NoeW MoeToeR about the difficulty to value one measurement over another

NœW MœTœR NoW MoToR NeW MeTeR

about the difficulty to value one measurement over another

by: BUSTER RœNNGREN

5 A man feels the world with his work like a glove 1 Neither the notion of authorship, nor the notion of autonomy, can longer be enforced for the sake of maintaining an education in architecture. Both concepts overwhelm the sound and pronounced value that the idea of a school once addressed. A student submitting to either of the two (main, current, antithetical) precursors, is certain to be sidetracked with the inordinate task of becoming the role of an architect on the one hand, becoming the architect of the role on the other. Further, the argument of this text is that the unanswered work, of the impartial architect, motivates an actual examination of the subject. I seek that which would bestow upon me, the right to be an impartial architect, to start at all. In the present moment of the past2, it is the only way to be an architect at all, where a purpose of being can be found. This is not to declare an education towards becoming more or less of an architect, but to halt at the precursor of the role, to state what an architect has never been and ”neverest” be: a specialist.

10

15

20 Therefore, it has been said that the past hundred years of education to such a degree 3 stem from unattainable conditions. While presented with a legion of faculties, none of which are specific to a school of architecture4, a student bargains for distinct aspects in the realm of architecture. However, because one cannot singlehandedly move and measure, architecture, being an occupation at once in the logic and writing of volume, is for the most part a matter of correction. But in place of dealing with these faculties as instruments, for distinguishing anything firsthand within the confinement of ones work, the projected self-interest prevails.

That is to say, a student will avoid any wrongdoing, by either reconciling with the objective in architecture or proofread what is subjective, to be right after hand. A precaution of sort, for time seems too short for revelations, when the plan is the answer. Seldom is the otherhand grappled with, seldom does a student's project question itself, let alone take a direction from foundering: from architecture. The difficulty is the choice, that one has to decide what to do, to become. Given the amount of information, material, lines to read and to draw from, it is not not uncalled for that a student finds the way, out of school and towards an identity, through specialism. Schooled by criteria, as in authorship, or the lack thereof, as in autonomy, no one rules out the end. There are but means to architecture, grounds to cover, instruments with which to measure, time to spare. For as long as I am partial, architecture is at a standstill .

When a meteor enters the atmosphere, it is not a form from outer space that is seen, but the line that follows: a character between two characters, incandescent in this very moment as a result of friction.

1 Tranströmer, Tomas. Klanger och spår, p. 86 2 Eliot, T. S. Tradition and Individual Talent. p. 42 3 London, UK: 1889 - The Architectural Association (AA) initiated the first full time course in Architecture, however the first Degree in Architecture was offered by The Cambridge School of Architecture in 1912.

4 Faculty as in competence to hand. In this sense, photography, film, text etc. are particular areas of capacity, to be devised for drawing or reading a situation. These faculties impart a practice in architecture, but are merely part of an architect's work, total of another person's regular trade: specialism.

25

30

35

40

However, one is not forced to denounce this routine altogether. Without doubt, the settlement of architecture in a course of study, does not hold the utmost truth of our current mental and manual capacity. A person who takes an interest in a particular subject, the definitive student, will centre the notice or activity in a select faculty, to go a certain direction. While this ability lies in exercising a command, like a motor, the administration of an aspect, calls for a focus ever more foreign to the architect. An architect student ought to be an inept student, for the projected work is predestined to make sense of more than an aspect, to wholly approximate.

Simultaneous operations, for an evenhanded practice about the logic and writing of volume, would be no-nonsense if one could think in a direction and draw in another. In that case, the potential architect would indeed be able to exercise two commands at once, and meet criteria.

Now, the motor of time in which specialists and architects have worked, that has a past 5, that wants to leave the future behind, reminds us that the order of things is revealed in sequence.

Mind and matter take turns in action. An architect moves towards totality via the extension of the arm, to locate all that is out of hand. At a standstill, this is the distinction to be made: an architect can move that which has never been measured, whereas a specialist does vice versa.

