outdoor shower - calls devotees.

THe outdoor shower is a statement piece alright, but what is the statement?
Yes of course it’s saying something about simpler times – and reminds us of holidays at a beach shack, of cold washing off sand and salt, yet somehow always taking some inside and onto the couch and bed and sheets.

beach shack memories

The outdoor shower isn’t simple any more. We have to time ourselves carefully lest the public see a wanton waste of water in the midst of drought. They seem so fun – declare a  frisky ‘wildchild’ approach to living, Creative as in Mac (those indulgent suburban spa baths are PC). If the statement was a noun it would be an impossible one such as ‘insouciance’, pressed onto the page by one trying too hard to be writerly. Yet the architect adds the outdoor shower as if it’s an afterthought, or better, just a whim of the client.

 
In a home environment an outdoor shower is an ‘intangible asset’. It might nestle respectfully against a weathered stone, timber or tin outhouse or buttress wall, or rear its head above colourful mass plantings – but it is never too far from the outer edges of the indoor/outdoor space that defines the architect designed Australian house. Is more likely to lurk in the Australian home’s hazy subconscious than a snake.
The outdoor shower is the home’s punctuation mark – or statement jewellery.
For all it’s evocation of hippy care-free days gone by, the thing calls for discipline. And gives its blessings only to solemn devotees.

Devoted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKVcQnyEIT8

Type

clutter free minimalist home

perfect home, perfect child

Once children come into our lives, the house fast becomes cluttered with stuff.

Spending money on storage cubes, cases, trunks, bags, boxes, baskets always appeals as a quick fix solution (the only true solution is an overnight stay – without children – in a chic hotel). But as one carts these into the house it dawns on us that we are bringing even more stuff into the house. Stuff packed away into new stuff is still stuff – and it clutters the house shamefully.

One solution is to transform some of the children’s stuff into art. Hans Bellmer provides inspiration for interesting transformations of dolls.

For those who find artfully arranged dolls a little disturbing, this toy car installation might hit the spot.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/12/rainbow-toy-car-installation-made-from-2500-cars/?src=footer

toy car installation

Artist : Dawn Rogal

Architects love the brick. Architects’ wives love the brick. Builders, makers, doers, fixers, tinkerers love bricks.

They are ‘permutation toys’ (a poetic term for the rubik’s cube coined by  child genius Ainan Celeste Cawley when he was 8 years old).  Increments.  Prosaic matter that gives substance to lyric impulse. En masse, bricks can lose their weight and solidity and yield soft curves, gravity-defying columns, spires and arches.

Brickworks_ yarralumla

brick ceiling - house in Kent featured on Grand Designs

What’s not to like about bricks? Well, lots it seems. Some decades ago, the public turned against them. When was it? in the 70s or 80s? the brick lost its appeal to the middle class. No longer a sign of status, the brick house was spurned. By the 1990s and 2000s renovators were madly rendering brickwork, painting over it. Bricks were deemed pedestrian, institutional, charmless – associated with suburban sprawl and ‘brick venereals’.

Howard Arkley painting. Australian suburbia

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/arkley/

The brick has an unbearable load. Is ‘overdetermined’.1 Regularly used as a metonym for pragmatic and soul-less urban or suburban development, it has been harshly judged, as if a co-conspirator in the schemes of tyrannous men.

The brick is inseparable in our minds and hearts from its uses and abuses. It has heightened significance as the means of urban, suburban and connurban development, and suffers the projections of our fears and contempt, our regrets and nostalgia, our hopes and fantasies.

When crumbling in ruins, bricks are picturesque and have nostalgic appeal. They can tend to the sublime. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/3.1.html

The brick’s value is taken for granted. The support it provides (like that of a good wife/husband/partner) remains opaque.

Wright's Larking Administration Building 1906 : Red Brick

There are books on the significance of other significant technologies – iron, bronze, steel.

guns germs and steel

Yet it is difficult to find serious accounts of the significance of the brick as technology. Brick as metaphor? An abundance!

