Design Philosophy Architecture_Clay: Constitution or Identity?

Final Essay: Clay (word count: 2583) ABPL90421| Design Philosophy Architecture (Kelly)Yutong Jin Instructor: Hélène Frichot

Figure 1. Footprint on clay

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Figure 2. Clay as brick

Figure 3. What if clay wants to be an arch?

1. Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.

2. Melbourne School of Desing, "ACAHUCH + OPEN HOUSE MELBOURNE - An exploration into the Miles Lewis Building Heritage Collection", https://msd.unimelb.edu.au/events/acahuch-open-house-melbourne-an-exploration-into-the-miles-lewis-building-heritage-collection 3. Wendy Lesser, " “You Say to Brick”: Louis Kahn Begins to Articulate the Ideas that Define His Architecture.", https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/spring/feature/louis-kahn-visionary-0 4. L. A. Paul, “The Puzzles of Material Constitution”, in Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x 5. Thomas, Katie, "Going Into The Mould: Materials And Process In The Architectural Specification". Radical Philosophy, 2022, https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/going-into-the-mould.

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Clay: Constitution or Identity?

“pleasure in the confusion of boundaries” -- Donna Haraway 1 A handmade brick found in the stables of St David's Anglican Church, Hobart in October 1973, now is exhibited as a part of the Miles Lewis Heritage Building Material Collection through the digital technology including 3D scanning and augmented reality. The Terracotta brick was made in the 1830s. Clay was formed into a rectangular 230*110*70 mm box.2 The architect Louis Kahn famously asked the question of brick’s identity, asking it “what do you want, brick?” and the brick purportedly repeated, “I’d like an arch.” 3 Importantly, Kahn expressed his respect for the material’s integrity, noticing the “authenticity” associated with its performance. However, there was one question he forgot to ask: what did the clay that composed the brick want to become? This question of Clay’s identity was addressed in the early classic puzzle of the Statue and the Clay, and Aristotle sees a statue as both its form/shape and its matter/clay.4 To understand the hylomorphic relation of clay, derived from Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of ‘becomings’, Gilbert Simondon suggests looking at material in terms of its chain of situated processes rather than the fixed identity.5 Beyond constituting a brick or a statue, clay has its own story of becoming and performing, multi-layer of clay’s identity are drawn acrosses boundaries. This is a story happened in the Parwan Valley, it is the story of clay. Clay whispers, if you listen.

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Figure 4. Wet clay soil packed and sealed in plastic bag

6.“Parwan Valley”. 2022. Academic Dictionaries And Encyclopedias. https://en-academic.com/ dic.nsf/enwiki/7199754.

7. A. Olshina and P. Hiew. “Kaolin in the Parwan Valley”, Geological Survey of Victoria Technical Record 1995/4, 1995, 5 8. Elizabeth Povinelli, “The There Figures of Geontology,” Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Capitalism, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 016 9. Ben Campkin,"Placing “Matter Out of Place”: Purity and Danger as Evidence for Architecture and Urbanism", https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2013.785579, 2013 , 10 10. Hélène Frichot, Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture (Baunach Germany: AADR, 2019). 9

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1. Above the land People were walking on the land of Parwan Valley, which was called Magpie valley once upon a time. It is located at the south of the Bacchus Marsh town center, 46 km west of Melbourne.In 1836, under the lead of Kenneth Scobie Clarke, they start settling in the area, planning, farming and extracting. 6. While scrabbing off the mud on their shoes, they pointed at the Werribee Formation, also referred to as the Yallock formation, which is one of the major Victorian source of high quality ball clay and kaolinite.

The clay pit hosts the economically significant clay deposits, consisting mostly of clay, sand, brown coal (lignite) and gravel, with some heavily ferruginised sands and silts. 7.

Geologists start to draw attention to the term “Anthropocene”, the epoch in which human distance outranks other geological forces. 8 Tracing back to the history of soil in Anthropocene, global soil change indicates how the Earth is transformed from a natural planet into to a human-natural system.

Clay as akin to dirt, it lies beneath our feet, amongst the neglected soil.

“Dirt is essentially disorder” as the Anthropologist Mary Douglas says, because it is “matter out of place”.9 Clay as purified mineral deposit, it offers great economical value that serves capitalist interest. Thinking about clay and its social system, the binary relation between ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’ was futher addressed by Douglas, as she explained, beyond hyginene, different notions are all relative and what is considered as a cultural mechanism of purification.8 It is also something that crosses boundaries, challenges decorum and contravenes norms. 10

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Figure 5. Hand print with clay

Figure 6. Finger print on clay 11. Geoges Ekosse, “Clays: A Gateway into the Future”, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40959189 12. Harold Cummins, “Ancient Finger Prints in Clay”, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1136661 13. Olga Raggio,“The Myth of Prometheus: Its Survival and Metamorphoses up to the Eighteenth Century” https://www.jstor.org/stable/750486 14. Deanne Gilson, “KARRINGALABIL BUNDJIL MURRUP, MANNA GUM TREE”, https:// rising.melbourne/wormhole/2021-melbourne-art-trams-deanne-gilson 15. Olshina and Hiew. “Kaolin in the Parwan Valley”, 3 , 5

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2.1.Underneath-ancient human trace Buried under layers of soils and minerals, clay also stands unique as one of the first raw material used by early human. The form of clay in pottery is often the only remaining substance that can indicate ancient civilizations such as in Persia, Greece, Mesopotamia, Ethiopia and Egypt.11 Fingerprints on ancient clay reflects the primeval human trace.12 Even long before that, in Greek mythology, human life began when Prometeus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure.13 Similarly depicted in the drawing of Indigenous artist Deanne Gilson: During the ancient time, Karringalabil the creator spirit in Parwan Valley also created the first man and woman out of clay, lived on a seabed with two major wetlands, bred by the Parwan and Spring Creek.14 However, the geological reality of clay is far older other than us human, than pottery, than statues.

2.2. Underneath-ancient ancient clay formation During the Miocene and Palaecone age, extensive weathering of rocks formed into clay minerals in Parwan. The weathered Palaezoic basement rocks, in particular the Lal Lal and Ingliston granites, produced pure clay deposits mainly in the north and west of the Parwan valley. Due to the presence of local organic material, the sedimentary deposits of Lower Tertiary often associated with lignite, introducing a certain amount of plasticity and bonding strength to the clay . 15

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Figure 7. Clay dirt with water

Figure 8. Forming lay clumps

Figure 9. Part of dry clay statue with water

Figure 10. Longer process to turn into clumps

16. A. Graham Cairns‑Smith. “Clay hypothesis of the origin of life,” Frozen Evolution, Mar 21,2022, https://www. frozenevolution.com/clay-hypothesis-origin-life.

17. A. Graham Cairns‑Smith. “Clay hypothesis of the origin of life,” 18. Louise Steel, "Feats of Clay: Considering the Materiality of Late Bronze Age Cyprus", https://doi.org/10.3390/ su12176942, 2020,1 19. Olshina and Hiew. “Kaolin in the Parwan Valley”, 5 20. Premier of Victoria.“New Signs Acknowledge Traditional Owners Of The Land”, https://www.premier.vic.gov. au/new-signs-acknowledge-traditional-owners-land

009 While biologically inert matter of clay is assumed to have helped the evolution of early forms of life, however, clay is never an inert material itself.16 In the process of forming natural silicates in solution, they preserve their external formal arrangement as they grow, snap, and regrow. 17 Clay as the agency of matter, it records and constitutes information.

