2020 Trees
The Rustic Tradition
Karl Herdersch Student ID: 646697 Tutor: Melissa Moore
The following text is a journey weaving around a diagram of levelling terrain for train landscaping drawn in 1838 and an image of an English garden taken from Stoke Lock on a narrowboating trip in 2020. It is a narrative that cuts between historic pondering and auto-biographic elements in response to Melissa Moore’s lecture series Trees at the Architectural Association, 2020.
Flatness / Horizontality Diagram of Urbanisation and Modernisation The Requirement to level Terrain
tness / horizontality agram of urbanisation and modernisation e requirement to level the terrain
urce: Nicholas Wood, A practical treatise on rail roads, London 1838
Source:
Nicholas Wood: A practical treatise on rail roads, London, 1838
Holiday snaps, Stoke Lock, 2020
Out
A group of six friends, bored with the restraints resulting from the first of what would prove to be many lockdowns during the pandemic, decided to book time out. Time out as opposed to time off as It felt like time had disappeared, or at the very least blurred by an onslaught of six hour zoom calls, followed by a wine or whisky haze (to mark the end of work) and punctuated throughout the day by sex sessions (or frustrating drought of). I was personally tired of watching YouTube videos on how to be productive and make our increasingly domestic cozy environments even cosier. Whether furloughed or not, things were definitely closed or ‘off’, so we definitely needed ‘out’. The empty streets of the city of London, although exterior to my new interior existence, suddenly felt like an extension of my room. The city had become a ghost of what it had been six months prior. I am haunted by a childhood of holiday memories, vast complexes or tourist traps . One of the most embarrassing (that must be committed to writing) has to be Benidorm, where my brother and I became victims of another awful sickness known as ‘Englishness’. My grandfather repeatedly forced us to wear Union Jack bandanas as we traversed from hotel to beach. Lunch was pepperoni pizza and dinner a seaside meal (utter shite barely edible). It is worthy of note that my family is part southern Irish and Dutch, so such behaviour may have been some form of passive aggressive heritage-grab, but then again I may be giving my gramps too much credit, as he was likely indifferent to such processes. Regardless, I vowed at the age of 12 to never subject my own hypothetical children to such excursions. For the last ten years, whenever possible, I would pack my bags for slow travel; meeting new friends, eating and learning. By far one of the strangest was an unexpected taxi ride into the Sweihan desert between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I had a few days in the region as a stop over between Europe and Hong Kong, and of course spent it in the usual tourist hot spots. Highlights included travelling 828 meters up the Burj Khalifa and visiting / trying to hate Jean Nouvel’s Louvre. Having strolled into the night, I found myself lost in the streets of Abu Dhabi at around 2am. A taxi driver, concerned about my safety asked where I was staying and offered a ride. After hopping in and chatting about my interests in the city and the food, the driver decided to take me on a slight excursion - one hour into the desert. I had no phone, and pondered how long it could take for my family or friends to find my dead body. We stopped and the driver left the taxi, making his way to the boot. I thought the fact that he didn’t lock me in was a good sign, and proceeded to get out to see what’s going on. I realised there was no need to lock the door - all I saw was endless desert and the sandy distant hue of the city. “Tea?”… To my great relief we were to share the brew of black tea with mint and sugar, popular in Northern Egypt, and I have been looking for decent Koshary since. We sat on the back of the car and spoke about his childhood, family and plans until around 4am. As the sun rose, the traffic consisting mostly of bus loads of construction workers increased, and I was driven back to my accommodation. I digress. The point is, 2020 was not to be a year of such adventure. After numerous FaceTime calls, we had decided to go on a narrow boating holiday. Something I had dismissed as a child as ‘perverted’… But in this scenario the English countryside was the best we could do. We were determined to reconnect with the landscape that inspired the great minds of Keats and Turner. If it did something for them, then it could - possibly - do something for us. We were to travel down the Trent & Mersey canal, through around thirty-something locks (losing count after the agony of the sixth in wet boots), and revel in the joys that this country has to offer. We passed through small market towns, visited Wedgewood & Royal Doulton museum with a profound interest in the clean toilets and marvelled at the size of closed industrial factories or the even larger Bet365 head office next to where we moored in Stoke. The most revelatory and eye opening of all the marvels within this stretch of the canal, had to be the insight into the English way of life, achieved by perving on peoples back gardens dotted along the water throughout the journey. I was right, boating holidays were for perverts, and I had become one. Many gardens included scenes of gnomes fishing and constructed landscapes leading down to the canal, as if the waters were warm and swimmable. The most honest of all the gardens had been stripped of all grass and replaced (very naturally) with concrete and a wooden pavilion housing a private pub complete with darts board. I suspect this was built before the first lockdown. What became obvious was that
the relationship between the inhabitant and the English landscape seemed to be far from the English rustic tradition (that we had, to be honest, expected).
Canals in Britain
The construction of the canal system marks the industrialist modern’s obsession with speed and progress. This period is written about endlessly but seems to lack the detail needed to really track the relationship (not that you’ll find it here in shortform). What seemingly had an incredibly creative effect on the local, regional, national and international economy and governance was to be later dismantled by privatisation under Thatcher in the 1970’s. The UK has since become a land with an Industrial past and an uncertain future. Pre-dating the railway age, canals played a central role in industrialising the British landscape in the mid 18th century. The reason is simple - England needed a cheap means to traffic raw materials (especially coal) by bulk and to promote more transformation of local monopolies to suit capitalist interest. The canal sides were scenes of great city growth, ablaze with the fires of Kilns that would finish huge quantities of ceramics for the nation and export. British Imperialism led by the East India company was in full operation globally. The company had embedded itself into the machinery of governance of England in the first half of the century, wanting to stabilise industry and infrastructure on its homeland. The dissolution of murky sovereign rule by chaotic conflicts of self interest within the company, begins at this exact moment - with the connection of clear trading nodes distributed across English home territories. The opening of the Bridgewater canal in 1761 was commissioned by Josiah Wedgewood. He wanted to construct his own grand project to connect the potteries to the River Mersey, which by extension meant the port of Liverpool. By 1771, Wedgwood had built Etruria on the perimeter of Stoke on Trent and was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1766 to make the canal connection. The project was led by the engineer James Brindley who surveyed and led construction on the seventy locks and five tunnels that we were to painfully labour through in the summer Brovid (Brexit - Covid) two hundred and forty nine years later. We were lucky enough to travel throughThe Harecastle Tunnel originally traversed by workers lying on their back, using their feet to push the boat 2,663 meters in almost total darkness. Luckily by 2020 we have no such traffic problems caused by the lengthy process - instead we have diesel fumes, a game of ‘dodgems’ with two walls and the occasional graffitied dick tag to remind us of life above. Our grand holiday project was obviously one of total luxury. I thought it would last my time— The sense that, beyond the town, There would always be fields and farms, Where the village louts could climb Such trees as were not cut down; I knew there’d be false alarms In the papers about old streets And split level shopping, but some Have always been left so far; And when the old part retreats As the bleak high-risers come We can always escape in the car.
Going Going, Philip Larkin: Racist, sexist poet
Ahoy! A British canal boat holiday with your family! Reads familyfuncanada.com’s article on the tranquility of the inland waterways. I once thought such short breaks can only be matched by the desire to spend your hard earned time off in Butlins, various water parks or Alton towers. Such English behaviour for holiday excursions began with pleasure boating in the 1860’s, the Victorians had fallen for the desire to travel the waters of the Norfolk broads and the Thames. Peter Bonthron and Tom Rolt are to blame- and you are forgiven if you haven’t heard of them. The first published ‘My holidays on inland waterways’ in 1916, documenting a 2,000 mile journey around the waterways. The second published ‘Narrowboat’ in 1944, de-
scribing his life on his live aboard boat ‘Cressy’, inspiring generations of boaters through its descriptions of refitting a workboat for living, rediscovering the beauty of the English landscape in the midlands, and giving depth to the varying life of boaters who work and live along the canal system. By the 1950’s commercial canal use had almost disappeared and the canals became an enthusiastic holidayers cheap cruise. Boat building had moved on from constructing work boats to pleasure cruisers and the canal and river trust raised £1 billion to restore the waterways since the 1990’s. There are 35,000 registered canal boats now in use on the canals, around 1,000 belonging to leisure boating companies. Unfortunately, I had heard of Rolt, having accidentally come across a copy of his book in a hipster cafe in Shoreditch around 2010. I was soon to become one of the other 34,000 living on the canals on a continuous morning license. Like many before me, I thought living on a boat would solve all my problems. I purchased a boat in the midlands in 2016, ‘Cygnus’, I had never been through a lock or manned a boat in my life. What this really meant was that I was ignorant to what 130 locks meant on the way down to London. A steel box with sub-standard insulation floating in cold water is great for keeping beers cold - it is not so good when you come home at 10pm drunk. And trust me, you need to drink. Between ongoing maintenance, endless trips to source supplies and waking up endlessly through the night to keep