We experience this state of being through books, plays, films, and other art forms which immerse us fully. The buildings in which we commonly encounter these arts have become increasingly deferential to them — white box galleries and black-box theatres are often neutral to the point of being anodyne. Even the lavish interiors of the Opéra Garnier or the Bolshoi Theatre are left behind when the lights go down. I remain unconvinced of the necessity of this. In our cinema, the forest’s presence was inescapable: the rustling leaves and swaying branches compromised audio and picture quality alike. Our chosen film was average at best and yet paradoxically real life felt ever more distant. A sapling which pushed up and out through the mosquito net roof calls to mind Sverre Fehn’s 1962 Nordic Pavilion or Lacaton and Vassal’s 1998 Cap Ferret House . This was intentional; the imitative instinct is a strong aspect of play theory. By actively compromising our view, the architectural allusion that came most strongly to my own mind was Peter Eisenman’s 1975 House VI . This house in Cornwall, Connecticut is (in)famous for what Eisenman called its ‘unassimilable idiosyncrasies’. 8 These include a non-structural column that sits at the dining table like an uninvited guest, and a slot window that continues across the floor, consigning the married owners to separate beds. Client accounts of House VI ’s conception speak of an engaging and collaborative process in which they were active participants. 9 Their indulgence of the architect and his uncompromising design paints them equally as patrons and players in this game. The idiosyncrasies of House VI cause the architecture to constantly exert its presence on the occupants, challenging them to adapt to the house rather than the house to them. Within the building, everyday activities are registered but assume extraordinary qualities precisely because in Eisenman’s playworld conventional norms of real life are left behind. Such knowing mistreatment of columns, solids and voids defy unwritten but commonly accepted rules of architectural composition. Although the term cardboard architecture coined by Eisenman may suggest levity, his work nevertheless observes the constraints of budget, program, site, building and zoning codes, technology and the laws of nature. The axonometric drawings that describe the various processes and transformations clearly express that an underlying logic and order remains. Such liberty within a system of constraints is not so far removed from Wright’s play-like process of volumetric composition of platonic forms, consciously or otherwise informed by Froebel’s gifts.
forest cinema rules
1 Choose a pair of mature trees no further apart than the length of the ratchet line used to join them. 2 Walk a few feet and repeat: ensure each line is broadly parallel and their heights gradually descend. 3 Drape a continuous length of fabric over the ratchet lines, stitch around the ratchet line to hold in place, forming a giant tiered hammock. 4 Hang a bedsheet taut between two trees at the lowest end to form a screen.
8 Eisenman Architects. House VI , 1975. www.eisenmanarchitects.com/House-VI-1975 accessed 31 /10/ 2023
9 Frank, Suzanne Shulof, Kenneth Frampton. Peter Eisenman’s House VI: the client’s response. New York, Whitney Library of Design, 1994
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on site review 44 : play ©
Tim Ingleby
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