Linda Just
This building I have passed countless times sits crouched at a minor intersection of my neighbour- hood. It asked for no deep study of its harshly weathered, nearly ugly features, and so I gave it little note beyond the fact that it [like so many others in this storied, evolving city] was probably a handsome, albeit modest, creature in its early days. And that, with its good proportions and sturdy bones, it had the inevitable destiny to wear many faces and serve many roles. The most recent skin was probably from the 60’s – enamelled metal panel applied only to the first floor and faded to an urban grey, accented by a portal coated in umpteen layers of cheap milky whitewash and a flaking red door. Once a doctor’s office, now seemingly vacant. Beyond that, I forgot it, or allowed it to fade into the stage dressing of my daily habits.
And so, one day, while in the midst of ritual errands, I was much surprised to discover a change – some furtive night artist had papered the building with an image of itself – the small, black and white, over- exposed elevation made a striking composition in the midst of its context. I paused to look and look again at the scene, and marvel at a strange change in perception. I snapped a photo, musing at the meta- quality of the experience, and carried on my way. Some weeks later, back from travel, I found the build- ing stripped and sandblasted, wearing a new face. It had become another candidate for the aggressive redevelopment that had claimed many of the more attractive brick walk-ups in an area which had, for some time, carried its pleasant grittiness with pride.
Though the building still stood, and was indeed nicely brick clad in its renewed, naked form, I felt a pang of regret, for having not given it more credit, for the fact that it would exist only in photographs, or a photograph of a photograph. Nostalgia will kick in and render it more softly in the filmstrip cinema of my memories, a forgotten ghost rendered sublime in a piece of ephemera. But I know it is the hard-edged reality that I will miss.
would be like denying the emotional and psychological impacts of architecture on its occupants. It may not always be necessary to manifest all qualities simultaneously, but they should at least be acknowledged and reflected upon. n Rossi wrote his pieces to expose a layer of complexity in architecture that may not easily be seen, but that can certainly be felt. The spaces he described likewise cannot fully be understood without occupying them. The great capacity of the virtual and digital is that it expands the boundaries of creativity exponentially – limited in some ways only by the very devices through which they produce and present: screens. Screens are still an intermediate filter of information before it is ever registered by the nervous system that will finally interpret it. To exclusively and impassively consume information through such a lens limits the multifaceted and dimensional perception of reality. It almost denies the existence of the relationship between the physical and the abstract. The unmistakable reality is, however, that we are both abstract minds and physical bodies -- products of our histories and environments – and this fact registers in our every action. It is why we build, and why we write: to express, and to remind. And there is some pleasure and wisdom to be gained in recognising ourselves in those actions and objects, whether we are reading prose or cityscapes. f
Complete reliance on such techniques has its risks. No rendering can approximate the impact of sound, temperature or continued variation in light on the personal experience of space. Hyperrealism makes it easy to forget these factors, and can be so convincing that it asks very little imagination on the part of the viewer. Trust and expectation management are then critical, should the end result not faithfully match the projected image. There also comes another Icarian risk with such an advanced degree of virtual representation: too close an attempt at reality can cause the Uncanny Valley phenomenon to kick in, and then surrealism and perfection garner the completely opposite reaction of incredulity and suspicion. Additionally, forms that can be created easily in a virtual world at times do not translate so well into the tangible one. Here curation becomes important; one must weigh the measures of novelty and experimentation against those of quality and relevance. The last few decades of design and construction have witnessed many failed attempts to reconcile the disconnects between conceptual aesthetics and practical means of execution. The argument in this broader comparison between text and architecture is not intended to denounce the potential of the digital, or to demand a return to traditions of ink and mortar. But rather this: in processes such as writing or building – where there exists this duality of form and execution – a balanced approach plays a critical role in their value and successful realisation. To ignore the appeal and significance of writing’s physicality to the reader
18
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator