REHABILITATING! RHEUMATIC ARCHITECTURES
Written by Guillermo Marquez Musso Design is from Michael Spooner’s thesis, “A Clinic for the Exhausted” Foreword: This essay attempts these few things: - Expand on Robin Boyd’s ‘ramblings’ from ‘The Australian Ugliness’ - Dignify Australianness through the suburban reputation of Edmond & Corrigan - Suggest the wounded ANZAC is ultimately the delusion of choice of Australian Architecture and their Architects. The intent of this essay is to: - Appropriately gather the memorabilia scattered from the Australia’s gashing wounds, in order to rehabilitate its architecture; architecture of hope. - Apply the confetti which is the architects Band-Aid, so that it is ready for the Australianness rituals. - Insinuate on whether attending a Eucharist for architecture might actually cure us, or consolidate schizophrenia.
[A] Untitled (1960), Robin Boyd, pen on paper, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.242.
[B] Footballer (1946), Sidney Nolan, enamel paint on composition board.
Robin Boyd declared an Australian ugliness in 1960, entirely dramatic, la grande bouffe[1], demonstrating to progressive modernists alike that their popular slogans could adapt to ‘ornament is grime’. While Boyd’s work is wholly concerned with a differentiation between features and ornaments, “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”[2]. The first being a kind of architectural prostitution, and the latter being the prostitute’s jewellery; its ‘opera’ dedicates reflective converse of Australian identity in the context of suburbia and suburb villages. Perhaps the best example is to describe Swanston Street as Melbourne’s Prostitute, a procession street, being understood as a whole Melbournian rather than the series of party-streamer-cabling[see image A] which ornament it.[3] This procession is what constitutes the architecture of Edmond & Corrigan; a hopeful architecture borne from the rehabilitation of said prostitute. Edmond & Corrigan directly challenges Boyd in regards to dealing with ornament. Ornament is the space where either ideas are drawn into oblivion or destruction. A ‘destruction’ merely portrays the ugliness, a visual wound; which is only arrived to by a lack of illusion[4], or perhaps a disillusion. The importance of placing Australianness embodying a wounded dignity is for the honesty to proffer Australian architecture as ‘rehabilitation into Australian society’. The context of Edmond and Corrigan’s architecture in this case, is to elucidate to this kind of self-inflicting wound; ANZAC hope after Gallipoli’s Massacre. Retake Swanston Street as a lesson in architecture, as if spoken about by a lector or priest, a reading from the bush poet’s testament; reflecting the dignity of Australian society. A procession is in order here, a mass; carried by architecture, inhabited by chanting Melbournians. As a church, a main nave splits a sea of buildings, “[the nave] is a neutral place that belongs to all and to none, where people pass by almost without seeing each other, where the life of a building regularly and distantly resounds”[5], as Cleopatra’s sensual perfume[6] tram; Melbourne’s fanciest automobile, draws past liturgically. Appealing like an AFL grandstand, sinner architectures gather on the pew, in awe at the splendour of Australianness[7][see image B]. The procession leads to the altar which behaves like the Australian kiosk, with words spoken by football players; on Swanston Street this is of course the Shrine of Remembrance, a reminder of more dynamic living. The narthex of the Melbournian culture church is borne from Building 8, the ‘royal doors’, which fronts to bequeath this Australian ritual.[8]
[1] Marco Ferreri, La Grande Bouffe (film), 1973. Note: Robin Boyd intentionally writes ‘The Australian Ugliness’ in an excessively rich and critical manner, which was called unpatriotic in its lack of peasantry. I intended to relate it to Peter Corrigan’s use of theatre to be critical. [2] J. Dodsley, The Aeneid, Volume 2, 1778, p. 138. Note: The phrase translates literally to “I fear the Danaans, even those bearing gifts”. It suggests a wariness and concern of the opulent ‘pop’ suggested by Robin Boyd’s ‘featurism’. [3] Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-92, Thames & Hudson Australia, Port Melbourne, 2012, p.5. Note: “Closer up, architecture dissolved into an array of jewelled details, each to be direct, impeccable in turning and proportion, resolved, poised, harmonious.” [4] Leon Van Schaik, “The Ambition to ‘Make the Culture’” in Cities of Hope Re-membered: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-2012, 2012, p.169. Note: “All the artifice shows, and there is no illusion” [5] Georges Perec, Life a User’s Manual, trans. David Bellos, London, 