The Secret Language of Surface
The super smoothness of contemporary architecture often makes it feel frictionless - as though you are skimming across its slippery surface. When you try to look at it, it simply confronts you with a reflection of something else - your own reflection peering back at you. Shininess is a quality applied to a material, rather than a material itself, and has become the dominant sensation of contempory-ness. We're drawn to shine with a narcissistic fascination - as though we were gazing at attributes of ourselves or at least our ideals reflected back. Somewhere in that sheen is the feeling that we have escaped the more gritty, earthly attributes: it transmits a sense of streamlined, dissolved materiality which approximate the liberated, weightless sensations of late capitalism. Finish lays a narrative of treatment over a materials inherent qualities - a process of etching refinement into unrefined material. Cultural meanings and value are applied by the techniques of production. Stone is cut by the sharpest blades, at the highest RPM, polished faster and flatter than it has ever been before. In comparison, the tools and techniques of other cultures and other times form very different qualities. None more so than blocks of rusticated stone, which reveal a wholly different set of concerns through the modulation of lumps of geology by chisels and mallets to form a gestural, textured surface. Rustication is all about roughness, a careful and precise kind of roughness, codified to represent aspects of the natural. In Renaissance buildings the ground floor is often faced with rusticated stone, with the piano nobile emerging from this rock-like plinth as though the architecture was a half finished sculpture. Rustication is rock-like, primitive, and base in comparison to the civilised architecture of the upper floors. Rustication takes a block of stone and carves it to make it look like a block of stone - a kind of logic that turns you inside out then spins you around for good measure. It artificially articulates an idea of stone - constructing meaning through its sculpting in a way that is both synthetic and real. The material is warped into form through mythological meanings of stone. Rustication takes narratives of origin and fate, of nature and culture, myths of creation and dramatises them into a building material. Ironically, that what looks natural is more constructed - more artificial - than the smooth dressed stone. There are many forms of rustication, differentiated by different decisions about how to manifest rustic-ness. Sometimes its a block with rough hewn surface, sometimes bordered with a flat-cut trim, and most strangely, vermiculated rustication. Defined by The Encyclopedia Britannica as "the carving or finishing of building stones with irregular grooves intended to resemble worm tracks, full of worms, or appearing as if formed by the motion of worms", rustication here becomes more fantastical. It becomes a cartoon version of stone, over-graphic and blow-up. The narrative of worm-eaten rock begins to suggest something horrific and grotesque - a fallibility undermining any pretensions stone architectures might have towards eternity. Though it is a part of a historical language of architecture, rustication shares a sensibility with certain kinds of contemporary culture. Think of fine arts interest in making the right thing out of the wrong material (or is it the other way round?) or furniture designs propensity to remake historical things in unlikely materials. A sense of perversity links these unlikely allies, along with the idea that surface carries with it stories and meanings beyond its physical properties. Historical viewpoints can open up vistas into contemporary practice that we didn't quite know existed. We could, for example, consider material experiments such as OMAs 'Prada foam' is a kind of futurist-rustication. Smooth, perforated and complex, it approximates something you might see through an electron microscope. Perhaps this micro-biology aesthetic is a high-tech re-mapping of Vermiculated Rustications morbid-anthropomorphic-narrative building material. Suggesting dissolution and decay in a boutique concerned with bodily beauty acts as a kind of ironic scenography - or a morality tale told through high-spec partitions.
Image via
Posted by anothersam at August 31, 2008 12:47 PM.
Contents:
More Scenes In Cartoon Deserta
Generic Powerpoint Template: Delivering Bad News
The Best New Building In London
Book Review: The Infrastructural City
The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition
Now Showing: John Baldessari Sings Sol LeWitt
Obscure Design Typologies: Life Guard Chairs
Osama bin Laden Cigarette Lighter: Novelty Products as Congealed Culture
Absurd Car Crashes: A Eulogy for J.G. Ballard
Now Showing: Dan Grahams 'Rock My Religion'
This Concrete 'O': On Serotonin, the M25, and the Motorik Picturesque
Church of the Literal Narrative
Philadelphias Floating Architecture
Now Viewing: Married To The Eiffel Tower
Le Corbusiers Image Hoard: Poeme Electronique
Giant American Signs: Original Learning from Las Vegas Footage
Giant Soviet Signs Cut Into Forests
Bricks Melted Into Icicles: Napalm Decorative
C-Labs 'Unfriendly Skies' & 'Bootleg' Volume
2 The Lighthouse: Self Storage & Architectural Hallucinations
Ceci N'Est Pas Une Pipe: Infrastructure as Architectural Subconcious.
Viva Sectional Cinematography!
Now Showing: The Installation of an Irreversible Axis on a Dynamic Timeline
Sim Seasons Greetings! The Rise of Neo-Winter
Geography in Bad, Festive Drag.
Simulations of Industry: High Tech Architecture and Thatcherism
From The Factory to the Allotment: Tony Wilson, Urbanist
Koolhaas HouseLife / Gan Eden: The Revenge of Architectural Media
Ruburb-ric: The Ecologies of the Farnsworth House
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham Redux
Acts of Un-Building: Timelapse Demolitions
Yard Filth: Next Years Hot Look
Stonehenge: A Black Hole At The Heart Of British Architecture
The Popemobile: Mechanised Robes & Motorised Architecture
The Secret Language of Surface
Information Fields: Agriculture as Media
My Bloody Valentine: Sound as Substance
A Cubist Copse: Gehrys Serpentine Pavilion
Spouting Off: Some Thoughts On The Fountainhead
Form Follows Dysfunction: Bad Construction & The Morality of Detail
Vintage Tradeshow Surrealism: International Grune Woche
Moving Houses: Buildings In Motion
Desktop Study: The Strange World of Sports Studio Design
Married to the Eiffel Tower: More Objectum Sexuals
60 Years of The Crazy Horse Memorial
Married to the Berlin Wall: "The Best and Sexiest Wall Ever Existed!"
