Recent drawings by Terrapol at Terra Politica.

Preston Scott Cohen’s ‘Recilinear Spiriculate’ (1998; in Cohen 2001: 99) is a pencil drawing showing a sequence of perspectival transformations of a blocky object. It comes from a series of formal experiments Cohen entitles ‘Sterotomic Permutations’, in which a hybrid projective / perspectival drawing technique is used to generate a group of house concepts. The drawing is an open-ended trace of a process. It doesn’t simply represent a three-dimensional object in two dimensions: there is no original object, nor a final one (although, of course, one was drawn first and one last). The drawing produces rather than represents. We witness the operation of a drawing machine. In this sense, the drawing is a calculation rather than a representation. Cohen sees architecture as the resolution of predicaments, to the extent that he argues predicaments should be actively sought out by the designer, and even introduced if necessary:

An architecture that is compelled to distort, and that ultimately highlights and questions norms, requires the invention of surrogate problems… Architecture could create problems, vigorously attempt to solve them, and never be able to. Architecture would thus keep itself alive by remaining an unfulfilled promise. (Cohen, 2001: 13)

Architecture should be a form of calculation, writes Cohen—but this doesn’t mean simply optimising, discovering a minimum or maximum condition. Rather, he intends that problems engender an open-ended instability, an oscillation or circulation.

‘Rectilinear Spiriculate’ oscillates between perspectival and stereotomic projection. There are two operations going on here. The Taylorian perspective apparatus employed includes a potential ambiguity about whether any anamorphosis is an effect of perspective or a property of the object itself; and Cohen exploits this further by using a procedure derived from Desargues for calculating the three-dimensional angles common in stone-cutting given only the standard figures of plan and elevation. The result of combining these two operations is that each projected figure is simultaneously the three-dimensional result of a calculation and a plane figure that can be re-inflated into three dimensions.

Symmetry is invariance under a transformation. The degree of symmetery is measured by the degree of invariance, or more precisely, the number of different transformations under which the object remains invariant. A cube, for example, remains unchanged by X, Y, and Z rotations of 90º, 180º, 270º, 360º, but is changed by other rotations; while a sphere can be rotated any number of degrees without varying. The sphere has a greater degree of symmetry. The transformations of ‘Rectilinear Spiriculate’ are symmetry-breaking. Lengths, angles, parallels, and ratios between lines are not preserved, although co-linearity is. In mathematical terms, this drawing is something between a projective and a differential space. De Landa writes:

Classifying geometrical objects by their degrees of symmetry represents a sharp departure from the traditional classification of geometrical figures by their essences… even though in this new approach we are still classifying entities by a property (their degree of symmetry), this property is never an intrinsic property of the entity being classified but always a property relative to a specific transformation (or group of transformations) (De Landa, 2002:17).

The object made present in ‘Rectilinear Spiriculate’ is tumbled, stretched and spun. It doesn’t rest or settle into any stable configuration. It oscillates between two and three dimensions, cast back and forth across the picture plane. But through this circulation a degree of invariance is preserved, albeit a small one. This minimal definition describes not a single object, but a multiplicitous one that is always being recalculated.

Enric Miralles:

In all my recent work, I think I have been utterly focused on being involved with reality, in other words, always in the midst of contradictions, the difficulties, the misunderstandings, there in the thick of it… When I am asked what sort of architecture interests me, I realize I finally have an answer: ‘architecture that is capable of avoiding demagoguery‘. In other words, architecture that is capable of not hiding the complex reality it starts from.

El Croquis 144, p.19.

Roland Barthes:

“Elle gives the recipe of fancy partridges, L’Express gives that of salade niçoise. The readers of Elle are entitled only to fiction; one can suggest real dishes to those of L’Express, in the certainty that they will be able to prepare them.”

The Manu Lounge, Edith Amituanai, 2006

The fireplace in the lounge of the Manu household is hidden behind a bookshelf arrayed with volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and flanked with blue-and-gold vases of plastic flowers. Above the mantle, a family portrait—mum, dad, an older girl and three younger boys. More photos, of family members and sports teams, are clustered around as part of the display, which is filled out with ornamental knick-knacks: a carved 21st key inscribed “Carl Manu”, little vases and candleholders, figurines, two wall-mounted flower-holders made from polished and painted coconut shells, a clock in the form of a fan, strings of beads or shells hanging from the ceiling, and lace doilies. On the far right, a cheap computer desk and office chair, and some old-looking electronic hardware modestly screened by a patterned blue fabric, and piles of albums. On the far left the ubiquitous power strip and attendant spaghetti of cables leading out of the frame to where I imagine the television, DVD player and Sky box are positioned. On the floor, a plastic woven mat. In this carefully set interior display, we read the importance of family connections, sport, and markers of social order. The encyclopedias at the heart of the exhibition connote an ideal of order and learning, even if rather obsolete and apparently not frequently accessed.

The domestic interiors of Pacific islanders photographed by Edith Amituanai (in New Zealand, Samoa, and Alaska) are not expensively furnished—the most expensive items that appear regularly are televisions. Couches and armchairs are typically shapeless and well-worn, draped over with bright fabrics. The floors are almost exclusively covered with mats of some description. The rooms themselves are generic, and we get the sense of people making themselves at home in buildings that offer them little. The images, some cheerful and airy, others stark or claustrophobic, are portraits of a culture of interiority and documents of the intensive labour of making a place home.

Visited a few volcanoes yesterday. Photos here. Map of the Auckland Volcanic Field’s 53 volcanoes here.