1987, p.3. Note: this sentence in the book is originally associated to ‘the hall’ of the house. [6] William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Penguin Classics, 2005, Act II, Scene II. Note: This is adequate due to the conversations on empiricism. The passage in the play discusses the scene where Enobarbus tells Agrippa of the good life they lived in Egypt. He describes how Cleopatra first came to meet Antony on a perfumed barge, comparing the queen to Venus, the goddess of love. Antony, he maintains, will never be able to leave her, despite his marriage to Octavia, “The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne; Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that; The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver.” [7] The writings of Maggie Edmond and Peter Corrigan, in Building 8: Edmond and Corrigan at RMIT, Leon van Schaik (Executive Editor Vols. 1, 2 and 3), Winsome Callister (Ed. Vol 3), Schwartz Transition, Melbourne, Vol.3, p.121. Note: “not to know football is not to know the town” [8] Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-92, Thames & Hudson Australia, Port Melbourne, 2012, p.139. Note: “for eighty-odd years RMIT had been seeking a strongly stated front and ‘entry’ to Swanston Street.”
[D] Piccadilly Circus (1960), LS Lowry, oil painting.
[C] Building 8, image by Georgina Matherson.
]E] Kronborg Medical Clinic (1993), Ashton Raggatt McDougall Pty Ltd Architects, image depicts Venna Venturis House facade streched through photocopier scanning.
In terms of being a Melbourne building, Building 8 is another outcast, conditioned by its budget to being a scenic element on the set of Melbourne’s play. By being a scenic element,[see image C] Building 8 serves as a condenser, blatantly contextualising the dirty realism of art brut Australianness,[9][10] coloured beads to the natives.[11] While being entirely Melbournian, Building 8 behaves improperly on Swanston Street; representing yet another piece of memorabilia originating from the basement storage of Hamer Hall,[12] “[if a robber] improperly wishes to occupy a spot which doesn’t belong to it, the true owner sings and sings so well that the predator goes away.... If the robber sings better than the true proprietor the proprietor yields his place.”[13] In terms of being Swanston Street’s vestibule it functions to assimilate the non-descript ugliness of the Australian city; this kind of front door design initiates the dignified glamour of Australianness in Melbourne. The same way Piccadilly Circus assimilates mundane autonomy and wretched night lights,[see image D] “The vestibule leads spatially and allegorically to the corridor: a place that promises to bring us closer to the interior proper”[14] this product is also present in Howard Raggatt’s stretching of the Vanna Venturi house in the Kronborg Medical Clinic (1993).[see image E] The intention of both these front door designs the proto-expressionist importation and appropriation whose exegesis presents that dignified glamour. The utility of Building 8 in relation to Swanston Street legitimises the spiritual quality of what would otherwise be a stylistic ghetto; a church with no entry leaving church goers trapped in their seats during Te Deum.[15] The Australian ritual is an acquaintance of this mental space,[16] by first embracing gumtree sameness through concentrating a ‘poor theatre’,[17] and secondly by dusting off the lingering need to kowtow to imperial theorists. Accepting Australian mental space is still a rogue idea; an idea without assurances.[18] Empirical evidence of the past twenty years of Victorian architecture continues to be found loitering like the tramp, about Swanston Street. This dusty concert however “at war” doesn’t save these architecture sinners with their rheumatism, or at best their ‘tramp-ness’.[19] Any of these punters on the pew, does not have a better sporting chance at rehabilitation but to engage with the architecture hope. Boyd describes this grandstand of Australianness politics as “[architectures] condemn[ing] one another for spoiling the landscape, but it is collective.”[20] [9] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p.349. Note: “And what is called art brut in not at all pathological or primitive; it is merely this constitution, this freeing, of matters of expression in movement territoriality: the base ground of art. Take anything and make it a matter of expression. The stage maker practices art brut.” [10] Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope Re-membered: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-2012, Thames & Hudson Australia, Port Melbourne, 2012, p.23. Note: “[Building 8 reminds] us that the shed is a conditional state. Where the stern budget would allow, the external richness is woven through within...