Sculptural Space

Thirty spokes will converge in the hub of a wheel; But the use of the cart will depend on the part of the hub that is void.
With a wall all around, a clay bowl is moulded; But the use of the bowl will depend on the part of the bowl that is void.
Cut out windows and doors in the house as you build; But the use of the house will depend on the space in the walls that is void.
So advantage is had from whatever is there; But usefulness rises From whatever is not.

From the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tze

Response to: Artwork

Original Post: Artwork

It's hard for me to speak about art, and I try not to pretend to know what I'm talking about, but I can try and relate it to architecture.

What I think about when I see (photos of) Lily's land sculptures is how diagrammatic they are - like abstract scientific diagrams of a magnetic field - but then obviously made from organic (Murray piece above) or domestic (as in the huge records installation) components. So the components are familiar, but not the arrangement. I love it how those sunburnt campers up on the Ovens river thought your underwater rock cairn was 'extra-terrestrial'.

Image: Iron filings in a magnetic field.

More Johnson: 'Building as Work of Sculpture'

'The third aspect, the most difficult, is the Building as Work of Sculpture. Architecture is usually thought of as different from sculpture and indeed not much great architecture is great sculpture. Pyramids: yes; Taliesin West, no. Stonehenge, perhaps; Versailles, no; the Guggenheim Museum, maybe. The Parthenon, certainly not. (Columns and entablatures see to that.) Frank Lloyd Wright roofs, arcades, colonades, all speak of architecture, not sculpture.'

- Philip Johnson, What Makes Me Tick
Extracts from a lecture at Columbia University, 1975.

Image: Philip Johnson, Crystal Cathedral, Garden Grove, L.A, 1980

Chapple Vale in Google Earth

Here is the site in GoogleEarth. It would be good to put up a .kmz file which properly locates it, but Blogger is only letting me upload images. The satelite imagery is pretty lo-res around there anyway.
P.S- Check out the LandVic post for more detailed site info.

Getting tanked

According to this 36 month Victorian rainfall map from the BOM, your site is in one of the wettest parts of the state. The good news is that new water tanks are cool as! This ones called the 'Bagel' from Tankmasta. It's meant to go underground but i think its too special to bury...

'Spatial, not sculptural'

I've been thinking a lot about this idea of the house as a sculpture. I think I know what you mean when you say 'spatial, not sculptural', but I'm finding it hard to move on from there, as I maybe see spatial experience (emotion) and geometry (science) as inherently linked.

I had a good look at the Donald Judd at the NGA when Amy and I were up in Canberra after christmas. That's the same piece above, but it was placed differently, sitting on terracotta tiles at 60 degrees to the room - to line up with the triangular grid in the ceiling I think. And lit more sharply which created more reflections around it on the floor.

The thing I like about it, and why I think it could be relevant and useful for this project is for proximity. You are always explicitly aware of the position of your own body in relation to the piece, and I think its this that drags you around it, up to it and back from it. Material and formal properties aside, is that the effect you hope this sculpture in the landscape to produce?

Maybe we need to dig out your masters on how work effects how people move in galleries Lily?

Image: Donald Judd, Untitled (six boxes), 1974, collection of the National Gallery of Australia

The 'Crutch of Serving the Client'

"Then there's another very bad crutch that you will get much later in your career. Please, please, watch out for this one: the Crutch of Serving the Client. You can escape all criticism if you can say, 'Well, the client wanted it that way' ... Where do you draw the line? When do the client's demands permit you to shoot him and when do you give in gracefully? It's got to be clear, back in your own mind, that serving the client is one thing and the art of architecture another."

- Philip Johnson. From a lecture to students at Yale, 1954.

(I wonder whether this blog will turn out to be a good idea?)

Image: Philip Johnson guarding a model of his AT+T building, New York, 1984

*News Flash*

I got accepted for the Smart Geometry conference (the 'Bi-mon-sci-fi-con' of architecture design computing) in New York which starts next week on the 26th of Jan. Amy's going to tag along for all the fun too.
So I've been a bit slack lately, but I've been busy and busy thinking- mainly about what kind of sculpture this sculpture for living might be... I will now attend to your posts. Nice job with all the pictures BTW.

Check out this page on the SIAL website for my report on the conference. - RH 26.03.07

Current Barwon Heads House.

Our current house, built in the 50's of double-skin concrete brick, has been fun to play with but has stubbornly held on to its former character. The concrete has been a great insulator and it has a solidity that is palpable when you live in it. Here are some photos of it's current state along with the studio in the back.

Artwork

Here is some of Lily & Martin's most recent sculpture and painting












Lily's peice in the Ovens River (Jan 2006)




Lily's piece on the Murray S.A. (May 2006)




















Some of Martin's 'Couple' series.

Site Photos

Whilst our architect was at home making further online castigations, we were on the site, getting a feel of the layoutand a sense of the flora,fauna and architectural history. (Apparently the site was a butter factory up until the 1940s-more later). Here are some pics (as demanded).




















We would like to access this view over the valley from the North East corner if possible.







Assemblage on site.














West view.



South East pan to South.





North view.



Obviously the size of the trees on the block is going to be an issue.



















Coming and Going.

Shopping List

Stuff we need to get on here... Please.

• Photos of your art
• Photos of your house / studio as it is
• Site Photos

We can use all this to evaluate the language of the precedents and attempts.

