I’m using these images, and more, as the material for PowerPoints, imaging a sequence for every one of the twelve workstations in the SWA office. This construct allows me to play with the transitions of ppt- the fragmenting windows, the fade and, much to my childish amusement, the sound effects of breaking glass and an explosion. I’m reminded of Graham Greene’s incredible short story, The Destructors (brought to my attention by Gavin Wade who used it to curate Sheffield 08). Set in post-war patriarchal Britain, a group of teenagers literally carve out the house of a grumpy war veteran, without detection. They make it an unstable cave. The coal van is unknowingly employed to pull the last critical corner down, reducing the whole house to rubble. The end is ambiguous; a strange alignment of emotion between boys and man.
Eleanor talks about the different timescales of architect’s office life- I imagine this to mean the huge intense push when pulling a bid together, the repetitious and critically important laying out of details, writing schedules, as well as the times of gathering together resources, spending time with a client, and the reflective site visit. However there is also the timescale of architecture as a discipline, and also the hard to articulate currents of values, taste and politics that shape the ‘structures of feeling’ of the decades we work in.
As we talk I confess that I find the space between the architect’s plans and the imagined physical space almost impossible to mentally fill. Even when rotating digital 3D models the constructed shape doesn’t automatically become an experiencable sensory place in my head. I am curious how architectural education and practice trains this, and not prepared to accept that this might be an ‘innate’ trait in an architect (just like the boring misconception that artists are ‘born’ and not ‘taught’). Toby spoke about the determination needed to hold onto the image of the beautiful view you know will be produced by a particular window placement, as you negotiate competing complex environmental, regulatory, financial and construction factors.
From this, Sarah talked about the often unacknowledged desire that drives architects- I imagine this is the desire to bring something to life and experience it, and the communication of this desire into other’s lives. Sarah draws my attention to an incredible essay by Clare Cardinal-Pett in the book and exhibition ‘Desiring Practices’. Cardinal-Pett explores a set of full size- (life-size) detailing drawings found in the vault of the Owatonna Bank building designed by Louis Sullivan. The drawings are by his draftsman George Grant Elmslie and contain a materiality and a kind of sensual engagement suggesting that Elmslie had a greater degree of authoriship of the making of the details than might be expected. Cardinal-Pett talks about detailing as the, ‘the joint, that is the fertile detail, is the place where both the construction and the construing of architecture take place’.
She imagines another history of architecture focused on the manner of working and a challenge to the privileging of product over production. She describes:
‘These full-size drawings are not pictures but demonstrations of how drawing becomes building; no polite dialogue but an erotic ménage a trois. These prints seek the hands of the drawing’s illicit accomplices, the builder and the builder’s tools. Exaggerated to the point of hallucination, these details do not simply delineate the building, they embody its fabrication.’
Methods of detailing are understood not as a gendered practice (she explored how historically detailing may be associated with women) but a ‘gendering practice’ where methods of detailing call attention to the architect’s lived body. The discussion of the ‘life-size’ detailing makes me understand my own desire to fill the gap between drawing and building, building and building process, and invites me to consider the scale of my images.
