The Way Space Feels.

I try to pay as much attention as possible to how I feel when I am in a building or in a space. It is in the feeling, the unquantifiable,… the immeasurable…., that the magic of Architecture is to be found!

Stepping into a space can make you feel a certain way. It can make you feel better or worse, than the time just before you moved into it. A space can communicate without words to evoke emotion and feeling in the person moving through it. Music can do the same thing to the person listening to it; speaking directly to the heart. Communicating the feeling, the emotion, in a way that words struggle to do.

We moved offices last week; less than a kilometre from our previous space in Cape Road; but the feeling of the new neighbourhood is quite different. The office we moved out of was a converted Victorian house. The one we have moved into is the third floor of a small, 1970’s mid spec office block. What feels most different however is the street or the urban quality. Our new office block is located on the corner of Clyde and Lawrence streets in Central. People walk up and down the pavement all day. It overlooks a small green park , there is a corner store just over the road and coffee around the corner in Parliament Street. I suppose it feels like a place where people belong and are meant to be. Our Cape Road office was on a busy street, cars rushing past. A very different character. Not nearly as suburban as the offices in Newton Park or Walmer, but still dominated by the Motor car. It did not feel as comfortable as this new space seems to feel.

It fascinates me that by arranging forms in a particular way; (walls, windows, pavements, park benches and kerbs), that people can be made to feel better or worse for passing through them. It fascinates me because to understand this magic, is to know good design. To own this knowledge is my dream.

Who built a Crooked House?

Architects are living through fantastic times in this city and South Africa generally. Not only is there an abundance of work, but a heightened awareness of the value that Architects are able to add to the built environment. There is such a lot of “cool” stuff to do, that I am worried that we try to do too much and loose out on the enjoyment of doing one thing well. I believe though that it is better to take action than to worry!

…So I have taken action.

I love beautiful buildings. Big buildings, small buildings. I love being inside them. The light, the sound, the way people use them. The way they sit in the city or landscape. I love the way these buildings are put together.

There is magic in that; and I am starting to reconnect with this magic.. What surprises me is that I have felt that reconnection not in the billion rand, high visibility, world beating projects running through our office, but rather in something a little more modest….

You see,.. my semi- retired father and I are building a wooden cottage in the Outeniqua indigenous forest. It is a very modest cottage built for family needs; rectangular in plan, with a double pitch corrugated iron roof. When I say we are building the house I don’t mean it as a metaphor for designing and drawing plans for, or a metaphor for sitting around watching the contractor’s progress. No; I mean we are physically, digging, measuring, cutting and fitting (and sometimes knocking down)

It has been great on two significant levels. Let me list them:

Firstly:

When physically building you are compelled to focus on one task. You are compelled to be present. Not to think about the next meeting or the previous phone call. How often do we get a chance to be focussed on the present? Especially those of us in management positions can lead a very fragmented and frantic existence. Many of us have powerful and creative minds but have created a reality for ourselves where we spread our input (and out impact) so thin as not to add the value that we could.

Secondly:

Building in the forest has helped me see the potential of my own hands and energy. I can actually build a house. WOW!
The real truth is that Murray and Roberts could probably build it a little neater. (OK,… a lot neater.) But it is not a competition. We are building the house because that is what we need to do to meet our needs and aspirations right now. We are not building the house to try to compete with Murray and Roberts! But what I am talking about here is something more widespread! A phenomenon that spreads across our lives and effectively limits what we believe we are able to do. We are intimidated by the corporate and media dominated world through which we move every day. We slowly begin to believe that we are not good enough to take action.

We cannot sing as well as Mariah Carey, so we will never dare to sing at a family dinner or in the pub.

We cannot tell stories as well as Stephen King, so why even bother trying.

Mom cannot make clothes as neatly as Edgars, so we’ll rather stay at home than be seen dressed in her homemade tracksuits.

We cannot build as well as Murray and Roberts, so lets not let people laugh at our crooked house!

The net result is that we become intimidated into inaction allowing big corporate and media giants to do for us what we used to do for ourselves, and it only takes a little time before we have lost our skills and our dignity forever.

I have in the forest found the joy and freedom of taking back that which I thought I had been robbed of. Cutting planks, laying boards, nailing trusses.

There is magic in that!

Antananarivo, December 17, 2006

I would like to be able to say that I published this blog from Antananarivo, but I am back in Port Elizabeth now. I did notice internet cafes here and there so I could have done it. I was travelling with my family though; and this was quite dificult. We got sick, the weather was hot and the language barrier was hard to overcome.

We only spent a morning in Antananarivo on our wat to Ifaty, near Toliar on the south west coast of Madagascar. "Tana" as it is known, could be a beautiful place. It is crippled with poverty and really needs a coat of paint. The city centre is surrounded by hills, the buildings are seldom more that 4 stories high and has a strange medieaval quality. Strangely absent (or out of sight) are any signs of corparate power or individual wealth. (like in Johanessburg or Soa Paulo where there is great poverty, but in the shadow of great wealth and power.)

I will return, but not soon.