[each] memento to be carried away by each student after graduation” [11] Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.84 [12] Joan McClelland, “Why not give culture a sporting chance, too?” Age, Fairfax, 15 December 2011. [13] Claude Samuel, Conversations with Oliver Messiaen, trans. Felix Aprahamian, Stainer and Bell, London, 1976 , pp. 61-63. Note: Details on Messiaen’s conceptions of bird song, his evaluation of its aesthetic qualities, and his methods for both reproducing it and using it as a material. [14] Brian Dillion, “An Approach to the Interior”, in The Surreal House / [edited by Jane Alison]; with essays by Mary Ann Caws, Brian Dillon and others, Barbican Art Gallery in association with Yale University Press, 2010, p. 61. Note: This essay discusses specific spaces found in ‘the surreal house’. The space discussed here is the sanctum. [15] Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel (film), 1962. Note: The film is dedicated thematically to pathologically inescapable spaces/rooms. The last scene presents the surviving protagonists attending a Te Deum at the cathedral. When the service is over, the churchgoers along with the clergy have been pathologically trapped in inside. This scene adequately presents the situation/scenario of Melbourne architecture fabricated in the essay. [16] Leon Van Schaik, “The Ambition to ‘Make the Culture’” in Cities of Hope Re-membered: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-2012, 2012, p.167. [17] Ibid, p.166-169, 2012. [18] Michael Spooner & Peter Knight, “Hunters in the City” Architecture Australia, vol.101, No.4, July 2012: p.82-84. Note: “This is to suggest that the city is still a rogue idea; an idea without assurances.” [19] Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.153. [20] Ibid, p.33
[F] The Swimming Pool (1953), Henri Matisse, blue paper cutouts pinned on paper, Installed in his home in the Hôtel Régina, photo by Hélène Adant.
[G] Performance for Barrie Kosky’s reproduction of Le Grande Macabre (2003), Peter Corrigan
[H] Collins St, 5p.m. (1995), John Brack, oil on canvas.
At the beginning of the 1940s the artist Henri Matisse suffering from bad health and arthritis. Unable to paint, he began to create large scale works made from paper cutouts. The work “The Swimming Pool” (1952) is the only cut-out composed for a specific room – the artist’s dining room in his apartment[see image F]. In architecture suffering, perhaps from similar tramp rheumatisms, exhausted architecture begins to mediate a relationship with thresholds of hope, the reminder of more dynamic living. In the case of “The Swimming Pool”, the dining room space surrounds the viewer with the cut-out, as Benjamin puts it, “the space disguises itself – puts on, like alluring creatures, the costumes of moods,”[21] it invades the interior in the form of ferns, aquatic creates and geological specimen. Comparatively to Edmond & Corrigan’s set design (almost exclusively done by Peter Corrigan) for Barrie Kosky’s 2003 production of Le Grand Macabre, ‘dynamic living’ places this dining space on the stage which is a rotating 5° angled platform.[see image G] Peter Corrigan’s contributions to set design bluntly display architecture job in being situational[22] entertainment.[23] An architectures productive life can be organised as “[working] towards an opening night. It is an industry where deadlines are taken seriously. Set building continues by fast track methods. Big ideas are broken down and simplified on the shop floor. Compromise is assumed, and almost favours the tradesmen. Their pragmatism and experience take care of the details and save time… the aesthetics are left to look after themselves and all energies are directed towards making the clothing fit.”[24] The point being that an architect can only do so much to dress or invigorate their ‘child’; so that when groomed, it is somewhat prepared to venture into the Melbourne night on unsteady legs[25] Peter Corrigan should not expect his scenic sets to influence any more than the vestibule, or any person in the crowds of Swanston Street,[see image H] though his taste distinguishes itself more similarly to the act of Barry Humphreys kicking a “blind” man on a tram. [26] Corrigan’s dignifies a design instituting the dirty realism that ‘[buildings] need to fuck as well, [buildings] have mundane jobs, [buildings] endure to carousel the pubs and football games.’[27] ‘Things in fields’ is a morbid condition which superimposes a foreground of litter, an adequate description of Australian realism.[28] At the same time like any construction site, ‘things in fields’ invigorates any background with a “potentiality of spaces yet to come”[29] beyond conventional architectural discourse.
