The relation / continuity between inside and outside – this seems to be becoming more central to the work and links back to my previous projects Echoes and Window Study, to the use of glass in modernist architecture, to Dan Graham's Pavilions, to Alex Hartley's photo-sculptures and light-boxes. Interestingly the Snowdon Aviary was one of the structures Hartley scaled as part of his 2003 project LA Climbs...
As summer finally approaches – as the sun is higher and brighter in the sky, and our estate garden returns to life – the inside and outside of our house begin to merge: In the flickering shadows of foliage that pattern our living room blinds, in the reflections of plants and trees that appear in our mirrors and glass-panelled doors. Our maisonette has large windows on both its NE and SW facing sides so light can travel straight through, throughout the day – this was so important to us when choosing to buy. Perhaps, then, it is not simply the daylighting, but the extent to which inside and outside are allowed to come together (the relationship between architecture and landscape) that determines the feeling of an interior domestic space...
Jeff Wall writes of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House, in reference to Dan Graham's 1978 Alteration to a Suburban House:
These huge window-walls create a play of reflection and transmission of light according to the daylight's character. Shifts in its direction, quality and intensity create moments when the gaze's play with itself becomes apparent ... From the outside, the tremendous reflectivity of the glass wall can screen the interior from view behind a mirror image of the surrounding landscape ... From within, in daytime, the landscape is intensely introjected while remaining immured behind glass ... Within the house, the occupant engages in a complex game with nature and with day itself.
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Discernible opens this week in our studio building – I'll be showing one of my Risograph prints of the aviary and a first, 2-minute edit of the 8mm footage.
Discernible opens this week in our studio building – I'll be showing one of my Risograph prints of the aviary and a first, 2-minute edit of the 8mm footage.
Bibliography (April)
Dan Graham, Two-Way Mirror Power, 1999
David Seamon & Robert Mugerauer, Dwelling, Place & Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World, 1985/2000
Anita Berrizbeitia, Linda Pollak, Inside Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape, 1999
Dan Graham, Two-Way Mirror Power, 1999
David Seamon & Robert Mugerauer, Dwelling, Place & Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World, 1985/2000
Anita Berrizbeitia, Linda Pollak, Inside Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape, 1999