While moving, or drawing the line, an architect is capable of making measurements6. Back to things themselves7, a maker of measurements can nonetheless be pragmatic, evaluating things in order, taking measurements of what is at hand. Arguably, this the field of specialists, still the architect takes on a project using the same specialist instruments. Be it photography, film, text, or other particular faculties, merely to a lesser extent. Volume comes into being as result: the ideal architect treats writing and reading equal, in both time and applied effort, to be allencompassing. Moreover, when the incentive is to make a general situation mean something, partiality is at stake. For example, an architect undertakes writing, not to be precise, or even to a degree, but considering alternative ways of measuring an idea. It is in the best of interests to rule in aspects: no writing has its complete meaning alone but an approximate text admits there is more to architecture than authorship. By occupying faculties all across the board, one has to come to terms with basic commodities, at least to call everything by it's right name 8.

However, clear of being such specialist like a lexicographer, the architect student can have in its favour a tolerance for what is common, learning less about more. Accordingly, a person mediocre at everything cannot be partial, and will likely call into question an uncertainty of aspects. By this general definition9, Le Corbusier would make an example of a great architect, if not having written to a greater length about architecture. Alas, the author won over the idea.

School is one slow learner - where architecture wants to be, it is not. So far, it is somewhere, somewhere else, at least to those who take measurements of the line of work. This specialist elsewhere, cannot be ruled on account of authority, for it does not belong there. It falls short.

It is the new meter that is relevant – now.

Motoring the notion of an autonomous occupation to its limit, one ends up at a critical point: an architect student is bound to, either conform to the triviality of the subject matter, or approve of that the work of architects is not independent as such. In no matter which sentence, there are simply characters. The advisable option, to inform a discourse for the education of an architect, is right in the last-mentioned.

But no character is a character in ”itself”. A character becomes a character when it is used as a character; once one finds a convention to go before it10 5 6 7 8 9 10

”School” Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations, p. 168 In reference to sentence starting on line 26 (…one cannot singlehandedly move and measure…)

Pasternak, Boris. Dr. Zhivago, N.p. Refer to sentence on line 12 (…the sound and pronounced value…)

Refer to Appendix: Definitions and Characters, lines 188-192.

Linde, Ulf. “On the Art-Informel”, Spejare, p. 94

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

A text might be just landscape to the architect, another field to make measurements in. For a typographer, text turn into characters. A specialist has a convention to reading, measuring in ways and means that architects typically do not. About typos: when I left a space on the page prior, or rather made a space, between the words Now. and Motor11, what actually took place?

90 Foremost, on the notions of authorship and of autonomy, neither the answer, nor the question, stem from a way of words determined by the undersigned. The logic adheres to and allocates the fundamental argument and disposition of the above referenced quote, whereupon Linde considers the mechanisms in describing a crossword as if it was a work by Piet Mondrian 12.

What took place in that case, using the crossword in a manner that the regular lexicographer would not, hints at positive wrongdoing. Ulf Linde used his convention of reading images, taking measurements from that viewpoint: things were revealed anew, even if it was not the author's position to make up for corrections. Furthermore, the evaluation of ones work is not independent as such: the new meter admits that made measurements move to the table of a specialist, to count at all. For, a movement of architecture plan on leaving room for inference.

For that reason, it is not a central interest of mine to state whether these ideas are new or not, authorship is an aspect among aspects, that I am right to have reservations about. One can rest assured that, if a person took measurements of this text, to find that it exceeds the limits, at least the sound and pronounced value that the idea of a school once addressed 13 did matter.

95

100

105 When I left a space on the page prior, or rather made a space, what did actually take place?

The terminological space is conventionally used by architects. Some give it an authoritative order, and command that it can be contained. Others mean that space is omnipresent and selfruled. The impartial architect reaches as far as to declare the term, or has conventionally no opinion or conclusion. A typographer would nonetheless recognise white space, meaning the specific function serving to separate letters, words, numbers and punctuation 14. While a work of the architect is about the reading and writing of volume, in any case, space is a separating character. In the above case, to form of a blank area, between two processes. Or a grey area.

Because, two things cannot part if not belonging at first: space was a linking character. This statement is to acknowledge that after being the writer of a volume of text, I am also the first reader of this volume of text. Everything will change. Opinions are to be dwelled upon, the declaration is a work in the moment. And now in this moment - I could declare the opposite. 15 Impartial as one may be, others take part. Perhaps the second reader would notice this space in particular, because it is unconventional. Not as a character in itself, but because the use of the character is. A typographer finds a convention to go before it, by addressing spacing ru les.

