The Architect's Dream
I’m sitting typing in the chilled hush of the morning. It’s dark (isn’t it always in December in London), and I have an advent candle lit- burning down another day until Christmas. Advent in the Christian calendar is a time of reflection and waiting, some traditions fast in advent too- making it a season of repentance and hopeful anticipation. Even for those who don’t celebrate advent there is a sense of anticipation this year- the news about vaccines, the promised ‘normal’ returning some time next year, the five days with family or friends over Christmas. So, much, waiting- hopeful waiting.
If i’m honest waiting is one of my least favourite things in life, but there is so much of it in life in architecture- a constant anticipation of a world that might be, of a project that might materialise. The project I am working on currently is moving slowly but surely towards its actual construction. In five and a half years at my current practice and approximately ten projects it is only the third where I will (hopefully) see ground broken.
Life in a practice that mostly works on large, expensive projects with disparate stakeholders and client teams means projects tend to stop and start, crawl along slowly, takes two steps forward then stops for everyone to have a think, steps back, turns left 10 degree and takes six frantic steps before pausing… it comes with the territory but when you spend long long days in front of the computer driving a new piece of the world into being- and then it vanishes overnight… it’s frustrating.
It also leads to the particularly curious frustration that some of my best work, my most careful and considered design will never be built or realised- it will only ever live in my imagination. Architecture is perhaps more apt than most professions to see this- so much effort, energy and frenzied activity is poured into visions and plans for a world that will never be realised.
The whimsical part of me wonders if there is an alternate universe full of unrealised building projects realised- a fantasy land of fantasy projects. It turns out that (much to my annoyance!) I am not the only person ever to have an idea along these lines. American artist Thomas Cole painted a picture called ‘The Architect’s Dream’:
Architect/ academic Edward Hollis describes it in his book ‘The Secret Lives of Buildings’
“It was a moment of absolute stillness. A perspective in time had become a perspective in space, as the past receded in an orderly fashion, style by style, from the parlour curtain of the [1840s] present all the way back to the horizon of antiquity… The array of buildings formed an architectural canon, each example dispensing inspiration, advice, and warning to the architect”
I must admit my particular ‘architect’s dream’ doesn’t quite look like this. There is an excellent staircase (that was too expensive), a house I sketched when I was about fifteen, some truly excellent oiled timber panelling (that the funding collapsed for), a crisp and elegant window detail (on a project we lost to another architect when a contractor came on board)… I could go on! To be honest it probably wouldn’t make such a good painting!
In other news I continue to be horrified by everything around the Grenfell inquiry, I wrote a piece about whether the predictions of a 10 year old RIBA report are coming true and am enjoying the pure escapism of flicking through House and Garden (architects on this email list please don’t hate me!)- and their lovely Christmas fantasies! (Yes I have decorated my flat, there are bows and wreaths and twinkly lights, and my long suffering boyfriend has indeed told me it is ‘too early’ and ‘a lot’!)
Until next time!