[21] Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedermann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Belknap Press, New York, 2002, p.216. [22] Guy Debord, Internationale Situationniste #1, trans. Ken Knabb, Paris, June 1958. Note: “a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events.” [23] Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak, 1970. Note: In the society of the spectacle, the commodities rule the workers and the consumers instead of being ruled by them. The consumers are passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle. [24] The writings of Maggie Edmond and Peter Corrigan, in Building 8: Edmond and Corrigan at RMIT, Leon van Schaik (Executive Editor Vols. 1, 2 and 3), Winsome Callister (Ed. Vol 3), Schwartz Transition, Melbourne, Vol.3, p.39. Note: While this is used by Corrigan to describe the set design process, I felt that it adequately describes the life (same as a person’s) of an architecture, especially in this context. [25] Michael Spooner, A Clinic for the Exhausted: In Search of an Antipodean Vitality: Edmond & Corrigan and an Itinerant Architecture, AADR, 2013, p.142. [26] “Escape from Mrs. Everage” The Australian Women’s Weekly, 29 September 1965. [27] The writings of Maggie Edmond and Peter Corrigan, in Building 8: Edmond and Corrigan at RMIT, Leon van Schaik (Executive Editor Vols. 1, 2 and 3), Winsome Callister (Ed. Vol 3), Schwartz Transition, Melbourne, Vol.3, p.121. [28] Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.40. [29] Helene Frichot and Stephen Loo, “Introduction: The Exhaustive and the Exhausted – Deleuze AND Architecture” in Deleuze and Architecture, Helene Frichot and Stephen Loo, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2013, p.3.
[I] Dandelion, Inscription Point (1980), Micky Allan, gelatin silver photograph, gouache.
[J] Coquelicots [Poppy Field] (1873), Claude Monet, oil on canvas.
[K] Punter’s Sunday Mass in Royal Exhibition Building (2015), Guillermo Marquez Musso
At this point, exhausted[30] architects gather to discuss the merits of the final project, Corrigan’s position is “there won’t be any cauliflowers growing by the front door”, meanwhile Boyd lurches due to that ‘lack of cauliflower’ towards the dandelion growing in its stead.[see image I] By evaluating the merits of gumtrees in regards to sloppiness, it is simply unfortunate that so few of them are neat enough in their habits to be acceptable. [31] Borne from this untidiness is a punk ethos which contrasts the austericans.[32] Spiritual architecture is instinctively a heterotopia of ritual, but is erroneously associated as a heterotopia of deviation;[33] an implication is that it is conceived as an embodiment of abstraction, separate from matter and worldly affairs.[34] The Shrine of Remembrance and its galleries were ultimately conceived as Melbourne’s empirical cenotaph, currently displaced with an oscillating poppy-red against bony classicism,[35] as if Monet’s ‘Poppies, Near Argenteuil’[see image J] where the field is the lawn on which the shrine rests. The red poppy demands bland respect on a historical basis, regardless of race, class, or sexual identity. This criticism seeks to understand whether the Shrine acting alike a pustule, anticipating to be picked at, suggests the invigorated background of grandstand punters. [see image K] Any Australian suburban house belongs to the grandstand; each newcomer builds a superficial personal house, a nice feature on the landscape, and after several have been built they begin to tug at every direction in dismay, pronouncing ‘Koyaanisqatsi’.