Ephemeral Installations

Stop picking on Martin's contributions Rory. I have included the 'leaves' because this is what I have been driven to in the past. Every house I have lived in has been hostile to ephemeral installations. These sculptural activities bring me more pleasure than 'stuff' yet the spaces have never been condusive to the work. Even worse is the fact that they have to share the space with furniture and the general crap of living. It should be a house full of spaces inviting installations but just as happy if there is none there. - Lily

Homer's Dream Car

Classic styling, all American power, drink holders everywhere, musical horn, and look, it's got a separate bubble for the noisy kids in the back, just like the Carnegie House!

So Proud & Pawson

Wowo i'm so proud of you guys for scanning and posting and commenting and writing. this thing is awesome already.
Also, did you like your dinner last night? Because tomorrow I'm gonna serve up some more PAWSON. I think you're headed there already...

Culture

Whilst we do not want to live in a De Chirico builiding (definitely no arches) we wouldn't mind the mood that is evoked by his spaces. Interplay of light and shade etc.

Language:Reflected Forever

This came up in conversation. 'Reflected forever' in relation to the bathroom ceiling idea. These also reflect the minimalism that we envisage the project embodying in general.
Agnes Martin The Islands c.1961
acrylic and graphite on canvas






Agnes Martin Untitled 1959
oil on canvas

Precedent: Trahan Church

Further to Steven Holls reflected light which, Rose in particular, all of us loved. We loved these windows that aren't windows, the "windows that let light in but don't have views" that there has been so much talk about, used in this church (by Victor Trahan) in Louisiana. All of the orifices into the sacred space are designed to refract light as it enters without any visual access to the outside. We think this idea would particularly suit the main bedroom as a place of sanctuary and rest.

Precedent: The Carnegie House

McGlashan & Everist's Carnegie House in Sorrento has aspects that we have talked about. Particularly the seperate 'pavillions' that are connected only by covered walkways. Lily and I have pushed around the idea that the main living area might be dislocated from the studio and the girl's bedrooms. The size of the components is also not daunting.

Design: Tennis Court

The tennis court always seemed to stick out in the brief as a big issue, potentially compromising the intimate scale imagined for the building.
The idea is to introduce heaps of extra poles for the fence, instead of the standard 8 or so, and dot them around the perimeter in clusters to put the tennis court in a dialogue with the surrounding forest, as in Aalto's staircase in the Villa Mairea. The idea for the fencing is to make it out of standard cyclone mesh, but of different guages collaged together to read like camoflage, the same technique Gehry used to generate the text (which has since been removed) on the Santa Monica Place shopping centre carpark in L.A.
Images: Alvar Aalto, Villa Mairea staircase, 1937 & Frank Gehry, Santa Monica Place shopping centre carpark, 1980

Interest: Dualities

• Not quite the country or the coast
• Too far from the city to be desirable, not far enough to be inaccessible
• Geographically remote, but culturally connected (internet and magazines)
  
• To design something challenging, or something nice?

Issue: Imposition

Although Lily and Martin claim they want something 'imposed' on them, they already have very clear ideas of what they want, especially regarding materiality and dimensions. This process of blogging will hopefully direct what is imposed into being something they can actually stand to be in. This is not to say I will take on all the ideas they suggest - as in design by committee - especially if its a Doric style portico and false stone facing.
Image: Howard Roarke tearing off the changes made to his masterpiece by the board of directors. The Fountainhead, 1949

Precedent: Stephen Holl

Lots of talk about 'windows that let light in but don't have views'. This image doesn't quite capture whats happening in this interior by Stephen Holl, but essentially its a double skin wall, with windows cut into the outer wall, and openings in the inner wall that don't line up with the outer wall openings. The back of this inner wall is painted in a colour, which then spills out from behind the gaps as subtle indirect coloured reflected light.
Photo: Stephen Holl, D.E Shaw Offices, 1992

Precedent: The Eames House

Ok, I honestly don't know how I got this one so wrong. I was so excited! I was sure I'd hit it! It's only for that reason that this makes it on here, I've got no issue with ditching it. But, for the blog - which will remember every false move - here's why I like it:

1. Standardised. I still find the transformation of whats just an industrial shed into a rich collage amazing.
2. Creative Space. This to me is the ultimate creative space. Everything is at hand; books, materials, equipment, space, light etc. Maybe all the little trinkets would annoy me a bit though.
   
3. Refinement. This houses invites constant refinement. I've always loved your house down at Barwon, and to me its like your 'life project', constantly being refined and modified, walls built or moved, bathrooms cast, furniture accomodated etc. But I had no idea this maintainence was such a burden!
4. Flexibility. The structural grid is interpreted and interrogated throughout the house, through colour, layout, patterning and furniture. Objects can sit on or off the grid without either being pretentious or appearing intentional.
5. Landscape. It's nestled in within huge trees, but is of a foreign language and doesn't try and imitate. The landscape is dumbly (but in a good way) introduced into the house just as potplants and ferns.
   

For a contemporary extension of the ideas of the Eames house, see French architects Lacaton and Vassal. They use off-the-shelf greenhouses and industrial sheds to address the issue of 'space' in low-budget housing.
Photos: Charles and Ray Eames, Eames House, 1949-50

Precedent: Heide II

I still find Heide II the closest precedent to what we've talked about to date, particularly for its type as a house/gallery. This doesn't make it exempt from criticism though, here's my list of pros and cons:

Pros:

• Engagement with the landscape through walls framing views.
• Material language. Concrete blockwork and timber decking.
  
• Flow of space.
  

Cons:

• Treated too much as a sculpture itself, not to be reconfigured or modified.
  
• A space-planning failure. Great gallery, but an awkward house.
• Material language may also be a bad thing, associations with depressing 60's housing.
  

Images: Heide II, McGlashan Everist, 1965