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.
36 House of Ephemeral Clarities
This started from thinking about buildings in which the interior is a revelation compared to the exterior. A wonderful example is the Bruder-Klaus-Feldkapelle in Mechernich, Germany, 2007 by Peter Zumthor, where the burnt-out wigwam formed for the interior is hidden within a simple concrete box. I started with an idea of a secret polished interior inside a container made from two tough slightly mis-aligned angled timber blocks. Given the effort of forming and polishing these two highly-figured Tiger Myrtle inner faces, their invisibility to a viewer who cannot enter the space was discouraging. I moved them apart.
Between them now, are two towers reminiscent of the two tall towers remaining in Bologna which date from the early 12th century. Some of the towers in Bologna had small pavilions on the top. One of those in the model is a simple barn-like form with a red sliding door. Perhaps it is a house or a small studio. On the other tower the antecedents are potentially one of the buildings in Peter Zumthor’s Allmannajuvet Zinc Mine Museum outside Sauda, Norway (opened 2016). More likely, it derives from the Delta Shelter in Mazama, Washington by Tom Kundig (c2006), given the colouration and the sliding panels.
Around the base of the towers there is paving alluding to Venetian paving by Carlo Scarpa, perhaps the base part of the monument the Partisan Woman with Augusto Murer from 1961, or other examples by Scarpa at Querini Stampalia Foundation or at Museo Civico di Castelvecchio, Verona between them spanning roughly a decade on either side of the monument.
What are the ideas of clarity? Those of the original designers (to the extent they are evidenced here) and those ideas underlying the elements portrayed here: dwelling, defending, proclaiming, interiority, externality, the ground. Each might be fleetingly grasped here.
Base: 126mm x 103mm. Model: 126mm x 103mm. Height: 168mm.
Initiated: 20 May 2018. Constructed: 30 May 2018 – 25 August 2018.