BOOK TWO Site Analysis: Past, Present, Foreboding Future
BOOK TWO Layout
Foreword
00
The Reading Grandmother The Bathroom People Specimen B. Observed
04 10
for a period of 300 seconds from a bench placed in the corridor of the women’s bathroom.
The Solo Eaters Specimen D. Analysed from afar during lunch time at the food court.
The Gossiping Ladies Specimen C.
07
16
Discovered lurking in the elevator corridor seated on benches lining the passageway.
The Tired Tourists
The Sand Pit E. Noticed Child Specimen as exhibiting curious
13
Specimen F. Spotted walking into the mall complex and finding rest at the food court on Level 01.
actions at the edge of Queen Elizabeth Square around early after noon.
Afterword
19 BOOK TWO Downtown Museum of Extraordinary Ordinaries
BOOK TWO Cover
The parting words and musings of book two.
Foreword
00
A pre-amble on the process and conclusions made through the making and collating of book one and book two.
The Reading Grandmother
The Bathroom People Specimen B. Observed
04 10
01
for a period of 300 seconds from a bench placed in the corridor of the women’s bathroom.
The Solo Eaters Specimen D. Analysed from afar during lunch time at the food court.
Specimen A. Found tucked away in a sliver slot of the mall complex at midday.
The Gossiping Ladies Specimen C.
07
16
Discovered lurking in the elevator corridor seated on benches lining the passageway.
The Tired Tourists
The Sand Pit E. Noticed Child Specimen as exhibiting curious
13
Specimen F. Spotted walking into the mall complex and finding rest at the food court on Level 01.
actions at the edge of Queen Elizabeth Square around early after noon.
Afterword
19 BOOK TWO Contents
BOOK TWO Contents
The parting words and musings of book two.
Foreword “In extraordinary times, the ordinary takes on a glow and wonder all of its own” - Mike A. Lancaster, Human.4 Go on, look closer. It may not seem like much at the moment, but trust me, look closer.
Essentially, this paper is about finding new ways of generating concepts for architecture. In this case, literature. In my case, specifically short stories, syntax and style by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami in his anthology: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. 01 Last week’s book one essentially produced a site analysis instigated by the style of short stories and Murakami’s tendency to project surrealism and extraordinary plots in the lives of ordinary middleclass Japanese characters. Book one was an analysis of the site via three modes of time: past, present and foreboding future and it was a good exercise in understanding the current narratives that already existed on the site. This exercise also initiated a first glimpse of the premise of my design concept: the absolute ordinariness of the current programmes on site such as the reading woman, the bathroom people, the gossiping ladies, the solo eaters, the lonely smokers, the sand pit child, the pigeon chasing boy, the skateboard lads, the tired tourists. I consciously didn’t choose to host the obvious programme of ‘shopping’ but focused instead, on the extra add on programmes that people may not notice as being a part of a shopping mall complex. At this stage, I am pursuing a new speculative development for a downtown museum of extraordinary ordinaries: that provides extraordinary spaces and experiences for supposedly ordinary programmes and allowing these experiences to be viewed as ‘scenes’ or ‘exhibitions’ of extinct activities of human society for a time when people are no longer appreciating or even noticing the beauty of these ordinary things. The project goes beyond the politics of public and private space and instead, focuses more on hosting the already quite beautifully ordinary things and people in downtown Auckland. It becomes a museum because in the hype of development and politics of privatisation, the remembrance of the ordinary tends to be lost therefore, I believe, needs to be preserved. In many ways, this museum acts as both a host for the ordinary activities but also as a preservation of these activities to be exhibited to people who have perhaps forgotten the extraordinary that exists when one looks closer into the ordinary. 