Donovan Hill Z house

Ferrier Baudet architects - Noble bathroom

Castlecrag house Neeson Murcutt

Neeson Murcutt Zac's house

3 M architects - uq micro-health laboratory

It baffles me that bricks are still so often painted over.

white 'painted over' bricks - striving for transcendence?

So, with deference to the brick I finish this post with a Vera vintage scarf, that might make an appropriate gift for the architect’s wife.

Useful quote for all those misunderstood architects/bricks out there:

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him”. David Brinkley.

An interesting phenomenon – brick lovers. http://brickloversblog.blogspot.com/

1. Overdetermination, the idea that a single observed effect is determined by multiple causes at once (any one of which alone might be enough to account for the effect), was originally a key concept of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermination

It’s that time of year again. One faces the dilemma of having to choose something perfect (-ly designed) for the discerning master of design.

A family day pass for Wet and Wild water park is good if you have the balls to try to coerce the architect to take the children for a day out.

Wet n wild is way more fun if you agree not to think figuratively, as the family is flushed down a large shute with the architect grinning wildly - conveying their illusion of control.

Most architects will  appreciate theme parks in a pop-culture sort of way. They love it that some lucky duck gets to design elaborate structures/devices designed to thrill and excite people.  They also dig the technology and while other folk may feel a breeze on their face or the cool spray of water as they whiz down a slide, the architect may be contemplating cubic volumes, curves, water flows, gradients and vectors.

contemplating flows

He/she will actually have a great deal of fun but may forget the children so this is recommended if your offspring are self-minding.

But back to Objects. The best gift for an architect is an object, rather than an experience.

One site with tons of brilliant ‘spot on’ gifts for architects is Top3bydesign

Remember the mantra: functional, well designed. The ideal gift for an architect must be an elegant solution to a problem.

ofess - umbrella in 'bottle' - more surreal than magritte

architects are technophiles but will have very particular preferences - if he/she is verbal you might be able to select the right technology artifact

floor plan of Richardson's famous Spite house in NY

Spite architecture – a perverse practice with a long and colourful history – is the  practice of designing and constructing a building, wall or extension to spite another person(s).

Richardson's spite house- see extract at bottom of this post for details of this curious enactment of revenge.

Spite architecture manifests itself in many forms, as the sheer intensity of malice inspires extraordinary creativity.

The Alameda Spite House: the city of Alamedia took a large portion of Charles Froling's land to build a street. Froling had planned to build his dream house on the plot of land he received through inheritance. To spite the city and an unsympathetic neighbor, Froling built a house 10 feet (3.0 m) wide, 54 feet (16 m) long and 20 feet (6.1 m) high on the tiny strip of land left to him (from wikipedia)

Spite house circa 1830 - Alexandria, Virginia. In 1830, John Hollensbury, owner of one of the neighboring houses, wanted to stop horse-drawn wagons from coming into his alley. To block off the area he filled that space with another house—the Spite House: 7 feet wide and 25 feet long - just 325 square feet in two stories

Crocker’s spite fence,  known as ‘Crocker’s Crime’, which completely surrounded his neighbour’s house, became a tourist attraction in San Francisco and a symbol for the Labor movement in SF, as unions and workers protested the widespread use (by Crocker and others) of cheap imported Chinese (‘coolie’) labor in major infrastructure projects. Crocker’s  Fence was built to foil his neighbour Yung, whose house enjoyed outstanding elevation and views – Crocker sought proprietorial control of the entire hilltop for his building and extension plans. Yung paid a price for refusing to sell out to Crocker on Nobb Hill, losing all outlook, views and sunlight to the enveloping fence.

“With the mansion just about completed, Crocker made one final attempt to buy Yung’s property, doubling his original offer. Yung however, because of the beautiful view, the wishes of his family or his own sense of defiance and pride, refused Crocker yet again. This time the Railroad Baron had a plan: he ordered his workmen to construct a three-sided wood fence around Yung’s house. The fence rose forty feet into the sky and the view, the sunshine, and the fresh air that the Yung’s had enjoyed were all but completely taken away. With only northern exposure left to them, the Yungs felt as if they were living at the bottom of a well. The fence was in place and the battles over it and what it represented were just beginning.”  (From James Sederberg – see the blog entry at http://foundsf.org )

The story of railway magnate Crocker and his spiteful construction of this astounding fence is fascinating and tells us a great deal about the history of San Francisco, industrial and race relations, union politics and racism, protests against the importation of underpaid Chinese laborers (‘Co0lies’). More generally Croker’s ruthless business and  building practices speak volumes about the unequal foundations of American progress and capitalism.