[36][see image L] Edmond and Corrigan’s Myers House (2006-08)[see image M] is situated inside a series of street named after pillars of Britain’s 1850s empire, in this case ‘Clement Canning’, the one-time Viceroy of India. Myers House helps accentuate an Australianness psyche of the punter, the wounded sinner. The most Australian feature is its veranda performing the largely vestigial role of Victorian terraced houses.[see image N] The underneath entry is more a colonnade, where visitors can seek for a front door, rather than it being another placard.[see image O] The ground level facade wall with its teasing windows is a gallery space, the interior invert of the exterior colonnade.[see image O] The gallery is a doubled interiority, “secret inwardness to be hidden even from the private space of the salon or bedroom... this pure interior is only fully expressed at the moment the cupboard is opened to the gaze.”[37] The whole interior programs centrifugal [see image P] movements organised fugue-like [see image Q] , with its contrapuntal tendencies and ‘musical outline’; the implication is that the passages are designed for ‘fleeing’.[38]
[30] Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, Verso, London, 1998, p. 152. [31] Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.97. [32] Ibid, p.82. Note: “Austerica’s chief industry is the imitation of the froth on the top of American soda-fountain drink. Its religion is ‘glamour’ and the devotees are psychologically displaced persons who picture heaven as the pool terrace of a Las Vegas hotel. Its high priests are expense-account men who judge the USA on a two-weeks’ hop between various Hilton and Startler hotels and return home intoxicated with conceptions of American willingness of labour (judged by the attitude of martini waiters), the average American standard of living (judged by a weekend at the managing director’s house on Long Island), and American godliness (judged by a copy of ‘Guideposts…an inspirational publication’, which is left by the bedside for every one of the hotel guests of Mr Conrad Hilton.” [33] Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”, in The Order of Things, Pantheon Books, New York, 1970. [34] Richard Munday, “Passion in the Suburbs” Architecture Australia, 1977, Feb/Mar. [35] Conrad Hamann, Architecture Australia, 2015, vol.104, May/Jun, p.30. [36] Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.33. [37] Brian Dillion, “An Approach to the Interior”, in The Surreal House / [edited by Jane Alison]; with essays by Mary Ann Caws, Brian Dillon and others, Barbican Art Gallery in association with Yale University Press, 2010, p. 59. Note: The space described is the ‘salon’. [38] “Fugue, n.” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2006
[L] Bodgie Wolf (1982), Edmond and Corrigan Architects.
[M] Myers House, Canning Street facade (2008), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, photography by John Gollings.
[N] Myers House, Canning Street facade (2008), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, photography by John Gollings.
[O] Myers House, Gallery Space (2008), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, photography by John Gollings.
[P] Myers House, First Floor Plan (2008), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, circulation drawing by Guillermo Marquez Musso (2014).
[Q] Ricecar a 6� BWV 1079 (1747), Johann Sebastian Bach, first page manuscript.
[R] Myers House, Living Space (2008), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, photography by John Gollings.
[S] Myers House, Roof Terrace (2008), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, photography by John Gollings.
[T] “Sister Boom Boom and other members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence hold an ‘exorcism’ in Union Square during the 1984 Democratic convention.