Through material engagements with clay, cultural and technological knowledges of ancient time were informed, through provoking and enabling potter’s behaviour and identity, hence moulding a distinctive pottery style.18 During this process, people, materials and objects are all matter to form this relationship, addressing the relationality of the material world. As a substance, the malleability of clay allows it to be shaped, formed, and moulded into a multiplicity of identities, to work with water and fire.Through the transformation of clay into ceramic, depending upon an alchemy of material interaction, the boundaries between the matter of the potter’s hands and the substance s/he manipulates are blurred, merged into assemblage, becoming permeable and fluid.

3.1. Above the land: Soil Damage The clay sediment is transported predominantly from west and north, traveling across the two major wetlands, along the Parwan and Spring Creek. The Parwan Creek runs along the western, with woodland species surrounding its banks. 19 Parwan Valley was originally comprised by plains grasslands, originally owned by the Wadawurrung people, sitting on the border between the Woiwurrung and Wathaurong territories of the Kulin Nation. Due to the intensive agricultural and horticultural activities by colonial settlers, the land was exploited, transforming wilderness into paddocks, residences and associated outbuildings. 20

010 Clay in the area often contained significant quantities of salt due to soil salinization\. Between the presence of salt in the clay and proximity to overlaying basalt flows, teeth marks are found on clay banks as a result of exposure to sheep or other animals for salt licks. However, the presence of salt for clay is regarded as detrimental to the economical value of clay in ceramic application, since it acts as a flux that might lead to the collapse of fired particle before clay reaching its required firing temperature. The occurrence of salt will then further migrate to the surface of the clay objects being fired, bringing with them iron oxides, or other substances, which may discolor its surface. 21 3.2. Above the land: Extraction & Brick Production Nearby, a brick industry known as the Brick and Pipe operation is located at the south of the Bacchus Marsh town center. Since at least 1920, clay extracted from parwan valley through open pit method has been the major source for brick making, pottery and other ceramic application in Victoria. In 1850, a development plan proposes to produce 1500 jobs in the precint. While the Coser Settlement Act in 1904 further subdivide large estates into smaller lots and homesteads in the Parwan area for capitalist interests, it increases the demand of clay extraction and local brick cottage construction.The peak of mining activity was in the 1950s and the production rates reached to 60000 tones per annum. Following along, the Section 42 in the Act was considered as a huge success in terms of placing thousands of miners, labourers and tradesmen on smallholdings as “the salvation” in responses to the increased population. 22.

21. Olshina and Hiew. “Kaolin in the Parwan Valley”, 5 22. Noah Tyler, Stewart Thomso. "Parwan Employment Development Plan - Historical Cultural Heritage Assessment (Tardis) October 2020 - VPA". VPA, 2020, 5

011 With the external force impositioned by groups of humans, while eliminating the other kind, clay is situated within physical boundaries that drawn on Kulin Nation, inscribing the ongoing colonial violence of their both standardisation and sanitisation. Clay deposit from Yallock formation has been used to both contribute to and reinforce colonial economic growth and sovereignty that imposes oppressive hierarchy of rural land and forces land extraction.

Identified by Marx, the destruction of the original ecology is associated with the relation between soil and human production. In his first volume of Capital "All progress in capitalist agriculture.” He stated, the crisis of soil is caused by a continuous progress of robbing both the marginalised worker and the soil. 23 Under the effect of “civilisation”, the Parwan soil is exploited by the colonial intensive farming; while the worker and the indigenous is forced to live in and on dirt, on the ‘purified nature’ as a by-product of industrialisation.

Colonial capitalism has transgressed the boundaries of ecology within this dominant bourgeois social and cultural value systems, pursuing an urge towards cleancliness. Douglas critiques this hegemony without disempowering positivisms and relativisms, polarising the binary relation between ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’.24 Clay, soil, and human body is related, as how Marx saw dirt as constitutive of ‘civilisation’ along with order and beauty, cleanliness. Clay should be seen as compendium category for all events which blur, smudge and contracdict which confuses the boundary.25

23. JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER. "THE CRISIS OF THE EARTH: Marx's Theory of Ecological Sustainability as a Nature-Imposed Necessity for Human Production", https://www.jstor.org/stable/26161524,1997,1 24. Ben Campkin."Placing “Matter Out of Place,” 10 25.Donna Haraway. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," 149-181.