02 Now, for this week’s book two, I wanted to continue the idea of literature instigating architectural concepts so I delved deeper into the style of Murakami’s writing. I read more books by him, watched a documentary and read a few analysis essays on Murakami’s syntax and style. And the more I read and researched, I began to uncover more of the characteristics and underlying parameters of his writing that I wanted to bring into this project. One of these things was a quote from a BBC documentary (In Search of this Elusive Writer) describing Murakami’s writing in a nutshell: “there is the autobiography, there is music, there is a sort of metaphysics and there is a girl.” Ann Sherif writes it another way: “(His writing) is both rooted in the quotidian (beer, women’s bodies, pasta), the fantastic (Sheep Men and women with beautiful ears) and the unconscious (dreams and intuition).” In a rare interview by the author himself for the Paris Review, Murakami describes his style as: “To take[taking] the focus so close that you pass through the zone of realism, and the everyday and the banal becomes strange again... The closer it gets, the less real it gets. That’s my style.” Through the collection of analysis on Murakami’s writing, I was essentially aiming to establish a set of rules or parameters in which I wanted to develop my own design concept. These parameters so far are compiled in the last short story in this week’s anthology: book two which I very originally named ‘Stories and Parameters’. So far these parameters consist of the following: + the quotidian: one must take the ordinary programmes on site as ultimate premise. + the fantastic: one must pursue the extraordinary in the ordinary through the action of consciously focusing into details and symbols from nature. + the unconscious: one must add a piece of their own narrative. + the music: one must add music to the design, preferably jazz. Following these parameters, I then wrote in-depth short stories on a number of the characters I had observed in the site analysis. These stories were written in a pretty strict framework of starting with a distant description of the observed character from my point of view, how that spurred up memories of my own and then a deep fleshing out of the ordinary action via dictionary definitions and writing from the point of view of the character observed. The project began to be a question of this: as Murakami’s writing does to the lives of his ordinary characters, can architecture make surreal the mundane? Extraordinary the ordinary? It is a shift, a transfor mation of the ordinary, in the sense of programme, compelled into the realm of the extraordinary by means of catering a space for this specific activity through the intricacies of detail, space, material, light, proportion.
00 Foreword
BOOK TWO Foreword
The Reading Grandmother
Specimen A *
Found tucked away in a sliver slot of the mall complex at midday. Please Do Not Disturb
01 The Reading Grandmother
The Reading Grandmother
In a sliver of a slot in the mall complex, commonly used as a short exit corridor, a mature lady, probably in her early seventies, was reading a book. Alone she was, yet the lady was entirely content: one could tell by observing the ends of her mouth curling up as her eyes devoured the pages in front of her. The space in which she occupied was exceptionally ordinary: a small area no larger than 1 metre wide and 2.5 metres long. The roof was generously high yet the floor space was narrow: it allowed the reading lady to be detached from the bustle of the rest of the shopping people in the mall yet not so much as to be completely unaware of the hum. * At the second half of last year, my father’s mother left this earth around about the same age as that reading grandmother I saw at the mall. Unlike many of my friend’s grandmothers, she didn’t bake, she didn’t read books nor did she like to cuddle us very much. Probably the most interesting thing was that I have never had a proper conversation with my Popo beyond the Indonesian words for ‘eat’ and ‘eat more’. How strange, that at the time of her living, I never questioned this abnor mality. All of these wispy memories cycled through my head, looping right to left, left to right, as I observed this reading grandmother in the sliver slot of the mall complex that day: subconsciously adopting her as my own.
