Author: Kieron Gait

I was fortunate enough to see Andy Goldsworthy retrospective at the National Gallery of Scotland earlier this year.

Most will be familiar with his work, at least on a cursory level – leaf paintings, rock stacks,  works on site made in-situ with found materials.  The retrospective is a reflection on 50 years of artistic endeavour, a lifetime attempting to reflect the beauty and fragility of nature.

I was familiar enough with his works, but by no means exhaustively and was astounded by the depth, care and craft of his works shown from hedge crawl – a video of him literally climbing slowly along the length of a Yew hedge on a frosty winters sunrise, to a black holes – holes dug in unusual places with no edge/depth.

This post is not a review of his work; you should look it up and seek it out if you are interested.  His website has a lovely record of projects  but there were three works that felt particularly poignant:

 

Red Flags

The Rockefeller centre in New York has a series of flag poles each with a flag of the countries of the United Nations.  Asked to prepare a work for the centre, he collected the reddest earth that could be found from each of the 50 US states and then stained 50 white flags with it.

The result is a stunning.  Stripped of emblem and motif, the flags hang quietly in their different shades of Ochre, expressing more profoundly the differences and connection of the place than any man-made design could.

‘flags are symbols of what separates people as much as what unites them – wars are fought over them.  It’s an anti-flag protest in many ways – AG

 

Midsomer’s Snowballs

A series of works where in winter, at different places in Yorkshire, Andy rolled a number of large snowballs – 2m in diameter.  The snowballs gathered pieces of eh ground around them, depending on where they were rolled.  Winter berries, pine cones, rocks, twigs, whatever was in the path of collection.

These were then put into deep freeze and then distributed around the streets of London on Midsomer’s day. They slowly melted over a number of days, an object in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaving behind their seasonal cargo on the streets.

‘some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy.  Not just because of the materials inside them, but the way they appear caged, captured’ – AG

 

Hanging Stones

A walk in Yorkshire with a series of 9 buildings – existing structures re-built and modified to be installations in themselves. The walk is currently 6 miles, with more buildings to be added.  The journey is all part of the work – there are occasional markers and navigation is apparently not easy, but that is the point.
The exhibition showed some sketches of his ideas for the buildings, but no photographs.  I haven’t looked any up on the internet either.

Next time in the UK, I’ll book to walk the Hanging Stones.  The idea of a ‘quest’ is exciting and the sketches are just enough to plant the seed of anticipation.

 

‘There comes a time, for all kids when they realise their parents are just human beings doing their imperfect best’

Somebody said this to me recently, and the words have lingered.

Such a beautiful description of the human condition. To our children we are surefooted and steadfast, but the yet-to-be revealed secret is that we are all navigating the experiences in life with uncertainty.

In a world that relentlessly tells us what success looks like and how easy it is (just click this link for my free e-book on a perfect life!), it is not unusual to feel lost. But it misses the point – Forging ahead into the half-light with an open mind and sense of wonder,  it is the as-yet-undiscovered moments and realisations that are the treasure. We don’t have to know everything right now.  Recognising, celebrating and learning from small, unexpected moments make life rich and our own.

There will always be someone more perfect.  Someone with a bigger boat; a bigger house;  a faster car around the corner. These insecurities are now AI-jammed down our throats, ears and eyes without any human input.  It feels critical now more than ever to take a breath and recalibrate priorities.

Our studio has tried (as much as possible…) not to look sideways. The houses and buildings we have produced over the last 15 years have all, at their core, been part of a continuous search to observe the world, and try to connect with moments that can offer us perspective.

A collective endeavour by many hands, we have spent an extraordinary amount of time considering detail, context, materiality in order to curate a moments where the occupant could feel a connection to something bigger.  There have been hits and misses, trials and errors,  but we have tried to learn and be more sure of our path as time goes on.  Our reaction to ‘our times’ is to focus inward and try and understand what it is to find our place in the natural world.

We are not unique by any means, but certainly in the minority.  We talk about our buildings through a lens of human experience and poetics, trying to avoid highlighting ‘practical’ or ‘functional’ features – these things are important, of course, but should be a given in good design, not its purpose.

Moving onwards, the light is becoming brighter and we can see more clearly our path, and that is a beautiful thing.

Our buildings may not be perfect, but we are searching.  Doing our imperfect best.

Our classic Queenslander houses are the early C20 version of flat pack housing. Building from a carpentry skill base (there’s a whole story of bush carpentry in QLD), timber mills – originally set up to service the supply of timber for ship building in NSW, found a way to diversify and deliver low-cost housing to the expanding QLD population.

As the softwood resources of Kauri, Hoop Pine and cedar were exhausted, the mills turned to hardwood, and structures became increasingly refined in their economy to manage the smaller and heavier hardwood sections. These structures evolved to be highly adaptable to topography and climate, which resulted over time in the ubiquitous Queenslander.  From 1900 onwards, most were selected from catalogues; the mills sent the pre-cut timber to site and then they were installed by a local team.

We recently designed an extension for a ‘Laidley’ – a simple four room cottage by J Campbell and Sons ‘Redicut’ homes in Red Hill / BŪN’A – the first nations name.

Lean and economical, the Laidley easily sits in the steep topography of Red Hill on stumps without need for excavation or retaining.

Our new extension (to provide an extra bedroom and some additional living space) follows a similar spirit – a structural logic, sized to suit standard pre-finished sheet sizes, no slabs, retaining or unnecessary excavation. A simple spatial arrangement follows the existing house, opening its edge to the North to provide a relaxed and adaptable home.

Orientation to view, light and breeze are prioritised, as are access to garden and the undercroft, which remains a ‘loose’ space for tinkering.

The design ideas are nothing new, but highly relevant, particularly with the current cost of construction,  scarcity of natural resources and dilution of regional identity.

in 1748 Giambattista Nolli published a grand survey of Rome, which he began in 1736. This is universally known as the Nolli plan.  In addition to the remarkable accuracy of the etching, features of the plan included its orientation to the North and in particular its representation of public and private space.

It uses the figure-ground representation which represents buildings and city blocks shown in dark hatch and open spaces left white.  What differs to previous maps is that Nolli represented enclosed public spaces such as the colonnades in St. Peter’s Square and the Pantheon as open civic spaces.  This allows the public-private demarcation to be more subtle and a deeper reading of the city.  At the time it would have been quite revolutionary to see the city more as it would be experienced by the inhabitant, and even now as a representation it quite astonishing in its detail.

It is a stunningly beautiful map and the University of Stanford has a wonderful interactive version, linked here.  It was so accurate and such an undertaking that he government of the City of Rome used it as a base for planning until the 1970’s (according to Wikipedia), almost 250 years after it was published.

We use Nolli and figure-ground representations of the areas around our projects.  With suburban projects they can clearly show the densification of the suburbs as larger suburban lots are sub-divided.  The reduction of significant landscape and removal of water paths as maximal plot coverage is pursued becomes clear.  In suburban situations rather than urban, the representation shows landscape vs built form. An interesting evolution would be due to see shared landscape (deep planting and large trees) seen differently from private landscape (fenced lawn).

As well as a useful tool they are lovely to look at as a snapshot of our suburban condition in Brisbane

 

Images of the Nolli Map taken from University of Stanford Interactive Nolli Map Website 2.0