Inflatable Icebergs: Sublimated Guilt Has Never Been So Fun
The Cinderella Effect: Phantom Architectures of Illumination
Two Deaths and a Retirement: The Strange Shape of British Architecture
If London Were Like New York: Antique Schizo-Manhattanism
If London Were Like Venice: Antique Geo-Poetic Speculations and Hydro-Fantasy
41 Hours in an Elevator: The Movie
NASA: Mapping the Moon with Sport
Lemon Squeezy: Design Tendencies after the Juicy Salif
The Nihilistic Beauty of Weapons Arranged in Patterns
Dogs: Britains Greatest Design Obsession
Detroit Sucks: The Motor Shows Last Gasp
Authentic Replicas: Football and the Franchising of Place
Folk Football: Landscape, Space and Abstraction
A Wishing Well with a Fat Up Pipe
The Camoufluers and the Day-Glo Battleship
Pseudoccino: Instant Coffee Foam
Blown Up: More Inflatable Military Stuff
On Christmas Trees, Folk Forests and Staples Office Supplies
Hampton Courts Shrouded Sculptures
Named Fabric: 20 Sponsored Pieces of Architecture at the New Museum
Form Follows Felony: The Secret Home of the Un-Dead Canoeist.
Architectural Magazines: Paranoid Beliefs, Public Autotheraphy - More on Clip/Stamp/Fold
James Bond Lives Next Door: Suburban Imagery as Industry
The Ghost of Christmas Futurism
Chapters for an Imaginary Book About Architecture
Shrouded Plinth - Urban Striptease
In the Night Garden - Surreal Landscape of Nostalgia
Kim Jong II, The Great Architect
Place Faking: Instant Heritage for the Thames Gateway
The Marc Bolan Memorial Crash Barrier.
Enjoy The Silence: Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham
In Search of Britains Vehicular History
Scary Suburbanism: Why Horror is at Home in the Suburbs
I Like Your Manifesto, Lets Put it to the Test-o
How to Become a Famous Architect
Northampton - Sci-fi Pop Planning Promotion
Advertising Central Milton Keynes
The Velvet Underground at the Glass House
Duplikate: Kate Moss on the Production Line of Individuality
Hollow Inside: Starbucks Foam and the Rise of Ambiguous Materials
Revisions to the Architecture of Hell
Crufts: Dogs, Design and Aesthetic Genetics
Eos Airlines: Executive Bubbles over the Atlantic
Google Earths Vertiginous Mapping
Church of the Ascension and Descension
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
Reading Lines: Skateboarding and Public Space
Chris Cornish: Prototyping History
The Most Visited Location in the UK
Anything to Feel Weightless Again: The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort
'Its beauty will know no season'
2000 Years of Non Stop Nostalgia. Or How Half Timbering Made Me Whole Again.
Backpeddling into the Future: The Historical-Futurism of British Architecture
Miss Selfridges' Feeling for Fake Snow. The Oxford St. Lights and Why We Need Artificial Winter
New Tory Logo: A Hazy Shade of Politics
Jeff Koons, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine
Celebrity Scents: The Bittersweet Smell of Success
Imperfect Pitch - Football, Space and Landscape
Product Placement: Making the Impossible Possible
Suburban Growth: Matthew Moores Field of Dreams
Perfect Sound Forever: The Secret Function of High End Stereos
A Little Light Product Placement
Some Advice To A Young Designer
Useless Proclamations for a Beautiful City
Topsy Turvy VSBA: Inverted Heros of an Upside Down Avant Guard
Everything Flows: ideological cartography
How Geostationary Was My Valley?
The Psychotic Utopia of the Suburbs and the Suburbanisation of War.
In a Lonely Place - Under Construction
Mach 3 Nitro Gel - Design that's foaming at the mouth.
Marchitecture. Architectural things to do in London this March
What happens when you cross a pen with a car?
Football Pitch: Best of British
The First Cut is the Cheapest - Blenheim Palace: pop architecture that goes for the jugular
Holiday Snap II : Giant Glowing French Balls
Holiday Snap: Canadian War Memorial, Vimy, France
Anatomy of an Architectural News Story
Its All About the Big Benjamins
Poundbury, unexpectedly, in the rain
The Exploding Concrete Inevitable. Lou Reed and the Casa da Musica
Untitled (Plastic Sack and Timber)
Berlin 1945 - The Obscene Picturesque
Interview: Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane
An Incredible Smell of Roasting Coffee
Langlands & Bell - The House of Osama Bin Laden
Architectural Criticism gets Sharp
Venturi, Scott Brown and my love that dare not speak its name.
Douglas Coupland: Design and Fiction
Christopher Dresser at the V&A
Fugitives and Refugees' - Chuck Palahniuk
Just What is it That Makes Yesterdays Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Everything Counts - The Sound of Geography Collapsing.
Other:
|
Links:
IconEye
Leave a comment