If Now. was to mark the end of a sentence, its distance to Motor ought to be shorter: there is a waste of space characters for a direct link to be. If Now. was to mark the end of a paragraph, its distance to Motor ought to be in another direction: there are no space characters, vertically, for this distinction to be made. At different scale, these declarations can be applied to a study of a city landscape. Since conventions for word and sentence spacing vary among languages, however, can characters devoid of content be written in an architectural language? Evidently, there is no conventional scale for reading the space of architects. What took place, using full justification16, and by letting the letters on opposite sides of the space be of the same amount, was an approximate nothing: for characters at hand, above the space, to fall in place elsewhe 11 12 13 14 15 16

In reference to a the white space/spaces on line 77.

Linde, Ulf. “On the Art-Informel�, Spejare, p. 94 Design with Beauty, Build in Truth: the dictum of the AA. Refer to sentence on line 12.

Sarazac, Tom. How Many Spaces at the End of a Sentence? (2011) Engdahl, Horace. As quoted in interview (25 October 2011) In typesetting: measuring to align along both the left and right margin.

110

115

120

125

130

If the aftermath of impartiality, is to fall short of writing a sentence, to discontinue reading, what is then the value of an architect? Attempting to answer that question, one would have to determine a meaning to architecture – in other words, it is pretentious to put a value forward.

Paraphrasing the autodidact Linde: by evading that pretension, however, there is a risk to be stagnant in conventions, keeping architecture at a standstill. Impartiality has no convention, but to keep from having most importance be ascribed to text, it is necessary to mention that a character is not only a component of writing and reading, but further, a term of an individual, a person, a name. Accordingly, an architect becomes the work: a character making characters.

Sigurd Lewerentz wrote nothing and he did not teach 17. Otherwise, it was seldom that he did.

Apart from the descriptions that he was required to submit together with the drawings of his projects, there is only one known piece of writing by the architect 18: Notes on the Landscape.

This essay, which is incomplete and at times disjointed, was written six decades before it was first published, uncorrected, in a monograph about his work. Despite its shortcomings, the editors stated: his works, on the other hand, are a very complete expression of his approach to architecture19. Notice how proclaimed specialists, insist on measuring out what is the work of an architect, to find distinctive aspects of architecture. Some called Lewerentz an artist, but no one thinks of calling the artist an architect (a similar case in point can be found in the jury citation from the Pritzker Prize awarded to Aldo Rossi: for his architecture and his drawings).

Whether Lewerentz' work is sheer or not, it was as if he stood at a slight angle to the world 20.

Deep down he felt that architects had failed their profession, that too much was given over to others. He, whose task it was to carry problems through to a solution as far as his intellectual capacity allowed. An architect was still an architect and as such he was needed. There were concrete problems to be resolved. They did not take long to discover, but all the longer to solve.21

It is possible that Lewerentz was regretful about not writing to a greater length, perhaps it is I who regret not reading to a greater length. At current speed of school, a student is inclined to attribute the publication or a building to be the work of an architect: what is for the eye alone.

Sigurd Lewerentz was not a writer, but he made measurements within more than one faculty, being his own manufacturer22. Drafting, photographing, mapping and laying bricks: he wrote volumes. And then he listened. Others would take measurements from him. Even if not being deemed impartial, Alison M. Smithson identified Lewerentz among other non-polemic, nonpolemical, nothing-to-do-with packaging-threads in the Modern Movement 23. From the table of the silent architect, Smithson writes, the movement has a long-wave momentum. In time, drawings are exposed, works re-observed, measured and recorded. The unanswered work can motivate an actual examination of the subject, where New Meter is an approximate invention.

Chapel of Resurrection there is a caesura; Between the portico and the body of Sigurd Lewerentz' el, so that the gap between varies, as if furthermore, the portico is not quite parallel to the Chap a wedge had been driven between the two I know of no precedent for either the disengagement or the skew. They are not the only equivocal elements in this design; so much so that we might say that the intense conviction of the classical language used is challenged in equal measure by the extent to which that language is subverted.24 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Wilson, Colin St. John. Sigurd Lewerentz 1885-1975: The Dilemma of Classicism. p. 9 Gennaro Postiglione et al. Sigurd Lewerentz: 1885-1975, N. p (Postscript) Gennaro Postiglione et al. Sigurd Lewerentz: 1885-1975, N. p (Ibid) Wilson, Colin St. John. (quoting E.M Forster of poet Cavafy) Ibid. p. 10 Ahlin, Janne. Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect, p. 180 (…he saw himself as an architect-engineer… ) Ahlin, Janne. Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect, p. 138 Smithson, Alison ”The Silent Architects” Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885-1975: The Dilemma of Classicism, p. 5 Wilson, Colin St. John. Sigurd Lewerentz and the Dilemma of the Classical, p. 51

