December 2012
robertjgrover@gmail.com philip.shelley@gmail.com wickham.matthew@googlemail.com acinusa@hotmail.com marcus@rothnie.org joshuawaterstone@gmail.com
Front Page Fragment of the Forma Urbis of Rome Piranesi, 1756 Richard Serra
‘I never begin to construct with a specific intention; I don’t work from a priori ideas and theoretical propositions. The structures are the result of experimentation and invention. In every search there is a degree of unforseeability, a sort of troubling feeling, a wonder after the work is complete, after the conclusion. The part of the work that surprises me invariably leads to new works. Call it a glimpse; often this glimpse occurs because of an obscurity which arises from a precise resolution.’
The Fragment as a means of understanding an a priori condition
Joshua Waterstone
PROMPTING A QUESTION OF ARCHITECTURAL INTENT In doing so there is a risk that we imagine the jug as an object with scientifically quantifiable
At this point a leap is made between physical artifact and imagined object, in which one’s mind begins to turn the potter’s wheel and complete the piece to one’s own specifications; the length and shape of the spout, the width of the handle. Our own thoughts and judgements form the remaining fragments of the piece, such that if another person were to study the same fragment a different imagining may be arrived at.
A chance discovery of a fragment from a ceramic jug reveals more to us than just the fragment itself. Our understanding of its material quality, its weight, thickness, age and colour instantly give us an idea of what the whole jug may have been like. Its curvature and surface texture give us an impression of the size of the original jug and how it was made. An image forms in one’s mind of how the vessel may have looked and felt.
Martin Heidegger
Rather, the architect can try to imbue the
‘Rational’ judgements are difficult to arrive at: the weather or the time of day can change the feeling of a place. The site that the architect seeks to understand and in some way to add to is not a fixed object but rather a shifting, changing, decaying place inhabited by living people. The fragments added or removed are not of a discernible whole that can ever be completed - to try to do so is futile.
The reading of a building, street or city similarly informs us of a multiplicity of different pieces of information more layered and complex than those of the jug fragment that we can hold between two fingers.
properties rather than a thing which is part of and defined by nature; that it has a cultural authenticity that goes beyond being a utility for man.
‘In the gift of water, in the gift of wine, sky and earth dwell. But the gift of the outpouring is what makes the jug a jug. In the jugness of the jug, sky and earth dwell.’
Matthew Wickham
A FRAGMENTED WHOLE
The best outcome is that the material pieces they have added each belong and have an interconnectedness that allows them to offer themselves forth not just as objects quantifiable by their weight or volume but as things with a nearness and specificity that is able to gather together man, culture and place.
fragments which they add, be they as small as a door handle or as large as a city block, with qualities that are felt in the neighbouring pieces and that connect one with an idea of an imagined whole.
Cutting Device: Base Plate-Measure The integrity of Serra’s work is concomitant with its process. In ‘Cutting Device: Base PlateMeasure’ a number of diverse elements are juxtaposed to separate and divide the piece. The activity of cutting restructures the field, informing the relationship between disparate parts in a way other than the literal juxtaposition of individual elements. What is poignant is that it takes into account the simultaneity and contradictory nature of the elements present and sorts them into a discernible historical continuum. The significance of it lies in its ethic not its intentions, Serra sets out to constrain the work in a qualified way, or in his own words ‘it’s how we do what we do that conjures a meaning of what we have done’. Serra establishes his own a priori in the way each architectural context presents its own frame and ideological overtones. Serra’s approach and ethic would suggest it’s a matter of the degree to which we choose to interpret them. A prompt, a comparison Richard Serra is referring to the ethical intent of his work, what is gleaned from a critical process, however he could just as easily be referring to an architectural condition or possibly even an approach to making architecture, something implicitly fragmentary. I would argue this architecture like Serra’s work is not gestural, not absolutist, not prescriptive of a ‘modus operandi’, not nostalgic, and not adding to a syntax that already exists. This architecture is ‘not looking for affirmation’ or complicity, the emergence of this architectural work as with Serra’s sculpture ‘relies on the process of its making’, not the augmentation of an existing language. A fragment.
Contributors: Robert Grover Philip Shelley Matthew Wickham Alastair Crockett Marcus Rothnie Joshua Waterstone
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fold
thinking about architecture
Issue #01
Fragment
This capacity for implication is often enhanced by another property of fragments: that their edges are irregular, uneven, often implying the larger programme of which it was part; of pattern, for instance, or, where location is
In this sense, fragment also implies value. Accordingly, we rarely speak of worthless fragments, but rather bits and pieces. The value of a fragment often depends of what it can tell us about itself and what it can, by implication, tell us more about the things of which it was once part, as well as how it was made. As such, fragments are a form of physical memory; a matrix from which reconstruction can be attempted.
If dust is the destiny of all objects, then fragmentation is the medium-term plan. The fragment is such a ubiquitous figure, we are likely to forget its presence. The very concept is part of a common European cultural inheritance, even the word is shared by most European languages, passed down, mostly in tact, from the Latin fragmentum. It’s telling that more equivalent vernacular words have not performed so well. German, for instance, has Bruchstück (‘broken piece’), but Das Fragment refuses to step aside. Etymological depth grants words a kind of power that they might otherwise lack; a license to signify more than the literal.
