Dilapidated Denmark



Arne Jacobsen designed Bellevista apartments - 1932-36, at Klampenborg are a sorry sight with paint peeling, crumbling balconies, cracks in the concrete and rotting wooden windowsills.
Copenhagen's Little Mermaid poses upon her pedestal of rocks avoiding the swathes of seaweed and tourist rubbish surrounding her.
Bleak vistas.

Denmark not taking care of their cultural heritage.


Line and Length


































































Shusaku Arakawa
morning box, portrait of a civilization (1969)
via Ro/Lu

Macrame on wood
via an ambitious project collapsing

Langley House by Warren & Mahoney
(1965)
17 Michael Ave, Christchurch, New Zealand
via Christchurch Modern


continuing exploring my interests in lines, and lengths of materials used to make other lines, mainly in craft and architecture.  sometimes it is hard to gather up all these different threads of interest in my head and to try and arrange or make sense of them in a more linear, less scatterbrained manner. perhaps once i recommence employment in a library, beginning on the first of next month, my catalogued and ordered surrounds will transfer into the rest of my life.

Dens of Inequity



images via

Spreads from Benjamin Critton's project, EVIL PEOPLE in MODERNIST HOMES in POPULAR FILMS. A publication printed in a pleasing red/yellow colour combinations, and includes quotes, diagrams, film stills, essays and more, delving into the relationship between architecture and cinema, and the association between ill-morals, vices and evil masterminds with modernist homes, traced through films along the lines of Diamonds Are Forever, The Big Lebowski, Blade Runner, L.A Confidential and Twilight amongst others.

Ideas like these interest me - I think about my embroidery floor plans of fictional settings from film, television and literiture connected by also their dual locations - existing in some manner in the 'real world' while only wholly residing in the imagination. The cliches 'picking up the common thread', and 'that nothing is ever a coincidence' are phrases oft repeat in the many murder mystery stories and screen adaptations I digest and that act as a sort of back bone to my practice.

I recently posted some photos of rock stars in their parents' houses and I was struck by how Frank Zappa and David Crosby were attired to seem in sync with their surroundings, while their 'modern dress', long tresses and full facial hair were at odds with the more conventional clothes of their parents. The photo essay was intended to highlight the different lifestyles and ideas between the different generations I believe, and this sort of contradictory outcome of matching someone to a surrounding meant to represent 'old' is intriguing.

I think about characters and their personalities reflected in their environs, and I can understand the cold, shiny surfaces, the hard right angles and the looming rooftop overhangs that cast ominous shadows mirroring the mentalities of the people who live in them. The character must embody their abodes and vice-versa. The brutalist nature of the buildings is apparent in the architecture, scale and materials. Grand concrete cubes with misleading panels of glass maybe not so that one can see in the house, but that whoever is inside can see them coming.
The 'evil people' of these popular films could perhaps be described as cold, clinical, calculating, corrupt, conniving, controlling and cruel, while also being charming, charismatic, clever and compelling. (I have run out of apt adjectives beginning with 'C' now), and possibly the same could be said about their dwellings.

I suppose this is why Ernst Blofeld only wears grey.


on a side-note, check out Critton's CV. As someone who is trying to wrangle a job out of Sweden (who is not being particularly forthcoming about it) I have taken a particular interest in other people's curriculum vitaes at present.

First House


First House (1950) designed by Group Construction Company, later 'Group Architects'.
via the Architecture Archive, University of Auckland

Affectionately known as 'the Group', they are now the subject of a new book Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture (Auckland University Press, October 2010), edited by Julia Gatley, also responsible for the acclaimed Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture, 1904-1984 (AUP, 2008).
The book will be launched with an exhibition of the same name during Auckland Architecture Week 2010 at Gus Fisher Gallery. The exhibition combines drawings, photographs, models, furniture, paintings and sculpture by members of the Group. Houses, the building type for which these modern architects are best known, are depicted in photographs and models.

I wonder if 'Allan Wild and Colin Wilson in Conversation' (reproduction plywood chairs) 2008, will be included.

Three Chairs



Similar chairs - first designed by my grandfather Allan Wild for Group Constructions 'First House', in Takapuna, New Zealand. Seen in situ above, with matching plywood table and kitchen furnishings.
From Auckland University's excellent Architecture Archive.
Allan Wild and Colin Wilson in Conversation, 2008, reproduction chairs built by my father and I, part of the exhibition 'Modern Love' at rm 103.
ROLU Furniture, found here.