02 The Reading Grandmother
An Extraordinar y Sliver for the Reading Grandmother
Reading: present participle of the verb read v. To comprehend the meaning of (something written or printed) by looking at and inter preting the written or printed characters. Old English rÌdan meaning "to advise, counsel, persuade; discuss, deliberate; rule, guide; arrange, equip; forebode;". Words from this root in most moder n Ger manic languages still mean "counsel, advise." Transference to "understand the meaning of written symbols" is unique to Old English. Most languages use a word rooted in the idea of "gather up" as their word for "read". * The act of reading is one that involves a certain level of escape. There are many positions in which one can read: you can lie on your stomach, you can lie on your back, you can toss your legs up to one side, or cross them securely in front of you. Each to their own I suppose. My own preferred position of reading is in a space, tucked away from the buzz of the fast pacing people of the city. In the space would be a bench, where I could gently stoop over a book on my lap and cross my ankles to one side. Once on my lap, the book, usually one with a soft cover, is held in place with each of my corresponding hands. And every time I tur n a page, I lick my index finger. Once my eyes fix upon the ink on the pages, I am locked and cannot seem to detract from this stance until I reach the end of a chapter, sometimes the end of the book. All this time, I am aware that the world around me swims at its own hurried pace. But in my book, the time flows with a gentle kind of current and my thoughts don’t feel at all hurried or rushed: every plot twist lapping in and out of the shore that I embrace in the solitude of my own mind.
03 The Reading Grandmother
The Bathroom People
Specimen B * Observed for a period of 300 seconds from a bench placed in the corridor of the women’s bathroom. Do Not Touch
04 The Bathroom People
The Bathroom People
They came in one by one, each with a stride full of pur pose and forward rhythm. In a 300 second period, almost two dozen singular bathroom people had paced the floors of the heavily scuffed white tiles that lined the entrance to the women’s toilet at the mall complex. The popularity of the bathroom could not be due to the space being all that exceptional. The women’s bathroom featured the regular line of stalls with advertisements stuck on the backside of each individual door, and those Dyson hand dryers that blew off every particle of moisture from your hands with a powerful 30 second, automated force. * I used to have nightmares as a child about desperately needing to go to the bathroom and when finding a place to relieve myself, discovered that the state of the toilet was so terribly horrid that I would have to wait and search for another. This disastrous patter n would cycle many times over until I would wake up from my sleep and realise that I had needed to go to the bathroom in the real world: my mind had been preventing me from soaking my own bed sheets. This is the memory I recollected as the steady flow of bathroom people walked in and out, out and in.
05 The Bathroom People
An Extraordinar y Bathroom for the Bathroom People
Bath•room: also refer red as toilet or lavator y n. a room or building equipped with one or more toilets Originally a room with apparatus for bathing, used in the 20th century. To go to the bathroom: euphemism for "relieve oneself; urinate, defecate.” * I had been exercising all sort of acrobatic twists and tur ns on my bladder throughout the date in the food court before finding this moment to rush to the bathroom. It is a funny thing don’t you think, that when you need the loo, your mind cannot seem to focus on anything else. Please, please let there be no line. There was none and I quickly locked myself in an empty cubicle, pulled my skirt up and almost collapsed on the cool latrine seat. Releasing the unnecessary contents of my insides, I felt a gentle swell of relief and my mind could see a clear sky ahead. As crude as it may sound, it was as if the cleansing of my body was correlating to the cleansing of my thoughts, and as I paused a moment to rest my eyes at the advertisement for ‘organic tampons’ in front of me, I began to plan the rest of my day.
06 The Bathroom People
The Gossiping Ladies
Specimen C *
Discovered lurking in the elevator corridor seated on benches lining the passageway. Do Not Tap Glass
07 The Gossiping Ladies
The Gossiping Ladies
One sat on one bench and another on a bench opposite. Both benches lined the sides of a wide corridor leading onto an elevator. “So the guy’s name was Shawn?” It was idle talk, the type to pass the time. No one really cared about Shawn. “Yeah, the guy from Christchurch.” The conversation was a dynamic variation of forced pitch inflections, evoking a sense of sur prise and reaction, partnered with sudden decrescendos of secretive solemnness. It was all an operatic affair: the acting and facial expressions punctuated with occasional shar p shocked inhalation of oxygen. * Korean middle aged women are notorious for their late after noon gossip. Throughout my childhood, my mother and her friend’s banter would be the familiar background rhythms to my correlating after noon studies. Even now, when I retur n home and hear my mother and her, now much older, friends gossiping in our living room, it takes me back to those blissful childhood after noons.
