Building with Particulars

A UTOPIAN VISION:

"A mythical isle of runaway children who inhabit ruins of old castles or build totem-huts & junk-assemblage nests"

-Hakim Bey TAZ

Bey's imagined society is far more practical, accessible, even normal than its fantastical language conveys. This form of building/dwelling-- "to use local, found materials simply because they are there, usable and natural, and to let them determine one's aesthetic, rather than to use them because one believes in it" (Higgins, Fantastic Architecture*)--has always been the modus operandi of nomads, pilgrims, squatters, and more recently, occupiers. This is a process-based form of building/dwelling, in which the architecture of a place emerges through a moment to moment engagement with its particularities.

"What did I notice? Particulars! The vision of the great One is myriad."

-Allen Ginsberg Wales Visitation

A morning walk reveals discarded wood, sheet metal, splintered furniture--all useful for construction, dwelling. An afternoon walk reveals a disused wood shed, an abandoned factory, a cave--all useful for cultivation, dwelling. Rather than possessing intrinsic beauty (the myth which drives commodity fetishism), the beauty of the materials is revealed thru their use. This is a place that emerges and re-emerges thru the fragmentation and creative recombination of its particular materials.

The building/dwelling practices of Drop City, a 1960s intentional community located in Southern Colorado, provide a useful illustration. The community consisted of a network of geodesic domes and zomes, constructed from locally foraged materials--car tops, bottle caps, nails, two by fours, railroad ties, chicken wire. In mark matthews' Droppers, founder E.V.D Bernofsky explains "During the construction period , we were always accumulating found material from around the area. We would assemble it into massive collages...the domes themselves became collages that we could get inside of". In Drop City, shelter was born of an art practice and was experienced as an inhabitable art object. Its architecture emerged from the active engagement of the Dropper's imagination with their place.

Our cities and towns have long been suffering the residual effects of another form of utopian building--one in which imagination is imposed on place, rather than engaged with it (see practitioners Haussman, Le Corbusier, Moses). Sterility, boredom and unrest arise from this form of building; overdetermination suffocates erratic currents of vitality and creativity, and as a result, inhabitants of such environments often express these forces through frustrated destruction (consider last year's London riots: the project of an energized community, like Drop City, but one of quite different character). Home delivery of food and entertainment means high rise residents find little reason to leave their castlekeep, children's play occurs in determined spaces like playgrounds and pools , wilderness is experienced in its constructed form--parks, walking is most commonly practiced while shopping.**

Such a form of building alienates inhabitants from their place, because there is no detectable trace of place (context) in the structure itself. Monuments of steel and glass may provide a sweeping view of a place, but they do not facilitate an intimate engagement with it. In an ideal process-based practice of building/dwelling, when inside, what is outside should be visible, not simply through the windows, but in the structural materials, style, indigenous attitude of the structure. Viewed from the outside, the structure should be fluidly integrated in its place, indistinguishable from the character of its context. This seems to be an intuitive, practical form of building, applicable to every place, invoking every place. Considered in comparison, Le Corbusier's vision, for all of its socio-political rationality, ultimately seems more mythical than Bey's "isle of runaway children", because his method is rooted in design principles rather than Particulars, citizenship rather than human agency.

*Hoping to post a .pdf of the full text soon

**But do not despair! There will always exist holes in such seemingly comprehensive projects as gentrification, urban renewal, civilization, etc. These oases--buildings under construction, abandoned buildings, cryptoforests--which escape overdetermination by neglect or incompletion, have a more 'open' character, and thus provide meaningful play/exploration opportunities.