As always when writing, the idea starts channelling other material, other ideas and notes, which may or may not be coherent. Reading Dan Hicks, an archaeologist who writes extensively on material culture quotes Susan Sontag, ‘Photographs are valued because they give information. They tell one what there is; they make an inventory. To spies, meteorologists, coroners, archaeologists, and other information professionls, their value is inestimable. But in the situations in which most people use photographs, their value as information is of the same order as fiction.’ 1 Hicks himself: ‘In Barthes’ terms, the ‘essence’ ( noeme ) of the archaeological photograph is not ‘what has been’ ( ça-a-été ), but ‘as if’ ( comme si ), not fixed on the remnant, but at once both scientific and imaginary.’ ...As if a photograph were not a still ...As if human life were a blur....As if archeology could be more than interpretive, and less than representation. As if the past were more than ruins.‘ 2 These are images, Croffead , Cloud’s Hill , Elemental and one lived house, another lens through which to see such houses. My mind sheds each image’s context, its socio-economic reality, climate, cost. They exist, for me, as photological images of architectural form, perhaps their most reductive presentation and more powerful for it. These are all basic houses, whether by design, tradition, relative poverty or some other minimalist desire. How much house do we actually need? Three things. New subdivision developer houses are absolutely complete, for ever; everything chosen and installed before going on the market, nothing to be done, which means the occupant need make no personal investment in the house or apartment other than money. The second thing, and this applies to Elemental , is the critical limit to which replication of an idea is effective. One half-house is an idea; 100 of them makes a homogenous community of after- market builders. Is this homogeneity desirable? Would 25 be better? or 10? Fifty years on, will clusters of 300 Elemental houses in varying states of augmentation be economic ghettos of an early twenty-first century idea of participation or will they be a rich tapestry of housing history? Zoning favours homogeneity over the heterogeneous mixing of classes, peoples, possibilities. Zoning is efficient for construction and services, but cuts off eccentricity, agency, difference. How does one plan and build for difference? Third, as long as bigger equals better, we will always have a housing crisis as small comes with massive stigma and the smallest market return. If capital accumulation is the goal, whether space or things, then staying still in a small dwelling isn’t progressive ; hardly worth it. 1 Susan Sontag, On photography , New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973 2 Dan Hicks, ‘Memory and the photological landscape.’ in S. De Nardi, H. Orange, S. High and E. Koskinen-Koivisto (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place . New York: Routledge, 2020. pp. 254-260.
This is a still from a promotional video for Vila Verde, Chile. A company town, the forest appears to be a plantation, so uniform is it. The sharp demarcation between housing and plant life indicates something mat-like about both. This doesn’t appear to be an organic relationship between housing and environment, but a rather brutal collage of two distinct kinds of capital accumulation.
W G Clarke, a Habitat for Humanity multi-unit complex designed for a SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art) competition in 2010. From an unattributed (possibly SECCA) Clarke quote on an archived blog: ‘His intention is to form a community (as opposed to a neighborhood) with different size options to accommodate different sized households and a variety of design choices available to the residents. A green structure, power would be supplied by photovoltaic strips on the roof, which is slanted so water runs off into a channel in the central courtyard to be collected into a reservoir. This water is used for irrigation of the communal vegetable beds that take the place of lawn. The structure seems to sum up what Clark is about: low impact, democratic and stripped down to the bare essentials. It is a triumph of graceful design.’
Google aerial of Inglewood, Calgary, with its main street cutting through from downtown to an industrial and transportation hinterland, ringed by railway lines and the Bow River. Originally a CPR neighbourhood, very diverse, four churches within two blocks of my house, including one for the CPR porters and their descendants. Strong community, resists erasure every couple of decades, now re-zoned to medium (12 storey) multi-family housing. Losses: access to the fertile floodplain soil which supports tree cover and gardens; access to sun at ground level; access to diverse peoples who are priced out of participation.
18 on site review 45: houses + housing
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