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Figure 11. Hand in clay

Figure 12. Hand in mould

26. Noah Tyler. Stewart Thomso. Parwan Employment Development Plan. 5 27. Thomas, Katie. "Going Into The Mould". 2 28. Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x 29. Thomas, Katie. "Going Into The Mould". 2 30. Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x

013 4. Clay and Brick; Matter and Form Built by the early 1950s, the Kerr Farmhouse was one of the oldest brick cottages in Parwan Valley, built from the clays of Parwan Valley, a representative of local societal changes described earlier. Located well away from a surveyed road, the complex was designed with proximity to a source of water, surrounded with muddy clayey soil, depicting the picturesque character of the Parwan Creek. Undergone numerous important historical period of alterations, the houses holds the significance of generations of history and aesthetic value in Parwan Valley. Fireplace mantels, entry door cases, pressed metal, these remained elements reinforces the imagery of the property as it was in the Victorian-era and Edwardian-era.26 In built environment, Simondon realised clay’s identity at different levels and scales of physical realities.27 Clay as a building material, when detached from its soil ground in Parwan Valley, extracted, and formed into brick cottage, clay is no longer recognized as such, its spirit and body become separated.28 At the same time, this separation caused the relegation of materials to the practical underside of architecture. Historical significance and its atheistic value become the only thing being valued and merited.

As a result of this occurrence, there is a propensity in both discourse and practices to conceptualize the form/materials interaction as a form/matter dyad, while form is often celebrated over matter; spirit is celebrated over body; brick is celebrated over clay.28 Rejecting this detachment and this trend of over-emphasized aesthetics in architecture, Simondon suggests that architect should “go into the mould itself ” to understand the dynamic journey clay undertakes, transforming along the way in terms of its hylomorphism.29 As Aristotle stated clearly, neither construction form nor matter is a substance without considering the other.30

014 5. After Over many decades of expansion and extraction, the producer Yallock formation only has a few of its reserves left. Along the Parwan creek, abandoned pits never remain quiet. While the perceived shortfall in Victoria’s ball clay resources, quarrying of clay in the Parwan Valley has also exaggerated the existing land exploitation and led to some as yet unresolved rehabilitation problems. Specifically, the Brick and Pipe operation in 1950s, caused unstable slopes on the hill, which subject to slumping on a scale of many 10’s of meters. Around the edges of the valley, especially towards the west, gullies and exposed slopes subject to water runoff. Along the Groves and Valley, eroded and drained materials has been running down to the Parwan creek, filling and cementing water body, contaminating the ground water and aquatic ecosystem with heavy runs off that increased the sediment load. 31 Without considering the ‘messiness’ and feral outcomes of its processing, clay is often turned into ecological ghost and monster by human force on this haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene.32 While removing earth surface, not only physical scar is left on land, but also particulate matter (PM), the primary type of pollutant in clay processing operation. Less than 10 micrometers (PM-10), it runs away easily from all dry mechanical processes, through crushing, screening and grinding. Together with carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulphur oxides (SOx), they escape from dryers and calciners, intimately contacting with people who have long-term occupational exposures to them, delivering severe structural and functional damage to lungs, haunting human through generations after generations.33

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31. “11.25 Clay Processing” , June 3,2022, https://www3.epa.gov/ttnchie1/ap42/ ch11/. p.g.8 32. A. Tsing, H.Swanson, N. Bubant and E. Gan, “Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene,” in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, eds. A. Tsing, H.Swanson, N. Bubant and E. Gan (University of Minnesota Press), 7.