THE AUGMENTED LANDSCAPE, SMOUT ALLEN #3

[ See Part 1, Part 2 ]

The drawing doesn’t simply read as a black figure against a white ground: white lines are traced across the surface of the black, and they appear to be perforated, punctured, and scored. They look like printing plates used for engravings or silkscreening, or printed circuit boards. In photographs of the model, we see that the elements drawn are, in fact, present as thin metal plates. In one image, we see the that the tabs along the upper right edge of the rightmost block of the drawing are folded up to form a three-dimensional edge. We also see that what we had taken for single blocks laying on a sheet of paper are in fact split into various planes: again, the rightmost block can be seen as two plates in the photograph, split about two-thirds of the way along. Incompatibilities appear between the model and the drawing: the perfectly circular element (the only perfect circle in the drawing) at the bottom right corner isn’t present in the model, although the pattern of perforations and cuts adjacent are clearly visible.

What are developed in this drawing are surfaces rather than planes. Descriptive geometry and orthographic projection relies heavily on the concept of the immaterial picture plane, through which lines and points are projected to construct an object through a network of interlacing lines in a single, cohesive representational set. The reality of the object in a set of orthographic objects is determined as each element is progressively disambiguated—a line in the plan could be anywhere in the virtual space of the object, but once it is drawn in section, its place is confirmed. By contrast, Smout Allen have little concern to shore up the substance of their virtual object by this kind of rigorous cross-fire. The object varies each time it is re-drawn—as they say, it is an iterative ‘test-site’ rather than a demonstration; a materialisation rather than a depiction. The floating condition of the drawing is not merely a compositional effect of the layout; for all it’s intricacy and precision, the objects drawn are, in an important sense, still indeterminate. The governing surface of this drawing isn’t the virtual and immaterial picture plane, but an actual sheet of matter, traversed by wandering lines, perforated, folded, and split into three dimensions. I asked earlier what codes were operating in this drawing—it should be recognised that they are the codes of the workshop, the modelling table, and the laser-cutter as much as the codes of orthography.

THE AUGMENTED LANDSCAPE, SMOUT ALLEN #2

[ see Part 1 ]

In their introduction to Augmented Landscapes, Smout Allen describe how they draw:

 “Normative demonstrations of architectural space by means of orthographic projection are avoided, as these tend to depict simplified, flattened or foreshortened viewpoints. The creation of test sites on and in the surface of the paper allows the work to react to and describe the iterative process of design. This work becomes a materialization of the practice of design.” (7)

The opposition here is between orthographic architectural drawing as demonstrative depiction involving the collapsing of space onto the surface of the paper, and a mode of drawing that makes the surface of the paper a reactive, iterative, and material test site. The drawing is a generative device, rather than a conclusive depiction. But this doesn’t mean that the drawing is uncoded, or that it enters into a domain of free play. Miralles wrote of his own drawings as “a working structure” governed by rules “of economics and commodity”. How is this drawing coded and how does it operate?

The black masses of the drawing cluster together like a flotilla of rafts. They are sited against a white ground, without any markers of place. Even the indexing marks noted previously appear only over the figure, not the ground. These aren’t artefacts in a landscape. We aren’t looking at an architectural figure that augments a pre-existing landscape, but at a landscape that drifts in respect to its context. (In the model that accompanied this drawing, the existing site is present only as white-painted glass). This effect of being unmoored could be taken to show unconcern for context, or a reinforcement of the architectural object as autonomous from its context—but in the project as a whole, there is in fact a deep concern for the particular qualities of place: the vegetation, climate, historic spatial forms, temporal rhythms of the Egyptian desert. So a reading of the drawing that makes it stand for architectural autonomy from site is unattractive. What alternative readings of the figure-ground condition of the drawing are possible?

THE AUGMENTED LANDSCAPE, SMOUT ALLEN #1

‘The Augmented Landscape’ is a drawing that appears in Smout Allen’s contribution to the Pamphlet Architecture series, Augmented Landscapes (2007). The image extends almost to all four edges of a double-page spread. Four large irregular black blocks, articulated  with fine markings in white and hatched sections, surround a smaller, more fractured block. Looking at the drawing as an isolated artefact, there are few clues as to what it delineates. It feels like a plan, although the heavy dominance of black in the drawing conveys more solidity than we’re used to in plans. There are certainly no indications of perspectival or axonometric depth. One possible indicator of the drawing being a plan is the grid of cross-shaped index marks oriented at about 40º across the page, recalling the overlays of aerial surveillance imagery used to piece together composite photographs. Another indicator might be the logic of scattering at work in the image. Various types of element: the big irregular circles, the little pockmarks (some solid white, some hatched, some merely fine outlines) and even the arrangement of the black blocks themselves, appear as if they’ve been scattered across the image from above. And of course, the drawing is labeled as a landscape.

The drawing is in fact a plan (of a sort), for Smout Allen’s proposed “Grand Egyptian Museum”, intended to re-house the Museum of Egyptian Culture. The project articulates the ground as an “augmented landscape”, “a hybrid environment, a utilitarian topography, a sustained artifice” (6). The proposal is for an underground museum, with sunken circular workshop courtyards, and an active landscape as a blanket over the top, accommodating a heterogenous array of features: chasms, a “vegetal chronograph”, floodplain gardens, wet blankets for evaporative cooling, draught corridors, and a qanat network. None of these things are easily recognisable, and Smout Allen seem to be quite deliberate in not providing the objects or features that typically allow for a drawing to be readable: there are no chairs and tables, no existing roads, no cars in the garage, no door swings, contour lines, or scale bar. At least to some degree, Smout Allen don’t want us to recognise this drawing. The drawing deliberately recedes from the representational codes of the professional architectural drawing.