the fire going, you need some escape. The moment I decided to sell my hope of escaping the realities of city living occurred after a week of unfortunate events. On boxing day at 3am I fell out of bed and woke. At first I believed this was some sort of prolonged side effect of Christmas booze, but after using my wall to step up on to my bed only to slip off again I realised my boat was rotated on its side. Scrambling out on to the towpath in minus temperatures in my boxers, I had confirmed that my boat was not sinking to the canal bed, but that all the water had been drained in its entirety, revealing a scene of complete carnage. Under the moonlight, I could make out a trolley, children’s bike and the wheels of a moped. I am reminded that London has always been a city of refuse. Steven Johnson’s Ghost map gives a great detailed description of the piles of stinking shit present throughout the city prior to the development of the sewer systems. This is what my then home floated above. It turned out a worst drunk than I had taken their boat all the way down to the Thames and left every lock open as they went. I stood outside for an hour and waited whilst the water was refilled down the canal locks from x meters above my level. The issue with living on the canal was that you became the proud owner of a fridge that was to be moved every two weeks - my world had become about the boat - and the community of boaters who increasingly resented each other due to cramped conditions. A few days later I was mugged carrying my friends camera to his flat. I put the boat on the market a day later. There are more than 10,000 people living on boats in the capital, all experts in emptying their portable potties into overflowing service points, adding to the necessity to know all the laundromats in proximity ofv the mooring locations (you get it on your trousers). For the boater, London is still a city of direct contact with your own filth.
The Washing Line
According to Merriam Webster the term clothesline was first used in 1830. This may seem boring at first, but it is of interest as it is a key innovation existing between the first and second industrial revolution. Between the construction of the canals and the railroad, the washing line is a marker of industrial progress that can easily be taken for granted. Prior to the industrialisation of laundry, riverside washing was normalised into the 19th century. Two tools were used to aid laundering, the washing bat (doubling as a washing board - an improvement from the previous use of tree branches) and a rocks edge, both used as a scrubbing surface and drying place in the summer. Simply put, the UK doesn’t provide such long summers, which may explain the historically close relationship the English have with dirt and fondness of ‘scruff’ (rugby and Bo-Jo for example, and in no particular order). Clothing was also commonly dried by using bushes, and large houses increasingly owned wooden clothing lines. It wasn’t until the victorians that we saw the use of pivoting clothing line systems complete with hand cranks. It is not so strange to associate the movement of the washing line with the obsession of the mechanisation of labour throughout industrial development with movement itself (the factory). The laboratories of the 19th century saw great leaps
in understanding nature (whatever that is), and its many mysterious movements. Etienne Jules Marey’s Spygmograph (1860) inscribed the form and frequency of the human pulse beat on a blackened cylinder, and E.J Marey’s observations of movements through photographic documentation are two of many examples. In the process of industrialisation, such scientific findings are coupled with state nationalism and monopoly to progress technologies that reduce the labour in production. The time of full mechanisation, complete with increased birth rates and longer life expectancy, occurs arguably in the twentieth century. But the humble washing line, pivoting on its central axis, fabricated in a factory and delivered to the workers back yard, can be seen as one of the many inventions of progress in the nineteenth century with its complete full faith in mechanisation. The ability to see ‘things’ in its totality (specificity) was obscured by the introduction of management systems and the increase of work / leisure time (Universality). Essentially you may not be able to understand the operation of the whole, but you can use it to do less domestic labour and subsequently work longer hours in the factory or pleasure boat down the thames. The revolving clothes line was an object so profound that it was worthy of showing off globally in the various great expos of the Victorian era, showcasing in an exhibition held in Melbourne from 6th November 1872 to 8 January 1873. This led to the first of the world expositions occurring in London at the close of the century (in 1851). Such events become a symbol of the industrial cooperation of the technical world system at large. The great exhibition, romanticised endlessly by historians and Architects, was supposed to resemble the techno-social coherence of world peace, yet critically speaking it is more of a showcase in the industrialist modern coercion through the lens of colonial beneficiaries.
