will perhaps find it easiest to relate respectively to the masculine and feminine world views, the paradigms are not gender specific.  Within Jungian psychology a man is said to have a feminine soul and a woman a masculine soul.  He suggested that it was each person’s role to work respectively towards a reconciliation with their male or female psyche and to live out such realisations in their lives.  So here at a cultural level the responsibility is similar.  I am also enclosing this piece because it may answer some of the questions raised by an earlier piece on this blog.  I hope that you enjoy it.

“……….During the creation and development of the ‘Humane Architecture’ programme it was possible to add more detail to these observations.  It became clear that the masculine approach was only giving the student a partial engagement with architecture.  Working conceptually was depriving the student of an immediate engagement with the experiential reality of the building.  Buildings were therefore becoming objects to be viewed in abstraction, in idealised space, or as the idealised Platonic form, remote from the reality and untidiness of use.  It was sobering to realise that these very same words could be used to describe the work of the early modern movement that saw architecture as pure form seen in light and which as Henryk will tell us had its roots in the Renaissance.  The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that the modern world of architecture was literally a masculine worldview.  Suddenly it was clear why our cities looked the way they did.  The towers of glass and steel were creations built by a society that was largely wearing male glasses; we were building through the eyes of men.

In contrast whereas the masculine agenda starts by seeking the ultimately unrealisable perfection of the pure abstract Platonic form, the feminine principle starts by accepting life as it is.  The feminine principle does not seek to impose from the outside but rather works from within what already exists.  The feminine side of creativity therefore seeks to open up and transform rather than replace or dictate.  Such an approach calls for the ability to listen and observe; to identify the potential growth points within existing conditions and to allow those conditions to grow into something new.  Within the world of architecture the needs of the client, the landscape, the history and culture, the context more generally within and around the site and the environmental conditions relating to the building are all important sources of potential growth and transformation.  These are the existing conditions and I have described them elsewhere as comprising the ordinary.  Looked at from the perspective of the feminine principle it is the ordinary that is waiting to be transformed, extended, re-created, re-made.  The feminine principle is essentially organic in character and therefore close to Nature in both identity and in the willingness to engage with Nature’s reality.  Ordinariness therefore represents the ground conditions of the feminine approach to architecture but out of that ground of ordinariness, feminine creativity offers the potential of extension and growth into the extraordinary.

Within what we are calling the feminine view of architecture the qualities of materials do not need to be subjugated to fulfil a higher conceptual purpose within the masculine world view, but can be accepted as what they are for themselves.  The qualities of a material can be enjoyed and used to create a particular character or mood.  The clinical neutrality that emerged within the masculine view almost as a by-product of the need to create the perfect cerebral form, captured most closely in the ethereal glass box, can now be replaced by the sheer joy and sensuality of materials.  When buildings loose the need to be neutral the way is opened up for an architecture that displays the variety and passion of life.  Architecture is therefore freed to address the particulars of life; to capture the particular mood of a specific project, a nursery school, crematorium, night club or maternity clinic.  From the feminine perspective the masculine world that was dominated by thinking and cerebral explorations is replaced by a world of feeling and emotion.  A world of feeling and emotion is a threatening world for those who seek security through control; however feelings and emotions also bring us closer to our deeper selves and open us to a perhaps risky but potentially more vital reality.

If the symbols that have dominated our cities have been the neutral masculine forms that were almost stripped of feeling, the symbols that are needed now to redress the masculinisation of architecture are the potent symbols of femininity.  Instead of the glass boxes and gridded towers the feminine principle would rather emphasise courtyard, cave or womb-like structures that symbolise our relationship with the earth and with each other.  Such structures would be more sensual and free than the grid-controlled plan.  Earth bound structures that engage wholesomely with nature and set up positive relationships between the landscape, the elements and humanity are the types of symbolic forms that the feminine principle would promote.  Contemporary examples of such buildings do exist but remain a minority within our unbalanced culture.

