F. Eight Houses of
In 2015, starting with the production of eight bases cut from a piece of salvaged timber, I decided I would make some works that were more overtly architectural than the sets of models I had been making post 2007. Inventing and rejecting a few alternative ideas, I settled on a collection of refurbished titles which had antecedents over a decade old, and which had variously been called either temples or chambers. They now manifested under the rubric of ‘House of …’ as it seemed a term of greater ambiguity and flexibility. As previously, and subsequently, the entertainment of generating titles results in excess.
Ruminations about titles draws attention to the reality that the title provides a broad brief for the work. Having decided to build something with a given title, in each instance I needed some concept of what one might be if I was to make a model at least loosely deriving from it. This was more-or-less a return to the strategies I employed in the Prelude set of pavilions.
The architectural input varied from exploring a period of architecture – for example Arts and Crafts – to quotes from particular buildings, to deriving characteristics from one building or type. Mostly the title preceded any form-giving, but there were also instances of formal ideas in search of a title or evolving and refining together.
32 House of Faded Desires
I had been steeping myself in Arts and Crafts Architecture. Predominantly, I focussed on the histories of the British and Australian movements. Mostly this was through reading, but I have visited several well-known examples of each.
For this model, I set out to make a basically Arts and Crafts house. I envisaged a substantial country house and mentally had a well-formed idea of it. Then realism struck – a sketch or two revealed that with the size of the bases I was using, my aspirations for a rambling manor were misplaced unless it was to be made at a tiny scale. After massive editing and a little mocking-up, part of a relatively British example started to emerge. The first deviation arrived in the form of one tall thin end wall sketched as part of an exploration of Arts and Crafts ideas. It was inappropriately reminiscent of Aldo Rossi. I pushed this a little further and continued to select materials and make a small start to construction. Once a model reaches this stage, I find it possible to advance the designing while walking, riding on public transport, or in the shower. There is something firm to visualise and build upon when away from the shed. I had stunning aspirations for windows, but great reservations about the possibilities I could imagine for their construction in woods at the scale I was using. Resort to further mock-ups confirmed that these windows did indeed lie on an awkward continuum spanning from impossible to hopeless.
The value of being alert to chance encounters in designing processes can never be overstated. In this case, on a visit to the National Gallery of Victoria, I saw the painting ‘A sheikh and his son entering Cairo on their return from a pilgrimage to Mecca’ by Robert Dowling, 1874 and a window in the background reminded me of the screened delights of mashrabia. They could be compounded with Arts and Crafts. This was the catalyst that moved my intentions from a vaguely accurate historic house to a piece employing an array of desirable, but faded, styles and historic moments. I folded screens from etched stainless-steel pieces once bought on a fancy in a railway modelling shop. They have been melded with Arts and Crafts fenestration to form two cross-cultural windows.
Construction progressed with care but required far more drawings than usual to establish both dimensions and means of making. Through the greater part of this modelling project, design-making has been one activity with limited forward planning and a preparedness to work with, and around, what I have already built. In this model there were too many dependencies for this to be the plausible.
At some point, when wondering how to span an opening, a partial ogee arch appeared as a scribble. While I am long familiar with their spread north across Europe in Gothic times, it might specifically have been sourced from a photo I took in the south of France and which sometimes appears to me as a computer screen saver. Thus, another time and historic allusion was added, quickly followed beside and below the arch by two postmodern pink columns (which surely must exist somewhere in Michael Grave’s oeuvre).
Exploring the roof pitches (on what would be the main front of the building) in card, led to a version with them lowered and flattened compared to the initial sketches, and the area morphed into a version of West Coast of America Arts and Crafts. Hence the pitches were carefully matched to drawings by architects Greene and Greene early in the 20th century.
Other elements followed – sometimes through searching for a way to do something such as support a roof or turn a corner, sometimes apparently unbidden – thus, there is a water tank and a florid fountain from a public garden somewhere. (For me its most likely model is in Dresden.) In each case, my ideas, like everything in designing, received some sort of scrutiny and evaluation. This may, or may not, be good quality evaluation. The decision to include some element or construct it in a particular manner may lead to subsequent self-chastisement or self-congratulation.
Base: 130mm x 102mm. Model: 130mm x 102mm. Height: 99mm.
Initiated: 22 April 2015. Constructed: 14 December 2015 – 24 June 2016.