The English Garden
At the age of nine I would dread Saturday mornings. I would go as far as to say this is how I eventually ended up begging to go to boarding school. Without fail I would wake to the smell of bacon butties, and my brother watching the same episodes of Tom and Jerry on repeat. But this was not the worst of it. Every Saturday morning as I tried to swallow the breakfast ‘to be grateful’, a frightening drone would slowly begin to murmur over the horizon line of the day, and echo through the suburban Blairite yellow brick streets of suburbia in Wiltshire. Mowing the lawn was my job, delegated to me lovingly from my parents paired with the absolutist “Earn your keep”, that became increasingly what seemed to be my raison d’etre within my parents home. My father was in the military at the time and I remember him likening the garden to the buzz cuts forced upon the ranks. I asked him hopefully whether the lawn could possibly bald like he did. I was then banned from anything I loved about life. I was grounded. Held still. Lockdown training. The cities of the UK in the 19th Century were reimagined wildernesses, wild ungoverned territories lacking the order needed to mechanise the machinery of Industrial growth. The strategic ideological restructuring of vast landscapes undertaken both by the individual and the state to ensure such order, can be simply understood as landscape design. The English rural economy provided the organisational framework to aid the re-ordering, privatisation and displacement of the existing unregulated frameworks. This narrative was popularised or may have actually progressed out of the imaginary of the landscape in picturesque painting of the 17th Century, a romantic aesthetic of pleasure and immense eroticism tinted green. Is the garden of stoke lock erotic? It reminds me of another ideal landscape etched into a collective subconscious. The computer wallpaper of Microsoft’s Window’s XP system. Charles O’rear’s Bliss is a photo taken in 1996 of green hills and blue sky with clouds in Californias Wine district. O’rear was paid a rumoured six figures for the licensing, making it the second largest purchase in the history of the still image. Possibly the most viewed photograph in the history of mankind, being seen by approximately a number of billions (there is no way of knowing) and used to ease windows users into a sense of total security in desk-bound situations; I wonder comparably how many have viewed the garden at Stoke lock.
Poromechanics
Is land a divine subject or operable object? The moderns drive for mechanisation by embedding inter-communicating machines into the landscape functionally reduces energy wastage by flattening the lands topography into a continuous artificial plane. A great levelling of all that is variable to save energy and allow continuous reliable movement and speed. This is achieved by the subject believing in the promise of progress. The construction of the canal or train line systems are both a reflections of humanity self organising through the addition of heavy technical massing. It is an example of the problematic acceleration of out of date carbon heavy progress. This series of thoughts around an image that repeatedly became an object of interest recognises a very clear pattern that one could attribute to the dramatic behaviours of land extraction activities since the 19th century. We have become the primary agents engineering new hybrids that have burdened both our understanding of earth systems and how we relate to them.
Bibliography
Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World, (Grafton street, London) COLLINS, 1984 Burton, Anthony, The Canal Builders: How Britains Canal Network Evolved, Pen & Sword Transport, 2015 Duhigg, Charles, The Power of Habit, Random House Publishing Group, 2012 Giedion, Sigfried, Mechanisation Takes Command, (New York, NY, U.S.A.) Oxford University Press, New York, 1948 Harlow, Barbara and Carter, Mia, Archive of Empite: Volume 1. From the East India Company to the Suez Canal. Duke University Press, 2003 Johnson, Steven, The Ghost Map, Penguin Books, 2006 Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, 1993 Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden: Technology the Pastoral Ideal In America, Oxford University Press, 1964 Morton, Timothy, Ecology without Nature, Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics, Harvard university press 2007 Negarestani, Reza, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous, re.press Melbourne, 2008 Sloterdijk, Peter, In the World of Interior Capital, Polity Press, 2013. Toulmin, Stephen, The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, University of Chicago Press, 1992 Westwoon, Robert, Gavin, Jack, Khan Farzad and Frenkel Michal, Core-Periphery Relations and Organisation Studies, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014