Sitting where they do their best work. Unapologetically ideating bold and optimistic visions for new ways of living in & inhabiting space.
A collection of portraits, interwoven with personal histories, dreams of modernist architecture, of farewell and of longing.
An outdoor pause, while thinking of Falling Waters. You’d construct a replica out of LEGO one year, yet never travel to visit in this lifetime.
Falling through the open backed thonets while sitting at the oak dining table. A table that would later be sold, for it found no home in a room whose compromised support beams wobbled when walked on. Sorry sagging floor joists, damage caused by rising damp.
So long table, only room for chairs.
To realise his genius, he needed others to believe in his genius. Sketches on paper and even tiny balsa wood models would only go so far to represent his vision, his cultural production.
For his success, he needed a certain reciprocity, a reinforcement of upstream and downstream prestige, found in some elusive boardroom, somewhere he did not know.
Based on the bi-nuclear, he wanted to overturn almost every convention of suburban home design. Partition off the private from the public. Ample use of natural light. North facing aspect. Bauhaus palette.
The idea was simple, rods of beech wood, heated and bent around a form. Economical & minimal in it's design, he would anticipate those modernist desires for form to follow function.
To forecast the changing needs of future generations, the homes they will need, the trees they will sit under.
A bridge should be designed not for the traffic that needs to cross the river today, but for the traffic that will arrive, once we are all gone.
Always in the back of his mind: height of pitch, plumb bob, two by four, gable, hip roof, stud wall, offset noggins, top plate.
While other things may go, this knowledge will never fade.
Once a year the architects would gather, to bestow graces upon those who push the profession further. He waited for this night all year, then when it arrived he sat paralysed in self doubt, and remained dressed up at home in his chair.
Rolled up hems so the sea can touch his feet. He saw the dead bees wash up onto the sand and he wondered why they fly to the sea to die.
Suddenly his legs no longer worked, a stroke on the beach. Choppered off the beach, sand and dead bees spun up with the blades.
