Hope

Still images from the garden during Spring 2021.  Looking for colour, shadow and light variations.  Hopefully they make you feel hopeful during these final days of lockdown. 

Layers of reflection from lockdown

I'm quite drawn to the layers in these images: glass, timber frame, refracted light, foliage, self portrait and differing building styles/eras coming into question through their reflection in a modern-designed building.  It made me excited to see the house from a different angle as I've been confined to the same views for so long now. Hopefully these images they're a contrast to the 'sameness' of the recent images I've published here. 

 In today's light: 

Framing the staircase

Condensing space 

I love making architectural models.  I feel like the only way I can think logically, but also imaginatively, about space and atmosphere, is to condense it on a smaller scale.  

I'd love to make model reconstructions of all of the memorable spaces I've inhabited, as I imagine them in my head: my bedroom, childhood house, the classrooms where I'd have philosophy and art classes in high school, bookshops, cinemas, the inside of an airplane going to London.  Enclosed spaces of solitude and daydream... where I've dreamt of the external world and where I've been most creative.  I like the thought that the models would condense and contain all of the feelings and thoughts experienced within these dream spaces.

This a W.I.P model for a current design project: a continuous undulating roof and opaque curved walls form a corridor and guide linear movement out into the landscape.  It's a space that's intended to act as a  corridor to access inspiration and connection for those living within the oppressive and capital-driven confines of a suburban housing development.

The anticipation of moving towards something; either the camera lens or the mystery of what might lie at the end of a corridor

Additional images to accompany the previous post:

Stills from footage

In addition to the previous post, I'm also thinking about promenades, arcades, laneways, corridors and tree-lined paths as framing devices for this same project.  Here are some stills from footage I took to think through these linear, horizontal spaces.  

Working on a new project looking at contrasting weights and forms; weight and weightlessness.  These pillars gently support (in a Glenn Murcutt-inspired 'to touch the earth gently' way) an undulating roof that ascends over the landscape and appears almost like a bridge over the Yarra. 

I finally went searching for this house that I've been admiring from a far distance.  It's perched on an escarpment that leads down to a creek and is partially hidden behind clusters of spindly eucalyptus.  The house curves around, imitating the countours of the hill and drawing reflections of the trees into its panoramic glass facade.  The modernist influenced exposed truss-like steel structure and the terracotta-coloured strips embellished across the top and bottom initially reminded me of Richard Rogers's houses. 

There doesn't seem to be any information on the house or architect online, so I'm not sure of its provenance.  This is also as close to it as I could get; slightly closer, by the embankment looking up through the trees. 

Concealed, diffused, revealed

One square of clear vision of the view out through my bedroom window and another of hazy and subdued light through opaque glass. 

Passionate purple flowers are subjected to gradual alterations of light as I work at my desk and try to make sense of things.  There are changes in colour and perception, as the desk lamp moves, and as I try to overcome difficult emotions, thoughts and tasks.

                                         

                        shifting                 

                                         

                    light                     

                    purple, green, white 

intensifying and coming to a desirable conclusion.                     

                                         

And then finally there is relief as things do in fact come together, deadlines are met, etc. 

Stills of various views from out the windows of my house.  Looking out for ideas, longing for connection and trying to contain my grief after receiving dire news regarding my dog's health.  

From Spring of 2019

I took these images while waiting for a friend to arrive, and then depart.  Longing for company with and without people. 

These small rocks- that exist in the atmosphere forever- tied to snippets of the short-lived news stories and cultures of today.  

Some of these rocks are souvenirs/memories from the UK, specifically from trips to Margate in Kent and from the banks of the River Cam, Cambridge, while others are from walks in Wimbledon Common.  

Jotted this down while listening to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p009mfhs

Sublime & nuanced sound

The attached image shows the stage prior to Pinchgut Opera's performance of Monteverdi's Vespers.  It was a moment of anticipation that I could constantly bask in.  

The Vespers were sublime.  The music, through its rich polyphonic textures and moments of grandeur and quietness, reached a level of devotion that touched my innermost emotions.  The virtuosity of the musicians and their collaboration on stage together was a privilege to witness.  From this experience I can attest that the universal idea of beauty as the goal of art does indeed inspire one's highest spiritual awareness.

Following the concert I was filled with contentment and hope.  I felt more healthy.  

At Walsh St

At Robin Boyd's Walsh Street House, everything seems to float; beams, walls, saucepans, ceilings. All these elements gently touch the structure suspending them in space.  The most obvious example is the undulating ceiling, made of slats of timber floorboards, resting on two steel ropes, suspended from east-west.  The design emphasis is on providing the right space for conversation between guests.  Thus screaming ornamentation, or banal "featurism" is rejected.  The space feels lightweight, effortless and as though every element of the design fits in with complete rationality and reason.  

An Arthur Boyd painting, title unknown

The ceiling at Jimmy Watson's (where we went for lunch afterwards),

also designed by Boyd

At Jimmy Watson's, there were obvious parallels between the two designs.  For example, beams become lights here too.  Also this curved ceiling reminded me of the suspended slatted ceiling at Walsh Street. There is a definite urge to participate in conversation with your guest when seated at Jimmy Watson's and at Walsh St.  Because it's darker and more cavernous than Walsh Street, JW's feels as though its inspiration is drawn from European pubs and taverns, rather than the Japanese inside-outside relation as is palpable at Walsh Street.