The Building

 
"The building is trying to speak; not listening to what it has to say is a form of barbarous inattention, like admiring a musical instrument while caring nothing for music."

Margaret Visser¹

The intriguing statement above is referring specifically to a church but is could be said of any building that draws our attention. While all buildings may speak thus, not every building draws you in to the same extent.

Making an illustration of a building is an act of both listening and recording what is being said. Whilst we are using the aural metaphor (because a building doesn't actually "speak") for seeing, we actually mean comprehending.

When a building inspires you to examine it more closely in the way of sketching or painting, it is well worth asking why some buildings compel you to do this while others don't. For example, I can't imagine Professor Victor Deupi wading though the swirling throngs along Connaught Road with his watercolor kit determined to capture the humanist impress of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters.

We record what we would like to remember. Painting or drawing by hand is a form of selective study of something that has attracted us in some powerful way. Otherwise it would be difficult the maintain the necessary concentration. It's a process of ingesting a physical reality into one's mind and spirit by performing the act of its transcription using bodily means. And because of this the process of study becomes intensely personal. Memory and understanding fuse organically. Through its representation, a rapport is created between the artist and the object of his study. Art in this sense can only be seen as an act of love.

Returning to the point of the above quote, of admiring the musical intrument but being indifferent to the music; in search of an architectural equivalent, we can see that a building too is an instrument but for what art?

Common sense tells us that a building at its simplest is an instrument of living. How we build therefore has a reciprocal relationship with our outlook and the pyschological state in which we imagine our world.

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1. The Geometry of Love, Margaret Visser

 
Siracusa 27 7 2004