Spite can be an intense force that drives people to extreme measures. Under the influence of spite, personalities fluoresce, people become caricatures of themselves. Artists may drive themselves to extremes of creativity. Or they may push themselves and others way too far whilst furthering their deranged cause: going ‘out on a limb’, or unsupported spite extension, losing sight of humanity and aesthetic sensibility. They may lose perspective, blinded by their own spite fence.

This, incidentally, is why the design competition has become a productive business model. Any architect participating in a design competition against a pretentious and overrated professional colleague, will understand that bitterness (and spite) is the viagra of creativity.

It can also provoke their most flawed work. Judges of design competitions may be familiar with examples of this from the mix of designs they have had to consider. Yet many inspired creations result from a spiteful, competitive spirit. If necessity is the mother of invention, then spite is the uber-mother.

The creative brilliance of evil vs the blandness of good is an age old dilemma for artists. John Milton struggled with this when writing Paradise Lost: God’s relatively few stilted lines seem dull in contrast to Satan’s inspired diatribes, and many critics felt that the vivid lyricism of Satan’s language undermined Milton’s moral lesson. I think he did a great job of vindicating Eve – who can blame her for being seduced. Ferrier

Spite architecture’s most common articulation  is the (calculated) design and construction of an unnecessary but often elaborate extension, wall or extra structure for the primary purpose of getting back at someone else, blocking their view, outlook, sunlight or breeze, or simply foiling that person’s own lifestyle aspirations.

the original Waldorf-Astoria hotel, constructed on Fifth Ave. NY, by William Astor. He had it constructed on the site of his father's house, adjacent to his aunt's house, to spite her after a family dispute.

An architecturally literate friend told me that the Turks invented spite architecture, but I am not sure if his estimation can be relied on, as he was at the time researching his Greek heritage. Certainly I recall seeing examples of Turkish ‘spite’ architecture in books (was it The Prodigious Builders? or Architecture without Architects?), showing rows of adjacent buildings with astonishing extensions protruding from their balconies – tit for tat, so to speak. Some say vernacular Japanese housing exhibits similar convoluted shapes, additions and extensions, suggestive of emotive motives (perhaps innocent follies or the products of heated disputes between neighbours). I’d be interested to know more about spite building practices around the globe.

Northern Anatolia: Wooden binding, mudbrick infill, supports of projections horizontal.

‘Spite’ constructions – buildings, extensions, fences, walls – stand as testimony to the enduring nature of negative emotions. Architects’ wives understand the power of grief, bitterness, anger, resentment, jealousy. Her own lingering bitterness when combined with the spleen of their architect spouse, creates a p0tent mix with the afterlife of yellow cake.  Children of architects often require years of therapy – while living in non-architect designed dwellings – to begin to recover.

Architects’ wives will be affirmed when considering the phenomenon of spite architecture. It validates their knowledge of the truth about architects  (and their own love/hate relationship with them) through its articulation of ‘darkness visible‘, its manifest proof of the imbrication of creativity and bitterness in creative people’s lives.

Examples of spite architecture -  like other forms of architecture – are material manifestations (literally – materialised in wood, concrete, stone, glass, steel)  or ‘statements’  in an ongoing conversation. In the case of spite architecture, the conversation is an argument or dispute: e.g. bitter statement, nasty reply, renewed assault, vicious retort, and so on. It is not surprising that the legal profession has special terms for various spite actions, including spite construction.

The example that spite architecture provides us with, demonstrating architecture as conversation, debate, argument, also reinforces Foucault’s spatial analysis of power relations and his understanding of the discursive nature of architecture and town planning. See Paul Hirst Foucault and Architecture, Local Consumption Press.  or this link to extracts from Hirst.

