In Place of the Page::::::building

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	In this current phase of In Place of the Page, Katie Lloyd-Thomas and I (Brigid Mc Leer) have been finding and deriving a building from the textplans made so far. As this process has developed we have discovered more and more about, not only what this building might look like and where it might be sited, but also its function. At present we know that the building will have 3 main functions; 1. it will be a storage and access space for a developing archive of personal place-stories, contributed by and gathered from the general public 2. it will be a paper-recycling centre, where waster paper will be turned into new sheet paper, which in turn may then be used by people on which to write their place-stories. 3. it will be a meeting, exhibition and resource space These functions of the building relate to the project overall and bring together its main themes of discursive space, writing, place and translation or transformation. We are of course still in the process of making the textplans and designing the building. And information on these developments will be added to the site as they emerge. Below are links to; • a text by Katie Lloyd-Thomas about her process of finding architectural plans out of the textplans • an animated movie of the finalised plans so far (made in connection with PVA media centre, Dorset) - this will grow and change as the building plans develop • some examples of the sketches done from the textplans and the emerging architectural drawings architects process - katie lloyd-thomas flash movie (launches a new window) building plans Architectural drawings - katie lloyd-thomas Usually an architect starts to design with a blank sheet or screen and a site and brief to frame her imaginings. But the process of finding a place in Brigid's text plans has been instead a decoding of some drawings that already exist. I will eventually have the complete package, but they are handed to me as if they are slowly being found in some untidy archive, without the titles, scales and drawing numbers that would usually inform their correct reading. I am fascinated by the processes I use to translate these drawings, and by the architectural conventions I adopt in order to make sense of them. I read them as orthographic drawings: plans, sections and elevations, and give them a fixed scale (sometimes using drawings as more than one projection and more than one scale, a site plan is also the detail of a door). I allow myself to copy them with the mechanisms of the architect, but edit and omit with unprofessional abandon. The drawings are full of words that sometimes become forms and spaces, but are also read as titles or labels, clues to the functions and materialities of the spaces. Instead of 'entrance' I find 'doors to this dialogue', instead of 'ventilation' I discover 'thresholds mediate freshness'. The first reading of the drawings is often rejected, because it won't fit with other drawings. When drawings seem to match in more than one dimension or scale I feel I am getting closer to the 'real' place, and seek words that will offer confirmation of my intuitions. I watch myself wrestling with these drawings to make them conform to the assumptions and logic of my discipline. I watch myself making place as an architect. drawings Brigid has been giving me these drawings. The first ones were a palette of icy blues and mustards. Words that move between poems instructions passages confirmations were organized in blocks and rows. Letters had become structure - all tension and compression. Door swings and string-like lines wandered through spaces of colour and whiteness. Brigid told me that somewhere in these drawings there was a place, and that an architect could find it. I set myself some rules. 1.attribute to each drawing a conventional scale. 1:5 1:20 1:50 1:100 1:200 1:500 2.read each drawing as a standard orthographic projection. Plan section elevation (later I decided also to include sketch not to scale) 3.each drawing may be interpreted at more than one scale, in reverse, and in repetition. 4.interpret words as labels: descriptions titles activities materials It was only by setting these rules that I was able to look at these drawings as an architect. finding When I started studying architecture I thought that for every brief there existed a right and perfect solution that, if I tried hard enough, was there to be discovered in the realm of confident conclusions. It never occurred to me that for every brief there were a multitude of possible solutions that I myself could invent. So now I am engaged again in what I once believed the architect's task to be - 'finding' the building, for it exists already there between the blue yellow drawings, in the word clues and links between pages. So close in my mind, these two processes, one of uncovering, the other of inventing. I have to remind myself that I am not a detective but an imaginer of possibilities. That I am playing not unearthing, an agent not a recipient. But it is easy to forget all of this because this game is also a discipline. And