The expansive interior light[see image R] can be associated to gothic tendencies (to say an implied spirituality) in theory, due to the several voids and roof windows likened to Sir John Soane’s House, that produce a “glowing quality”.[39] The Australian roof meanwhile is as Le Corbusier’s Bertesgui Apartment roof, [see image S] though lacking the eccentric lawn, fireplace and parrot; coerces the view of Carlton tree tops and Melbourne housing commissions. [see image T] It is only accessible by climbing through a ladder staircase which could be liked to Australia’s national sentiment.[40] Cassandra Fahey’s poetic title regarding a watercolour concerning Peter Corrigan, “kill the father; kill the father; kill the father; what are these demons? Where? The building slew a thousand snakes; their guts crawling through the facade which ached to be one its side; so the guts would dry out quicker & go the fuck away”[41] portrays the tectonics of Edmond & Corrigan’s architecture as that which acknowledges an inevitable architectural hangover.[42] For example, the gallery inside Myers House shuts itself out from the exteriority to conduct its rehabilitative orgies; an oddly officious piece of artwork embodies a sexual and domestic secrecy that is to be violated to the fullest extent. [43] Effectively, this prostitute architecture naturally houses its sanctum in its doubled interiority, a reflection from the exterior chaos of the street procession which places Canning Street as both brothel and chapel for the sisters of perpetual indulgence.[44][see image U] Essentially, prostitute architecture relies on tolerance rather than consumption; it thrives on ephemeral anxieties and the bluntness of accepting the arbitrary, since the prostitute is uninterested in displaying any emotion on the job. The Drama Centre for the Victorian College of the Arts is on the job,[45] “some streetwalker lounging by the pavement at an alley corner, on the lookout for customers and yet at the same time it presents a storming tour of inner urban forms,”[46][see image V] it is a forefront for an architectures brothel and chapel; condensing inner-suburban industrial imagery inside a type of hermetically sealed environment which is required for its inhabitant’s survival. The inhabitant in this scenario oscillates between accommodating and curating for both VCA drama students and a Melbourne performance culture. Since this kind of historical morbidity suggests an uncanny preservation as a scenic set, it represents a finished product.[47] Embodying a perverse secrecy from being a condenser, the Drama Centre and the two annexing ARM performance buildings create environments for the Melbourne punter; the Drama Centre accepts the Australianness more readily and less ambiguously than the rest [see image W]. [39] Leon Van Schaik, “An Analysis of the Architecture of Sir John Soane” AA files #9, 1985, p.48. [40] Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-92, Thames & Hudson Australia, Port Melbourne, 2012, p.139. Note: “Architects’ design response to the high tide of national sentiment in Australian architecture could be likened to a ladder, the rungs of which correspond to degrees of difficulty.” [41] Cassandra Fahey, “kill the father…go the fuck away” in Cities of Hope - Peter Corrigan, RMIT, 2013. [42] William Blake, “The Little Vagabond” in Songs of Innocence, Penguin, 1995. Note: The poem tells the opinion of the boy who believes that more people would choose to go to church if there were alcoholic beverages. This is because he sees how happy those in the alehouse are, therefore he believes church should have a similar atmosphere and people would be more willing to attend. Also, that it would not be sinful to make the church similar to the alcohol-serving establishment because God wants to see his children happy. [43] Brian Dillion, “An Approach to the Interior”, in The Surreal House / [edited by Jane Alison]; with essays by Mary Ann Caws, Brian Dillon and others, Barbican Art Gallery in association with Yale University Press, 2010, p. 61. Note: The space discussed here is the sanctum. [44] Dr Michael Spooner, Studio:NO HOMO! 2015.1, http://thexhausted.com/ministering-to-my-peers/studio-no-homo-2015-1/ [45] Hollis Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionistic Era, Getty Research Institute, 2003, p.29. [46] Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope Re-membered: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-2012, Thames & Hudson Australia, Port Melbourne, 2012, p.102. Note: “The Edmond and Corrigan design is more figural and explicit in its referencing. In the same way, the ARM building represents the theatre and music as a finished product, especially compared with the singing architectural spectre in the side street just behind.” [47] Ibid, p.102.
[U] Sister Boom Boom and other members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence hold an ‘exorcism’ in Union Square during the 1984 Democratic convention, photography by Chris Stewart.
