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.
38 House of Discrete Uncertainties
Brutalism was abroad when I was a student, but I have not thought about it much since the middle 1970s. Prior to this model I had been visually revisiting it. Much that I would not have considered Brutalist in the past is subsumed into currently more inclusive definitions in texts on the topic. Formally, Brutalist buildings are often remarkable. Inhabitation of many of them might have been only variously successful. A colliding fascination here is parasitic architecture, which seemed to generate most excitement from my students in the 1980s; perhaps in theory rather than physical existence, parasitic architecture remains properly alive.
While this model has become a meeting of elements from these sources, it started with lenses. When I swapped lenses between frames when changing prescriptions for my glasses, the optical dispenser asked if I wanted the old ones. I showed her some images of models on my phone and promised to include the lenses in a model. After a false exploration or two in prior models, the promise reached fruition here. Ideas of making a mechanical butterfly with four lens wings were discarded in favour of glass canopies echoing Hector Guimard’s Parisian Metro entrances. The echoes became faint; the outcome is not markedly Art Nouveau – it is far more recent.
The two main volumes of the model, as arranged, relate to the Brutalist canon, although the lower one derived from thinking about Louis Kahn and was initially intended to have a circular hole cut into one end (perhaps pointing in the direction of The National Assembly Building of Bangladesh). The small scale did not lend itself to quotations from such a large building; a ring was substituted and then augmented. Now it might be a speaker.
Discrete elements were variously added, some plausibly from Brutalism, but by being in Huon Pine separately adhered to the (probably) Myrtle main block they appear more parasitic. One of these is drawn from the catalogue of roof forms shaped over (mostly dormer) windows or vents in a symmetrical curve and labelled ‘eyebrows’. Tending to the literal, I shaped an awning that was actually asymmetrically eyebrow-like. There are also four brass vents similar to those found on many buildings. The beginning of their path to this model started on drawings of Shin Takamatsu buildings which intrigued me around 1990.
Two vent stacks reside in one corner; they are popular in Brutalist buildings, but these may have escaped from a middle-aged ocean liner. There are also two pipes – almost mandatory on buildings with an industrial aesthetic. As there should be, a red door is fitted into one face of the lower block.
The whole composition resides on a platform of the same shape as the lenses.
Base: 126mm x 102mm. Model: 126mm x 102mm. Height: 196mm.
Initial thoughts on a Brutalist architecture model: August 2019 onwards. Constructed: 12 November 2019 – 18 March 2020.