Editorial by Simon Sellars:
My first exposure to serious architectural discourse came from the novels of J.G. Ballard, which feature a series of failed architects. In the Ballardian universe, because architecture often utilises funds from state coffers and must adhere to laws and regulations, it will by necessity be an instrument of the state, and the architect who rails against regulation will be rendered impotent.
Consider Ballard’s novel The Drought and the character Lomax, a complex, wildly eccentric architect tormented by the structural failure of his flamboyant designs, which he sees as great art, in the face of ecological disaster (itself a complex metaphor for unfathomable external control). For Ballard, to be an architect is to conform, and he astutely identifies the difficulty in locating architecture as an art form, given that it is tied to capitalist economic practice.
Such issues are touched upon in our interview with Alain de Botton (p74), where he responds to his critics in architecture with some home truths about the profession’s Lomax-style narcissism. In a different though related trajectory, David Walsh (p56) discusses his Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) as ‘the edge of architecture’: built form providing the vessel that allows art to first embrace and then push through nihilism to excavate meaning and affirmation from chaos (a course of action Ballard’s architects often resorted to after they’d risked all and failed).
Elsewhere, Callum Morton (p50) demonstrates why he is arguably the most exciting practitioner working at the intersection of art and architecture, and we also recall the influential work of Morton’s mentor Howard Arkley (p44), who unsurprisingly was a fan of Ballard’s novel High-Rise, about tribal warfare in a middle-class apartment block.
Film is not forgotten, with Owen Hatherley’s essay on constructivist architecture in early Soviet film (p66), while Christopher Brown invites us into a parallel universe: a custom-designed house reconfigured as ‘architecture fiction’ (p136).
Happily, despite Ballard’s prognosis, our project reviews feature actual architecture that positively reinforces, or reflects upon, the discipline’s relationship to artistic practice, whether it’s FJMT and Archimedia’s bold redesign of the Auckland Art Gallery (p84), the earthy poetry of Gregory Burgess’ Burrinja Cultural Centre (p90) or the confident expression of Room 11’s GASP! Boardwalk (p96), which takes MONAs cue in reinventing the cultural landscape of Hobart.
Welcome, then, to the Plastic City, and to AR 125: the nexus between architecture and the arts.
In this issue:
- On the cover: GASP! Boardwalk, in Glenorchy, Tasmania, by Room 11
Project reviews:
- ‘Crossing the Threshold’: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, by FJMT & Archimedia (review: Simon Sellars)
- ‘Structural and Poetic’: Burrinja Cultural Centre, by Gregory Burgess Architects (review: Emily Potter)
- ‘Seeing Anew’: GASP! Boardwalk, by Room 11 (review: Judith Abell)
- ‘Creative Archaeology’: Clifton Hill House, by Sharif Abraham Architects (review: Paul Carter)
- ‘Act of Resistance’: Francis St Apartments, by Candalepas Associates (review: Laura Harding)
Features:
- ‘Suburban Unease: Howard Arkley’s Psycho Architecture’ (featuring mini-interviews with Callum Morton, Darren Wardle and Louise Forthun), by Ashley Crawford
- ‘Meaning in Space: the Lyon Housemuseum’, by Leon van Schaik
- ‘What is and What Should Be: Soviet Constructivism on Film’, by Owen Hatherley
- ‘Vehicular Architecture: Chisholm Automotive and Logistics Centre’, by Paul Morgan
- ‘Virtuous Creativity’, a profile of WOHA by Patrick Bingham-Hall
Interviews:
- Callum Morton: the Real and the Virtual Together, by Stuart Harrison
- David Walsh: MONA’s Inverse Archaeology, by David Neustein
- Alain de Botton: ‘Don’t let the free market decide’, by David Neustein
Plus Conrad Hamann’s look at the history of Heide II in our Lifecycle feature, Lucy Humphrey’s profile of Hannah Tribe in One to Watch, Harrison and White and Andrew Maynard Architects on Design Wall, and reviews of South and East: the 2012 NZIA Conference (Simon Sellars), Hal Foster’s book The Art-Architecture Complex (Justine Clark), and the 2012 Boral Design Awards (Mat Ward).