08 The Gossiping Ladies
An Extraordinar y Set of Benches for the Gossiping Ladies
Gossip n. idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others Old English godsibb "sponsor, godparent," from God + sibb "relative". Extended in Middle English to "any familiar acquaintance", later to "anyone engaging in familiar or idle talk" (1560s). Sense extended 1811 to "trifling talk, groundless rumor." * In many ways, it serves as a game. We, the participants of the game, know that it doesn’t have any satisfaction beyond the passing of the time but for that sole pur pose, it serves us well. The topics of gossip can vary but never seem to stray far from the themes of the children’s new school teacher, the children’s latest achievements and the talks on the latest anti-aging beauty regime. “Don’t you have anything better to talk about”: a common question asked by our husbands. I answer a curt “no.” Men just don’t understand. “Well I guess that is just the way things go.”
09 The Gossiping Ladies
The Solo Eaters
Specimen D *
Analysed from afar during lunch time at the food court. Fragile: Do Not Disturb
10 The Solo Eaters
The Solo Eaters
When I was in inter mediate school, I immensely enjoyed the film Mean Girls: an absolute artwork and commentary on the reality of American high school drama. There is a scene in the film where Lindsay Lohan’s character finds herself sitting in a bathroom cubicle eating her lunch by herself. The scene was both a sad moment in the film’s plot as well as an image that terrified a soon-to-be high school student in fear that this same reality would befall me in the coming year of starting at a new school. * Fortunately, this never happened, yet the memory of this thought was conjured as I observed the solo eaters of the downtown food court. Most of them seemed entirely content sitting on their tables with an empty chair in front of them. Some of them got quite comfortable, slipping off their shoes under the table and crossing their ankles, rubbing one feet on the other as they munched their way through. Others seemed concer ned. Deeply concer ned and every munch of their meal was partnered with a quick glance around as if some ominous spirit was watching them.
11 The Solo Eaters
An Extraordinar y Table for the Solo Eater
Eat v. to take into the mouth and swallow for nourishment; chew and swallow (food). Old English etan "to eat, devour, consume.” * To eat alone is a special occasion indeed. One can experience all the pleasurable satisfactions of consuming food while not thinking twice about how one looks doing so: “You have a little something in your teeth”, “My, you eat a lot for someone your size.” Nope, none of those remarks. It clears up a lot of space for thought on other things: the thoughts on the day at the office, the new inter n in marketing and even gently toying with the richer topics of life’s meaning. Bite one: a crunch of amalgamated flavors; crispy slices of chicken breast, juicy rounds of beetroot, thin wafers of fresh lettuce, the occasional spice kicks of the peri peri sauce, the comforts of the standard wrap. A dribble of sauce escapes the cor ner of my mouth and I let it do so, no hurry to move in immediate action as I take in the sensations of the first bite. Bite two: the pleasures are heighted once again but this time I think of my day; the new barista at my mor ning cafe, the kitten at the shop front on my way to work. They are idle thoughts, playfully filtering through my mind like an ‘old school’ slideshow presentation. Bite three: now that my taste buds are used to the sensations of the food, the mind begins to wander down a more condensed alley of my thought; thoughts of my dreams, pursuits and passions. To eat alone is a special occasion indeed.
12 The Solo Eaters
The Sand Pit Child
Specimen E *
Noticed as exhibiting curious actions at the edge of Queen Elizabeth Square around early after noon. Do Not Pet
13 The Sand Pit Child
The Sand Pit Child
The setup was simple: a shallow pit of sand stones. The child, no older than 20 months was placed at the cor ner of the setup, enthralled by the action of scooping the stones out from the pit to the ground surrounding the pit. The repeated action seemed to have no meaning, no pur pose. Yet the mechanical nature of the child’s ar m and the adamant sense of pur pose through which the child moved in this way, evoked a sense that perhaps, there was a reason for it all. * The kindergarten that I spend my earlier years featured a large sandpit in the outdoor play area. For such a simplistic idea, it was a popular site for me and my peers, plastic spades and bulldozer toys tagging along for the play. There was something so invigorating about the scooping of sand from one area and mounding it upon another. Was it the mechanical repetition of it all? The shifting of terrain through the power of one’s own hands? Perhaps, I am just overthinking the nostalgic memory: children are just fascinated by everything and sand is no different. Yet my mind tugs at attempting to put my finger on why: why the sand, why the pit, why the conviction in this repetitive motion?