33. “11.25 Clay Processing” , June 3,2022, https://www3.epa.gov/ttnchie1/ap42/ ch11/. p.g.12 Figure 13. Google Earth site lite image: Expansion of Yallock formation

016 6. Aftermath After over 60 years of active quarrying activities operated by Brick and Pipe Industries Ltds, the exploited landscape is then subjected to a series of rehabilitation efforts delivered by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. 34 The post-colonial policy has been focusing on the land rehabilitation of the area, investigating how to reduce water runs off, increase local biodiversity, and avoid sheet erosion. Ironically, all of the protective measures are around the purpose for further clay extraction and land exploitation while some them might causes even further ecological damage, as documented in 1953 Parwan Hydrological Experimental Area by the former Soil Conservation Authority35 : “remediating land by confining future operations”, “avoiding the steeper slopes around the edges of the valley” “ensuring that final slopes are gentle, covered in soil and re-vegetated progressively and promptly”.

The 'material-based phenomenology’ of clay, from Nick Coetzer’s perspective, 'is political in its erasing of any overt political traces'. 36 When comparing the destructive violence of agriculture and deforestation, the ecological impact of these protection scheme of prawn clay pit is undoubtedly positive. However, moulded by performative metaphor such as “decolonization” and “post-colonialism” ; these rehabilitation projects often shaped into tools for mitigating the effects of colonialism to further achieve indigenous elimination and territorial appropriation, segregating the boundaries between clay’s various identity and its surrounding.

Clay’s various identities in Parwan Valley are contradictory, partial and strategic (pg 72, cyborg). Above/Under the land of Parwan Valley, clay was once dirt, soil, mine, brick, pottery, statue; eventually they all turn to dust.

As Jay Owens reminds us, “there will be dust. There is always dust.” 37 Decay

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34. Olshina and Hiew. “Kaolin in the Parwan Valley”, 5 35. Anthony Y. K. Wu, R. Hartland, M. Papworth, "PARWAN HYDROLOGICALEXPERIMENTAL AREA" 1986, 3-4 36. Thomas, Katie. "Going Into The Mould". 5 37. Shannon Mattern (2018) "Maintenance and Care" in Places Journal (November). https://placesjournal.org/ article/maintenance-and-care/?cn-reloaded=1 (Links to an external site.)

Figure 14. Part of dry clay statue smashed into dust

018 and decomposition of material is inevitable1; In response to Peter Jackson’s ‘broken world thinking’ and Donna Haraway’s idea of ‘staying with trouble’, it’s important to recognise biases in the desire of repairing urban fabric.38,39 While facing the ongoing anxieties around social justice and inequality, Elke Krasny views connectedness and interdependency as an inherent condition—the built environment cannot be isolated from the political, social, and cultural fabric which have shaped positions for both architect and care workers.40 Similar in a way that clay’s true hylomorphic relation can’t be separated by mould, territories, tool used and social behaviors.

In this capital-centric built environment, architecture and urbanism play a crucial role in response to planet’s urgent condition. In searching for the ethic of care, if they exist, how could we mould ourselves into clay, smudging the boundaries between “us” and the “others”, embracing messiness rather than replace what was perceived as ‘broken’, to repair without causing further harm.

Figure 15. Hand with clay

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Figure 16. Hand in mould

Note: When I situated myself in a clay pottery workshop, instead of moulding it with my hand, I put my hand into the mould, I want to feel how clay feel.

I know that’s probably not what they mean by “putting yourselves into the mould”, but I still did, because that’s the quickest way for me to feel about clay when the deadline is rushing me through, when I was supposed to ‘slow down’ and 'hestitate'. 41 38. Steven Jackson (2014) "Rehthinking Repair" in Media Technologies, Essay on Communication, Materiality, and Society, 212-239 39. Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016).

40. Elke Krasny, "Architecture and Care" in Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny eds. (2019) Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, Vienna and Cambridge Mass.: Architekturzentrum and MIT Press.

41. Sophie Hochhäusl and Torsten Lange, T, et al. (2018) “Architecture and the Environment”, Architectural HistoriesHochhäusl_Lange_Field_Notes_Architecture_and_the_Environ.pdf, 6(1): 20, 5