DRAWING MATTER - APHORISMS

WHAT IS PRESENTED HERE ARE A SELECTION OF APHORISMS THAT TAKE THE ASPECTS OF MY WORK WITH DRAWINGS AND REPRESENTATION INTO A COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THAT ASCERTAINS THAT THE TASK OF EXPLORING ARCHITECTURE AS THE INSTRUMENT OF OUR TIME HAS ONLY JUST BEEN TOUCHED ON.

Frame of Reference

From paper architecture to digital architecture, the image frames the word of the architect; ever seeking a universal language. There is an aspect where by reducing the elevation to its bare minimum the character of paper is reborn; a necessary evil to combat the technological advances in drawing and construction. We can collate numerous proportions to qualify the quadrature of line, but it stands against the knowledge of the artificial perfection that has marked architecture from the beginning and bears witness for a rejuvenated horizon.

Pneuma

There is a drawing that speaks to all drawings; breath. A design that is very sought after. It catches your words; gets held; expels and circulates. It is there to be mastered and endured for the emotions it dispels. It gathers lines; recites and recapitulates and offers information. It is the meaning of life but it is also the wind; it is everything and nothing all at the same time. It takes no shame whether in light or dark and is a shared phenomena. It is one and all. It is also not ours; we are on borrowed time, working the reason for existence; there are many as there are arguments. Time spent is not time wasted but experienced and the dearth of integrity is there to be supplemented. Eventually we will know what to do; we must destroy the struggle.?

All Too Human

The sleight of hand that makes art consequential is whether there is an emotive message; where technique releases a concept that recognises a human construct. The discussion is ancient, as old as us recognising the cosmos and allowing architecture to inform us that it is also a human construct.

The Body Beautiful

Perfection has cost us our own form of deception. While we stand aghast at the image of beauty we can interpret that there is more to it than meets the eye. It is not skin deep but a collective appreciation in the ability to make the life of others work. Whether this has climaxed or is being usurped has charged our notions of difference on the political front line. The body is beautiful; it’s structure is phenomenal; the very pulse of its thinking breathes life; it is architecture.

Ink is Well

Drawing incites a concept, whether on paper or skin; the examination of ink that communicates the notion of creation towards a creator. It is like a race to an infinite finish line that exposes hazards and warnings to navigate its understanding. Complex or Primary the principle is the same; can the drawing be understood and give meaning to the ink; the shellac suspending carbon to offer permanence. Perhaps drawing presents itself as an art of available means, meanwhile architecture is an art of available funds. The two are held in symbiosis quantifying the necessity of culture and taste and the issue of economy. By all accounts the immediacy of an art is its necessary evil, substituting the spoken word with the dexterity of an image to engage with a world that currently presents itself as the opposition.

Operation Zero

Calculating the pretence in architecture a new horizon was born; an ability to enrage the ground plane and give rise to a vocabulary. Not withstanding the control of the arbitrary, a condensed examination of mathematical harmonies present the dichotomy between the aspirations of the commercial and the avant-garde. They are unwittingly intertwined to confuse any sense that engages with its dialogue as the pact in the profession is to lead by the political, not the pen; the conclusion was formerly written. Without prowess,the power that is instilled by the economics of area has rarely reached elevation; its utility concerns a different approach to the discipline; removed from discussion and reviled, due to its ability of making a significant eruption and disruption. This white noise has lingered for generations, unkempt, harbouring a promise of untold wealth; an elixir in the articulation of the imagination. The wonder is whether we should let the monster sleep or awaken a following that can foster a real truth for change.

Format

There is a gift in the proportion of format; from the golden section to DIN; an apparent arbitrary form of measurement vindicated by its geometry that proffers itself for universal application. They wrestle for authority, as they would, in the fullness of their application, and serve as a trope that can instruct governance. One is drawn to the simplicity; the abstraction of a square or the unfolding of a spiral; two ends of our visible spectrum that harmonise their political differences over time. It is extraordinary that these models of thought have survived, if only for the paper we write on or the table we draw on. Their significance rests on its ability to harbour insignificance; that there are greater issues at large. But the intrinsic dilemma is that format handles the issue of timelessness, while our utilisation is trapped by a misconstrued mortality. We have lost the belief to live!