Philip Shelley
EMBRACING THE FRAGMENT
Fragmentation can of course also be destructive. It could be argued that the point at which fragmentation becomes undesirable is where the different branches of knowledge and practice can no longer be understood in relation to one another, when the outline of the whole schema is no longer discernible; where fragmentation is disguised as pluralism, when artificial boundaries between disciplines harden, as their common understanding and purposes wither away. Our knowledge is necessarily incomplete, but our thought and actions should, in some sense,
As for architecture, might the idea of the fragment go beyond that of physical substance (of, say, building conservation) to be extended to the immaterial, acknowledging its role in the subject and character of our thinking? Might there not be value in embracing the fragmentary quality of knowledge in architecture, rather than pretending it is some organic whole, or ignoring the problem entirely?
preserved, of the arrangement of entire building complexes over time. Even small fragments thus possess an implicate order, which can only be recreated by the efforts of people: by the application of scientific techniques together with the cultural acts of interpretation, discussion, and communication of such insights.
In the meantime, an increased openness would be welcome, creating a kind of practice more interested in incorporating valuable precedents and existing structures, with architecture as a social art and cultural practice.
The corrective shift towards a more complete architecture is underway, with thinking and teaching increasingly taking place close to practice. Accepting the fragmentary quality of knowledge, our task is to make it and its overall shape more coherent. This task involves a kind of curation – interpretation, ordering, narrating, setting in place. Indeed, the whole question of how architectural knowledge is to be held and perpetuated in the digital age should also be contended. Sites such as art.sy, an attempt to create a structured public repository of art, promise future revolutions in how we might share and order architectural knowledge in the near future.
always take account of the larger picture, and the full purposes and potentials of how we shape the world around us. One precarious consequence of this over-fragmentation is the present schism between designers and society, in which the social dimension of architecture in particular is either mistrusted, forgotten, or marginalised, both within and outside of the discipline.
In contrast, there are those projects to which photographs will not do justice. I refer to those that play to all the senses of touch, smell and sound as well as sight, or are just incapable of true enjoyment without a visit. It is for such buildings that the fragmentation of architecture through imagery is most frustrating, diminishing a carefully considered creation of space into a representation that can never fully recreate the original.
We live in an environment where much architectural communication and education is through publication and the limited perspective provided by imagery. Our understanding of architecture is warped by use of this single form of medium, reducing a building to a single set of photographs and formal drawings. I would argue that reliance on a set of prints for an appreciation of the built form leads to miscommunication from these fragments. This miscommunication allows for both intended and accidental misrepresentation of a building by its author.
During our education, we are taught of the significant movements and figures of the past through key buildings. However, very rarely do we receive this tuition through visits to such important projects, rather via presentations consisting of a brief photographic overviews and glimpses of formal plans. This does not lead to a position where we truly understand the significance of such works, but rather develop a superficial view of how we consider the physical form depicted in the imagery. Possibly this is just the result of a world where there is so much to see, and a limited time in which to experience it. We are required to resort to fragments, as anything larger would limit the number of projects it would be possible to discover. For a weak project, this fragmentation can be beneficial, highlighting positive aspects, and failing to comment upon those less successful. For an excellent work, this fragmentation can be detrimental, as the limited capacity of such publication methods leaves the reader without the true level of understanding that a visit would provide.
A STUDY OF FRAGMENT It could be considered that the awareness that a project will be primarily experienced through a number of photographs may lead to a designer creating merely a building sufficient to provide these photograph opportunities and nothing further. An example of this could be a private dwelling. The architect wishes to use the project for publicity and generating further work once completed. By providing a building that will satisfy five or six camera snapshots may achieve this publicity brief, whilst not necessarily producing a great work that best serves the needs and aspirations of the client.
Maybe this fragmentation is why modern buildings often feel so overdone, excessively borrowing features from many precedents that lead to a cobbled together composition with no over riding aesthetic or character. The wealth of fragmented influences that we have at our fingertips leads to a cluttered mind and subsequently over-busy architecture. If we were to reduce the quantity of architectural snippets that we view, and rather concentrate on the quality and depth of architecture that we experience perhaps we, as the next generation, can fully understand the buildings that we want to create and form an era of architecture that cannot be summed up by fragmented images. Alastair Crockett
MISCOMMUNICATION THROUGH FRAGMENTATION
AN ELUSIVE REALITY
Robert Grover
On the western side of the PlaÇa de Carles Buïgas stands a low horizontal building. Its form is unclear; a white horizontal roof to the north appears to float above a reflective void offset, by a solid plane of pale stone to the south. It is an object of illusion; reflections and transparencies distorting the perception of a physical reality.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion is a place of ambiguity; it is simultaneously knowable and incomprehensible, rational and chaotic, simple and complicated. Solid walls appear to dissolve whilst transparent planes become voids of infinite reflection. It is clearly a building of heavy stone yet floats as though its mass is inconsequential. Inhabiting this structure is like being the edge of Nirvana, yet never being able to achieve enlightenment.
Mies walks a precarious tightrope, traversing a fine line between tantalising ambiguity and meaningless incoherence. Despite its careful detailing and fine craftsmanship The Barcelona Pavilion appears to us incomplete; a piece of reality that alludes to a larger whole beyond the physical limitations of its walls. The building is a fragment of an elusive whole, an allusion to a higher reality slightly beyond reach.
This fragmentary architecture runs counter the Quixotic pursuit of an architectural ideal. A reductionalist world view lends itself to the belief that buildings can become the physical manifestation of rationalist thought. The results are invariably disappointing as they never achieve the ideal they seek to pertain, serving as monuments to the fallibility of man.
The mystical world of the Barcelona Pavilion is a place for dreaming. It is not a failed attempt to achieve a Platonic ideal but a fragment which stimulates personal transendence to an elusive higher reality.
Marcus Rothnie