The dominance of the masculine principle, if that’s what we can call it, has been so complete that the feminine is barely able to surface.  A few years ago I gave a lecture in Mumbai (ICHH International Conference on Humane Habitat at Rizvi University, School of Architecture) about ‘humane architecture’ and this metaphorical male-female division of the architectural world.  After the lecture I was taken on a tour of the city.  Glossy glass and steel towers were springing up everywhere, marking the city’s status as India’s leading financial centre.  Between the towers people slept rough on the streets but then we came to Dharvai the slum capital of the city.  The power of this area seemed immense, a whole community, vital, lively, trading and accommodating millions of formerly homeless people had grown up on the western edge of the city over a period of some twenty years.  It was as if it had risen through the cracks in the pavement; a colossal illegal symbol of femininity.  It was breathtaking, within a generation a city had literally grown out of the earth and displayed all of the qualities of the feminine architecture principles I had earlier described in my lecture, though I was not able to make that connection with my colleagues.   The city had grown out of need, out of ordinariness, it was messy but related to the earth, indeed it could be said to be built of the earth, it gave shelter, accommodated industry and commerce, and encouraged trade.  Within a few metres of this community the soullessness of the commercial towers glistened.  The futility of this juxtaposition screamed loudly, the opportunity for reconciliation between these masculine and feminine principles was there to be taken but instead, like a bad divorce they were seen to be in conflict.  The result was that the city authorities were slowly clearing away the slums and replacing them with the most appalling stacked minimal shelters, racked in ranks of four and five storey sterile blocks.  Like a concrete machine the masculine principle was marching across the city.

The experience in Mumbai was revealing because the masculine and feminine principles were still vying with each other and clearly displayed the dichotomy.  It was clear that neither the masculine nor the feminine principles alone were the solution.  The need was to redress the imbalance.  It is not enough to swing from a male dominant paradigm to a female alternative.  The need is to create a Natural Order, a genuine balance between these two polarities.  The healing that our culture needs will take place when the masculine and feminine agendas discussed above are brought into a genuine symbiotic relationship with each other such that each side is enlivened and enhanced by the other.  The healing balm is to be found in the gap between these two great metaphorical opposites, just as transcendent peace is to be found in the loving conjunction of man and woman.  The silent therapeutic middle ground that is between all opposites can be opened and held by great art and architecture.  Great art has always performed this function.  When the symbolic forms are found that are able to hold the opposites in perfect equipoise, the architecture will hold open a therapeutic gap for all and for all time.  Once opened the gap cannot be closed and thus remains permanently accessible, offering therapy like a spa pool to all those able to enter.”

Silent Lion

Walking around the Tate Britain exhibition of the pieces shortlisted for the Turner Prize, it was very tempting to dismiss them out of hand. Listening to the artists discussing their work on the Channel Four 3 min slots some days later however gave me cause for reflection. Their works present themselves as strange objects each on the shore of distant islands beyond the seas of ordinariness, neither speaking with each other nor with ordinary mortals. Of course in our post modern culture such remoteness in itself is considered enough to make them each a cause célèbre, but is that enough?  Should ‘not-understandingness’ be a criterion for excellence?

We are told that these artists are understood by a select audience but I wonder how true that is. Does that select audience really understand or genuinely share some truth that the rest of us are missing? Is this select audience being regularly transformed by these works as earlier generations have been transformed by the masters of the past? Of course new work often has a period of ‘challenge’ but Carl Andre’s bricks have been sitting in the Tate now for over 40 years and the screwed up pieces of A4 paper were mailed to members of the art world over 15 years ago. For me it is time to take stock, if such conceptual work is to be considered art, at best it is partial and at worst too thin to be seen at a cultural level. Partial because it is generated largely by the mind and therefore remains a commodity only for the mind; which is of course a partial reading of humanity and too thin, because a work cannot be seen if it remains essentially private and unable to communicate with a wider audience.

Culture is by definition a collective phenomenon, so a central quality of any art work has got to be its ability to communicate. We have got to ask the question therefore, if these Turner shortlisted schemes are put forward as art, by what means are they expecting to communicate? Is it enough to assume that if a form means something to an artist, that it will mean the same to everyone else? Clearly that cannot be the case. We each have a unique view on the world which our postmodern culture validates. So by what means are these pieces meant to communicate? If the post modern edict that ‘anything goes’ has run its course, by what criteria are we to judge the works of the new culture? Well those criteria have surely got to be some form of clear communication that sets up a positive connection with and within culture, in my view this has three separate but sometimes related qualities which if justified will not only explain the grounds of communication but will also suggest a way of reintroducing beauty into art. Indeed beauty may once again become a criterion in the judgement of art. These three qualities are:

1. Ordinariness: generating links to the exiting culture
2. Good form
3. Reconciliation of dissimilars

Each of these three criteria can arguably stand alone and can be sufficient in themselves but they will often be interrelated. Let’s examine them briefly in turn. Firstly what do I mean by ordinariness? The ordinary is the ground state of culture, which is of course constantly being extended. A table for example is part of this ground state, in the distant past we would have eaten off the earth or perhaps a flat stone, at some point someone created a table. Its usefulness communicated and established its continued use in culture. Other artefacts similarly established themselves, bowls, jugs, wheels, and eventually more subtle pieces that spoke beyond the utilitarian, about the sensual and emotional world of humanity, in painted and sculpted artifice that remained connected to the ground state of culture through the figurative. Within this first mode of communication the artist is simply working within the established boundaries of culture, a well crafted artefact can reinforce, extend or refresh ideas already in circulation.