Brave New World

Drawing for the future is not simple. We have to push through the boundaries of recognisable geometry where economy sounds it’s trumpet. Repetition squares up to a bad name, so what becomes is a territory that is rife with angst. What discoveries can be made that can illuminate the darker side of our reality? Is there any truth that needs to be excavated by a visionary? Can conclusions be eradicated from the face of this earth? There are a plethora of drawing styles that have navigated the path of humanity, but the digital is deemed to be suspicious; it pretends to be something it is not; it describes the end space of drawing; a recapitulation of a memory construed through the recognition of a displaced iconography. It is as though we are to know all about it before it has been drawn. That the consequence of purpose has culminated in an understanding of the authority of practice and the tools that surround its instruction. This is a brave new world where architecture harbours on the edge of sanity and its perpetrator’s are unwittingly mocked by the tradition of the establishment. We will forge tomorrow; it will be fake news and we will be living with it.

Dance Sounds II

When architecture is not, but wants to be, the drawing looks to regulate the frame of reference; where a building navigates a drawing; where lines are controlled by the hands of geometry. The space does not move but the eye trembles at the association of thoughts that span a monstrous epoch; to carry the responsibility of what we have made to pass; of what the future will become if we do what we are told.

South of Eden

There is a place that is removed from the biblical garden; a sanctuary that propagates a wealth of beginnings so that knowledge can not mark the end. Attuned to the music of geometry, straight lines and circles wait to cast their influence upon Eden’s architecture, so that the dearth of reality can be revived upon the fall of man’s original sin. The fruit of these labours is not superfluous but a necessary adjustment in the concept of atonement, without the religious overtones. It is an attempt to purge originality by exposing the root in the panoply of our surroundings; a metaphor of nature over ruling god. Whether Eden wants to be rescued is another matter and would rather be left to its serpentine ways, but south of Eden there is a place that has removed the venom from ignorance.

A Transformation of a House

Plans are generated to guide a construction industry. Since it’s digitisation the concept of the plan has released a plethora of interpretations that the architect has entrusted to be a valid development from the foundations of our tradition. There are becoming a multitude of trajectories that handle the implications of this abstraction, tangentially setting a direction from the circle of convention. At some point these works will be far enough away from its centre that they will be determined as normal and in some way we will have found that the intent of construction is to ground the discipline of being an architect as being merely original.?

The Appeasement with Gravity

Those architects that build have the advantage over those architects that draw. They are two different sorts that have their own vocabulary; disparate in terms of what architecture is supposed to be. Perhaps their paths cross when they exchange disciplines but their collective nemesis is gravity; the opponent that marks their longevity in the exercise of their disciplines. For how long can the architect be new and represent every turn in the tide of creativity. For how long can we endure the trappings of our natural laws above those we have written or are about to wright. There is an abundance of creative references for both sides of this story but together the architects have their solemn duty to stand fast at all levels of absurdity that is thrown at them.

IMAGE CAPTIONS

Reformatting Melancholia – extrapolating the proportional frame of reference to the drawing of Albrecht Durer.

The Body as Metaphor – a wire framed model/bust of the myself that is graphically construed as an architecture

Flower Power – the manipulation of the Robert Mapplethorpe images of the 1980's

Puzzled – a systematic tessellation in the symbolism of the house

The Royal Arch – the consolidated geometry of the West End of London utilising the ceremonial single column

The Point of the Cathedral – a speculative project that reasons with the light of architecture

Body Double – the manipulation of the Helmut Newton images of the 1980's

A Circle with no Centre – a set of compasses that construct a fixed sized circle without the construction of a middle point