[V] School of Drama (2004), Victorian College of the Arts, Southbank, Edmond and Corrigan Architects, flipped sideways as if spewing, photography John Gollings
[W] School of Drama (2004), Victorian College of the Arts, Southbank, Edmond and Corrigan Architects, north elevation, photography John Gollings
[X] Kneeling Fauness (Toilette of Venus) (1946), Auguste Rodin, bronze statue
[Y] The Keysborough Church (1977), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, east side, redering by Robert Pearce, with hypothetical priest and parishioners.
[Z] Building 8 (1995), Edmond and Corrigan Architects, homage to Ned Kelly, above RMIT Kaleide Theatre.
Australianness architecture is a prostitute, prostituting the same way Auguste Rodin prostitutes the goddess Venus for his sculpture, from a his lover Camille Claudel;[see image X] those into theatre call ‘prostitute’ by the respectably ambiguous title of performers, “occasionally, to flaunt their progress or to steal a glance, one performer manages to pull back the drape in the hope of hearing the prophetic peal of trumpets – let the walls of Jericho fall! But, only a whisper is heard, an intonation that claims, momentarily, victory over the din of the other.”[48] Michael Spooner describes a process of exhaustion which follows from the figure of the drowning performer (perhaps in alcohol), in effect, Australianness interrogates a threshold of glamour which drives its architectures to sin and wound one another. Australian architecture fails to understand its Australianness by either misunderstanding or ignoring Australians. Boyd elucidates the decent into chaos through “the greater and fiercer the natural background, the prettier and prettier the artificial foreground”. [49] The Eucharist, or mass, address concerns of the Australian, sublimating any unflattering comparisons so there is no loss of face.[50] The Australian mass is ugly, cruel but kind, unrelentingly aggressive in its commitment to equality, while containing the glamour of its ritual procession. The purpose of compromising architecture as a social role and its analysis as a heterotopia of ritual; is to glorify its ugliness or mediocrity. Australian architecture attends rituals in search of redemption and its ablution through rain is its baptism. The concerns of Australianness direct itself at dignity, that which is intensely shallow and unsatisfying.[51] Robert Pearce who rendered many of Edmond & Corrigan’s architecture gave their work the dignity which would otherwise be neglected.[see image Y] Dignity as ‘punk’ presents as much dignity as ‘digger’ or ‘bushman’, roles which were lost to the folklore and times of Ned Kelly and before, eventually iconized through Building 8.[see image Z] Australian dignity is concocted on a misapprehension of Aboriginal spirituality and its landscape, if anything, Australianness is the surreal house[52]; embodied by Canberra’s Old Parliament House, housing the Museum of Australian Democracy; whose front yard features an Aboriginal tent embassy. Snobbery is rife in Australianness, which causes a social optimism to displace a dynamic mistrust of potential neighbours.[53] The “war” described previously while romanticising Australia’s masculine + martial folklore, “the lads who went off to fight the Turk and the Gypo”[54], would naturally marginalise suburban forms into architectures whose identity was uneasy on the Australian landscape, perceived as the subversive current of urban aggression.[55] Returning to wounded architecture, its premise as Australian relies heavily on Robin Boyd’s arguments of a ‘cultural wasteland’ as well as Edmond & Corrigan’s constructions of architects as ‘hungover diggers’ in their pursuit for survival.[56] This survivalist architecture defines Edmond and Corrigan’s suburban reputation. [48] Michael Spooner, A Clinic for the Exhausted: In Search of an Antipodean Vitality: Edmond & Corrigan and an Itinerant Architecture, AADR, 2013, p.140. [49] Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Penguin Books, 1960, p.19. [50] Ibid, p.19 [51] Ibid, p.5 [52] The Surreal House / [edited by Jane Alison]; with essays by Mary Ann Caws, Brian Dillon and others, Barbican Art Gallery in association with Yale University Press, 2010 [53] Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan 1962-92, Thames & Hudson Australia, Port Melbourne, 2012, p.101. [54] Ibid, p.98 [55] Ibid, p.102 [56] Ibid, p.103
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