Richardson’s spite house: extract from  A.G. Van der Weyde’s “The Queerest House in this Country”, Valentine’s Manual of Old New York (1929): 

Sarner ascertained that one Joseph Richardson was the owner of the narrow strip along the Avenue. He offered Richardson $1,000 for the land, but Richardson demurred, saying he considered the property worth very much more. He wanted $5,000. Sarner refused to pay this price and Richardson called his visitor a “tight-wad” and slammed the door on him. Sarner then proceeded with the construction of his apartment house and arranged with the architect who drew the plans that there should be windows overlooking Lexington Avenue. When the houses were finished Richardson noted the windows and then and there determined upon his curious revenge.
“I shall build me,” he said to his daughter, “a couple of tall houses on the little strip which will bar the light from Sarner’s windows overlooking my land, and he’ll find he would have profited had he paid me the $5,000.”
The daughter, Della by name, unavailingly protested, as did also Richardson’s wife, that a house only five feet wide would he uninhabitable.The old man, who had acquired a reputation as a miser, was obdurate. “Not only will I build the houses,” he insisted, “but I will live in one of them and I shall rent to other tenants as well. Everybody is not fat and there will be room enough for people who are not circus or museum folk.” So, within a year, the house was built. It effectively blocked out the light from all the side windows on Sarner’s property, and old Richardson was happy. Cited by A.Alpern and S. Durst,  New York’s Architectural Holdouts (1984), republished 1996, Dover Publications.  See www.nyc-architecture.com and http://blog.plover.com/tech/spite-house.html

Spite House - Seattle

Seattle Spite House. ” In the 1920s there was a *nasty divorce*. The judge awarded the husband the house and the wife the front yard. Perhaps he thought a sale would bring the two back together? Alas, twas not to be. The wife took her property and built a house on it.   From the front the Spite House looks perfectly ordinary, if a little old- fashioned (pink stucco, spanish-tiled roof). It’s the side dimensions that make it unique. The north end is only ten feet wide, the south, only five“. [Mark Lockwood, 09/07/2000]

There are many fascinating accounts of Spite architecture and vernacular architecture – some can be found at the following.

Spite House info

Turkish vernacular buildings

Bay ridge spite house

Interesting Blog

Narrowest home in the world.

Great blog on style and architecture

Many designers and architects have a strong aversion to wearing ties. Some go so far as to say they chose their profession to avoid having to wear a tie.

mario botta

This may run deeper than antipathy towards mainstream conventions; it may be to do with sensory issues (as with those experienced by people on the autism spectrum).  Architects may love texture in buildings and landscapes, but can go crazy when in contact with or constrained by textured fabrics. The signature architect look of T-shirt or open necked shirt under a jacket is not just a statement of style, but can be essential for sanity.

gehry - rarely seen in tie let alone bowtie

So the bowtie may be suppressed but not successfully.

botta design

botta stool - bowtie?

Many architects wear clothes or adornments that distinctly resemble the bowtie.

albert frey - bowtie substitute?

florence mary taylor - mobius fur replaces bowtie

a polka dot handkerchief in pocket - traces of the bowtie

bowtie like fold

and prefer to play with the spirit of the bowtie in their design work.

Bowtie sculpture outside Gehry’s disney cnncert hall in LA.

gehry's play on formality of concert hall

marques de riscal hotel

And of course utzon’s iconic (bowtie) building

The bowtie keeps popping up in architecture.

Architects’ wives have been known to serve bowtie pasta to architects in deference to their husbands’ special professional status.

The bowtie stands for the architect’s professional status     and      the architect’s clown status

architect as clown: or "Mickey Mouse"

The bowtie stands for architecture as serious business

wooden as in serious

and         architecture in bed with art and design, fanciful and fun

The bowtie stands for the architect’s technical expertise (it requires some technique to arrange);

and       the architect’s  (sartorial) incompetence.  The bowtie can be an easy fix.

Instant bowtie

The bowtie speaks (volumes) of the architect’s love of  3 dimensional forms.It announces the architect’s love of the FOLD

A bowtie, like the modernist cube, is simple,  yet can have origami like complexity and wit.