that discipline is exactly what enables architects to forget they always also play. I found the entrance first. A bridge that led across a watery shifting place to a series of doors where one could deposit spoken and written words. The package of drawings is given to me incomplete and, gradually, missing drawings arrive that contain new information. A circulation space appears, stairs, spaces for storing and conversation. I am finding places at the largest scales, and at the tiniest. I realize that I have a site plan of a dock that matches one I have seen on a London map. And a detailed drawing of a transparent chamber that sits between hot and cold, condensing an unseen speaker's breath against a visible glass plate. Will the exit be the last page to arrive? copying I have chosen to translate Brigid's drawings into a place by copying. I am selective, and do not copy everything, but so is whatever apparatus I use. Another history of architectural practice might be written through its modes of copying. For each technique prefers certain kinds of information and omits others. Each technique encourages a particular kind of place making. tracing Mostly I trace Brigid's drawings. Tracing is a kind of copying, always from something already there. Tracing, unlike printing or rubbing or photography, prefers outlines - it is 'outline loving'. It can transform the amorphous into the prescribable. Some changes in colour or tone, some densities of texture and information, are mopped up by the thick greyness of the tracing paper, soaked into it, blotted, lost to the copy. Before tracing paper was invented in the nineteenth century architects would soak their paper in oil, so it became translucent, smelling, tactile. The oil must have left traces on the finished copy, when you pressed into the paper to transfer the lines. The oiled paper would dry crispy and fragile, and shred into fragments and flakes. My tracing hardly changes Brigid's drawings. Only little blu-tack stains, remnants of masking tape leave their sticky marks on the smooth laser-printed paper. If I choose, they might also become part of the building I am drawing. pricking Sometimes I use a compass to copy a form. The pricking is point-loving. It sees ends of lines and their intersections only, it is blind to contour or thickness of line. The wholeness of the original is punctured, voided by tiny holes, that leave ridges for fingers to run their ends across. Even before tracing, architects used pricking to copy drawings. By laying the drawing over a blank sheet of paper they pricked through each time a line changed direction or met another line. And then, jumping from one node to another, they filled in the space between. Architects assume that the fine lines between nodes will be straight - sometimes I find myself straightening Brigid's strings, and other times I join the dots just as I please. photocopying I (enlarging and reducing) Enlarging and reducing (to write) photocopying II (reversing) It seems to me that Brigid's drawings have not all arrived the same way round. When I try to put them in a spatial sequence, they don't join together in the expected progression. For example, doors must always come between outside and inside, at the threshold here between sea and entrance hall, but these drawings have doors that lead nowhere, or back to the sea again. It is a simple move to copy the drawings onto acetate so that they can be reversed and order restored. At once the drawings have a front and a back, I can move around them, cross the threshold. The acetate is wall-loving. Like Durer's perspective screens, the acetate transforms three dimensions into two, squeezes a space into a plane. It turns each drawing into a depthless section, a flatness with transparent ways through, porous wooly materials, dense defined edges. photocopying III (repetition) Although the pages Brigid gives me have edges, the drawings often appear partial. They leak off the page, fade into whiteness, refuse to be completed objects. If I am to believe these drawings, the place they describe is impossibly fragmented, each space merges into another without transition. But I read them as an architect who only draws a component once for the builder, who can make the part many times from one instruction. I make multiple copies of components and paste them together. This way the building grows quickly, it extends and occupies my page, it takes up space. Repetition is mass-production loving. I remember those buildings I have visited where every capital has a different face peering out, another animal nestling in the carved foliage, and wonder why other architects of old drew the same detailed scrolls and volutes on so many columns even before they could press the copy button. reading poems instructions passages confirmations email katie lloyd-thomas Building Plans 1/ made_siteweb 2/ paperpulpscan 3/ bridgeweb 4/ paperwallweb 5/ hmmotionscan_wb 6/ plumbingdrawweb 7/ sitealaricscan_wb 8/ paperwall2web 9/ mhmotiondrawingwb 10/ bridgedrawingweb 11/ sitemapweb 12/ sydneydrawweb 13/ echodoorweb
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