14 The Sand Pit Child
An Extraordinar y Play Pit for the Sand Pit Child
Sandpit n. 1. a shallow pit or container holding sand for children to play in 2. (Mining & Quarrying) a pit from which sand is extracted 3. (Mining & Quarrying) an event organized by a gover nmental body, business enter prise, etc at which specialists from a wide range of disciplines are brought together to try to find a balanced solution to a given problem. * To take something out from one area means placing it in another. That is the law that gover ns this action. Through my own mechanics, my own motion and my own bare hands, I scoop the sand stones from the pit and mound a pile of separated mass to another ground. As one side seems to empty, the other side increases. As one side resembles a gaping hole, the other represents a mountain. All from the same matter yet opposite for ms: an opposition shaped by one simple motion from my own simple hands.
15 The Sand Pit Child
The Tired Tourists
Specimen F *
Spotted walking into the mall complex and finding rest at the food court on Level 01. Please Do Not Make Loud Noises
16 The Tired Tourists
The Tired Tourists
They had large backpacks strapped across three sections of their torso: the chest, the stomach and the hips. They walked with a slight bend in their back and matching pair of gently droopy eyes. The two lads were tired alright: 24 hours traversing the sphere of the earth can do that to a person. Walking bleary eyed through a clinical mall complex after such travels wouldn’t be the obvious agenda: yet there they were, two tired tourists strolling through the food court of the downtown mall complex, plonking down their gear and their weary bodies on the available empty chairs. * When I arrived in Berkeley for my exchange, I walked out of the SFO air port and couldn’t quite believe where I was. It had been a long jour ney to get to where I stood and an aching desire for rest consumed my body. Yet I was alone: no one was going to pick me up and take my bags, no one was going to call to see it I had landed safely. I was alone. With my backpack and a heavy travel suitcase I traversed to the shuttle bus and told the driver the address I would be going to. The state of one’s mind in such scenarios are split: on one hand you are trying to absorb all the new sights from this new place, yet you must also navigate through a set of pre-planned practicalities: transport, accommodation, cash, stay awake. It is an act of amusing paradox.
17 The Tired Tourists
An Extraordinar y Napping Bay for the Tired Tourists
Nap n. To sleep for a brief period, often during the day; doze. Middle English, from nappen, to doze, from Old English hnappian. * “Please�: I pleaded with the universe; just a little moment of rest. My body is weary and my mind is numb: please, just a little moment of rest. A space and time to breathe deeply and just think about the depth. A space and time to make vertical my body and gently realign the bones through the force of gravity. A space and time to close my heavy eyes and let them release the tension of being awake for so long. A little moment of rest. A little. Moment. Rest. Nap. Day. Night. Night in the day.
18 The Tired Tourists
Afterword
By the time I had observed all of these characters on the site, I realised that I myself had tur ned into a personal anthology containing each one of their stories. At this stage, my design is very much in compartments: an extraordinary sliver for the reading grandmother, an extraordinary bathroom for the bathroom people, an extraordinary set of benches for the gossiping ladies, an extraordinary table for the solo eater, an extraordinary play pit for the sand pit child and an extraordinary napping bay for the tired tourists. How to link one story with another will be the challenge of book three but in many ways, this practice of developing a design by starting on small intimate interiors and working from the inside out could be a practice in itself. The main realisation from the process of book two is the customised nature of each space: I now have a personal desire to provide for the people to whom I have begun to invest my thoughts and time; the ordinary people and their ordinary acts.
19 Afterword
BOOK TWO Fin