See this commentary on architecture and the Deleuzian fold. http://www.krisselstudio.com/000-docs/2-research/Gilles%20Deleuze.pdf

The fold is the general topology of thought… ‘inside’ space is topologically in contact with the ‘outside’ space… and brings the two into confrontation at the limit of the living present.

Like DNA or the mobius strip, the bowtie reminds us of the interconnectedness of inside and outside, form and function.

mobius strip

The bowtie is the 3 dimensional equivalent of the palindrome: a word that reads the same backwards. A word like ‘racecar’ or ‘nun’.  Or a phrase like this one (mantra of the angry  waiter):

Stressed   no tips – spit on desserts

The bowtie is not just the same backwards, but it also remains the same upside down. As in the palindrome NOON.

The palindrome/bowtie logic is appropriate for architects any which way you look at it. Architects are accustomed to being f…ed over from various directions and heroically manage to function with dignity no matter what position they end up in.

It is also an appropriate emblem as they are often ‘lefties’ (left handed), hard wired to see things differently. As architects’ wives will know (after years of  co-navigating with their upside down inside out partners), architects often have issues sorting out left from right.

a moment of left/right confusion has terrible consequences

A significant proportion of architects and designers have been dyslexic. Which gives this blog some immunity as architects are likely to look only at the pictures.

model of le corbusier car

Does an architect have to be famous to carry it off?

arne jacobsen

charles eames

saarinen

It’s a jaunty yet dignified look. Are architects aware that the bowtie is…. well, theatrical.

gropius

It seems to be the architect’s exclamation mark! Don’t they realize it is best used sparingly?

le corbusier - earned his bowtie and spectacles

Wright

These are questions people may well ask – in a parallel universe in which people are curious about architects and take an interest in their work. As things stand in this world, even architects’ wives may care little about what architects wear or don’t wear.

But let’s imagine there are some people, somewhere, who are interested enough to question this phenomenon of the bowtie.

How would you answer them? Does the bowtie help us to ‘crack the code’ of architects and architecture?

kahn

Some observations.

1.       The usual and most plausible explanation for this profession’s attachment to the bowtie is that the bowtie is practical for the architect working at the drawing board:  it does not dangle over the drawings (or keyboard).

eisenman

2.       Like distinctive spectacles, the bowtie is standard dress code for the Architect who has proven his/her design talent.

pei

3.       Architects must earn their bowties (and spectacles, and mutton chops) in the way that people in the military must earn their stripes.

Architect: Sir Charles Barry

4.       Bowtie = Cultural Capital. Particularly ‘design’ capital.

See Bourdieu on cultural capital:

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=nVaS6gS9Jz4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=bourdieu+distinction&source=bl&ots=70uSwfXRcM&sig=-afDvjbYXYjWpLfxX1Icrw3RHtc&hl=en&ei=CyzATJqVI4e3cN6ywckL&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

5.       An architect may be outstanding at documentation, but this talent, without design acumen, does not entitle them to the bowtie.

6. In fact the bowtie may signify entitlement. Architects’ wives may know that the bowtie announces the architect’s sense of entitlement.

pereira

7. If this is so, then the bowtie is the most ironic of all sartorial flourishes, given that architects, however ‘entitled’ they may feel, operate in a world that pays them little heed.

8.       When a building, constructed with considerable ‘modifications’ to the architect’s considered design scheme, eventually collapses, the architect’s bowtie says I told you so.

9.       The bowtie may be chosen by the architect who wishes to remind others that he/she is a highly trained ‘professional’. Some might feel the need to assert this when surrounded by builders, contractors, tradesmen, governmentbureaucrats and clients who do not value such professional training and qualifications.

10.   The donning of a bowtie often signals that an architect has at last achieved considerable recognition in their field. This is no small feat as architects are harsh critics of each other and may demonstrate enthusiasm only for little known architects in faraway lands and/or dead architects . See  “A jealousy of architects” at http://architectswives.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/a-jealousy-of-architects/

The next post will consider the paradoxes that the architect’s bowtie embodies. For some interesting commentary on architects and their bowties check out this site:

http://blog.taylorstitch.com/2009/11/bow-ties-the-architect/

seidler