The second of these qualities; ‘good form’, remains central to culture, despite the fads and fashions of recent times because it is essentially derived from the ground state of our perceptual systems. The nervous system sees, feels and hears the world in coherent form. It is our nervous systems that find the order we experience in the natural world but also in the human extension of that world in what we call our culture. We cannot separate ourselves from this perceptual reality; it is part of what we are which is why it promises to be a return to beauty. In this mode of communication the artist is using her form making skills to create an artefact that is so well composed that it resonates profoundly and speaks directly with our nervous systems.

The third way that communication takes place is through the reconciliation of dissimilars. If an artist has adopted this method of communication it is because she has experienced something which she cannot communicate within the ‘ordinary’ established aspect of culture and needs to speak beyond the edge of the ordinary. To do this she must find the similarities within dissimilars. She must find a way to show us how previously contradictory phenomena are able to be reconciled, how an aspect of the world beyond the edge of the ordinary can be related back to the ordinary. This aspect of culture may initially need a period of time to be assimilated by the culture, not because the work is seeking difference for differences sake but because of a compelling need on the part of the artist to share her experience of the world. This is a relatively rare aspect of culture; it is the most vital aspect of culture, a relentless process of unification, a process that reveals what we might call beauty in its pulling together of our post modern worlds.

Well this piece clearly needs filling out but it is an offering. It may raise some question about how the Turner Prize nominees seek to communicate with their public or whether they have no such ambition and seek rather to remain in their private worlds.

Silent Lion

This has been an interesting week, in quite separate ways the power of architecture to affect lives was raised as an issue by two people but from very differing perspectives.

A few days ago I had a discussion with a politician who talked about being shown around the Houses of Parliament by a lady who outlined the way the building influenced the behaviour of the users. The building was presented as having a very authoritarian, masculine form. Most people would not have been aware of this but with just a moment’s reflection; it is easy to see how the form of the debating chamber for example sets in stone the politics of conflict, or should I say opposition. I quoted Winston Churchill’s lines to her, “First we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” but added that she was lucky to have had such a tour with someone perceptive enough to make such observations. The conversation then moved to the buildings of Plymouth and our shared confusion that a building as modest as the Plymouth Civic Centre could merit being listed by English Heritage.

To me this clearly seems to be a decision made by visitors to the city rather than those of us living here. From an experiential perspective the building has offered little to the inhabitants of the city. It is a prima facia community building but does nothing to speak about community. Rather its form is strident in the urban landscape standing as a dominant masculine form more suggestive of civic control than civic community. One can only imagine that its English Heritage champions were more concerned with its modest pedigree, seen from an academic historicist perspective rather than from the experiential perspective of the Plymothians who use it. It is interesting however, though perhaps not surprising, that both these political buildings have such controlling forms.

The second time that this issue was raised this week was at a lecture delivered by Professor Woudhuysen. He was talking about future trends in architecture and the construction industries. His presentation was filled with critical figures and statistics including the £4,000.00 price tag he normally charged for is lectures. His position was largely an overview, often remaining at a national or even global level in its breadth and perspective. His offerings to the future of architecture derived from this global perspective, his criticism of other architectural gurus, such as Lord Richard Rogers and Prince Charles were scathing, and any models that he hinted at for his audience were distant and lacking context. At one point the brutal high-rise dwellings of Hong Kong were offered as a model for the housing shortages in the UK. Even if the 1947 planning acts were repealed as he suggested, a position with which I have a certain sympathy, his proposals remained almost totally without a qualitative dimension. This lack of an experiential take on architecture was typified by his derision of Winston Churchill’s remark that by coincidence I quoted earlier …. “First we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” His futuristic posture seemed to release him of the need to engage with the real time experience of the ‘now’ rendering him unable to read the qualitative affects of architecture. Although his macho lecturing style won him some raucous laughs from his largely male student audience, I suspect that the future lies closer to the female readers of the political architecture mentioned earlier rather than with a Futures Guru that lives more in his head than his body. Fortunately and somewhat ironically I believe that his kind of take on the future belongs to the past.