Mysterious hidden actors
Agata Ruchlewicz-Dzianach, Vigo
A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Strolling the streets of Vigo in Galicia, I think that various interventions should take place - for clearer visual reception and a desire to give relief to eyes tired with squinting. Not only here. Reviewing pictures stored carefully in my mind, up to now I have probably seen just one example of so-called completely structured composition - Edinburgh.
Seeing this, an immediate need appears to proclaim the thesis: The facade of the city should be organized. It should be subjected to some principle, because it influences us.
It talks. But does it really need to talk about the order? Do children playing under a row of perfectly matched buildings have the same fun as those surrounded by eclectic facades? Do series of identical white window frames put us in the same mood as unordered set of three red windows, then two white and a few more or less scratched with bright blue?!
I delight in observing how the buildings are juxtaposed. I’m pleased with their little particularities. Drawing hundreds of lines on the photographs, looking for common points, surfaces, forms. Merging into the common areas of color. Maybe I would miss it, if it was gone....
Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea.
Yoshio Taniguchi stems the tide of definitions of the packaging. The problem of the double-entendre, and even multi-entendre face of the building niggles. A permanent architectural element designed to talk about the function... Designed to represent. To send the messages about the people that reside behind it. Sometimes appropriately, sometimes not. Could it be that the architecture continues to be “parlante” or, echoing van Berkel, the facades are a screen constantly displaying the perpetual entropy of the city?
Or perhaps only "entrails" speak? In principle, who is more important? It is possible that the facade itself is an insignificant background and these are occupants that are doing the entire show? The essence is this Taniguchi's tea, and feelings of the one who drinks it. We move inside it, we are inside it. And as said Tschumi: Any relationship between a building and its users is one of violence, for any use means the intrusion of a human body into a given space, the intrusion of one order into another.
A house is a machine for living.
Buckmister Fuller
But is the inner life from this definition inaccessible for us - passer-bies? Not necessarily..... It´s pleasant to imagine that this is a new incarnation of the shadow theater. Instead of the screen - a solid and rough structure with glazed openings. Behind it - actors. It is true that they don’t know much about each other and not everyone wants to perform at the same time. We don´t care...
Moreover, every few meters a group of actors on the left have ears at the height of knees of the actors on the right (technically - the result of different height ceilings in the neighboring buildings). Another thing to consider is the costumes. Do the actors behind the eighteenth-century face have the same clothes as those behind the recently formed eclectic seal? Although I must admit that it tempts me to sneak into some backyard and lurk for residents to cleverly persuade them for one small, tiny visit in their home. To enter inside and explore the color of the walls, furniture, style. Furthermore the temptation grows to enter deeper and deeper, even to the wardrobes to take a look at clothes inside, just for a moment. New questions arise.
From our perspective, all these things appear to be organized. The farther from the scene we are, the more props, more layers we notice. As on the photograph of Miguel Hernandez - our piled Indian stage design has so many plans that the viewer must be very observant to understand the subtle play - even those mysterious, hidden actors that take part in the show are hardly conscious one of the other.
One, two, three. The play has certain place and time. Duration: from sunset to sunrise. We do not need to be quiet or still, we can even bring own food-to-go. The "entrails" of the scene come alive. Two yellows on the the fifth, three pale yellows diagonally, the entire first division from the left is in a warm orange. On the first plan the horizontal row of cold white. And somewhere in the distance a lone red square completes the snapshot of this moment. The machine come alive and tells the story. To my place in Vigo, in springtime, from 21:30 to 08:00, I invite!
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