135

140

145

150

155

160

165

170

Image 1: Lewerentz' Caesura at the Chapel of Resurrection, The Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm

175

Appendix: Definitions and Characters

180 MOTOR, latin mōtō: giving, imparting, or producing motion or action. That supplies motive power for some other device. Set in motion, keep moving. To convey (someone) somewhere.

METER, latin mētor: measure, or mark out. The fundamental unit of length in a metric system.

A device that measures and records the quantity, degree, or rate of something. Rhythm (poetry)

185

SPECIALIST: a person who concentrates primarily on a particular subject or activity; a person skilled in a specific and restricted field. For example: a surveyor, cartographer or draftsman.

ARCHITECT: a person who concentrates primarily on a general subject or activity; a person skilled in a non-specific and unbounded field. A surveyor-cartographer-draftsman combined.

190

IDEOGRAPH: a written character symbolising the idea of a thing without indicating the sound used to say it. As a rhetorical device: uses an abstract concept to develop support for a position.

O: The lower case letter o is in typographical terms described as a bowl, it describes a curved stroke which creates an enclosed space within a character (the space is then called a counter).

E: The lower case letter e is made of two counters, a partial and a fully enclosed space within a character. It is distinguished from the o through its bar, the horizontal stroke in characters, that separates the bowl of the e into two counters. As a practical analogy, an e is drawn as a curved stroke that closes to form a bowl but continues the loop to form an appendix to an “o”.

195

200

With the basic commodities of architecture I refer to Wittgenstein's assertion that: To express in the same language means to measure with the same rule 25. The precision in architectural expression is precise just for the reason, that it reveals what the architect has in common with the one who takes measures from it. Therefore, an education in architecture is to be informed by all characters. From the fundamental letters that constitute a way of words, the alphabet, to an expansion off the pre-school ABC, the punctuation of space. Letters are just material, in absence of linking and separating characters, nonetheless would one be able to distinguish words in a sentence or even a sentence itself, in absence of space. Still, space is no character in itself, it cannot be singled-out. An architect student who dwells on space as if it was really particular, ought to look elsewhere: sign up for a specialist programme at NASA 26. Out in space, it becomes more and more difficult to measure that a city, with all its buildings and characters, is not an entity, but an unfinished sentence: -letter-blank-letter-letter-blank-letter-e On firm ground it is likewise above one's head to perceive a landscape, in the city or in a text.

Like those who have imperfect sight, an architect sees things at a distance. Standing too close to the city, or a text, one can only take measures from that viewpoint. Making measurements requires a movement from convention, towards a general elsewhere, a character place linked to language merely through its separation from it. For one to say that a New Meter could be the property of the alphabet, if it makes sense. For one, Sigurd Lewerentz elected the silence, not space as such, but what breaks a sound in two. The classical language did not fall into an empty space for that matter. It was there, he knew it still, probably to a degree of specialism.

He withheld from concluding on a classical foot, from finishing its sentence, and turned his back on that language. The turn can be seen firsthand, in Lewerentz' placement of the above stated portico, letting it stand free and at an independent angle from the chapel. The distortion finds its purpose in a need to reconcile the line of approach path with the location of the two doors required by the rite of passage27: an approximation. Lewerentz recognised a landscape, a user, a function, the relationship between logic and writing. With this recognition, whether it stemmed from a classical knowledge or a modernist conviction, he treated the two volumes equal. One did not follow the other, but found a form, by belonging to and detaching from one another, to communicate from (not with) language. The keyword is in the caesura28, in other terms, an interruption or a break. It is not the character himself, breaking with tradition, that is partial, but the exposition of Lewerentz' work, when measured by others, that becomes polemical. Specialists project their conventions onto particular aspects, and in doing so, will meet resistance if a value does not add up. An architect will have to tolerate not being able to answer what will become of the work. One can just move the point of view, to approach it all.

From title to ideograph: the replacement of vowels between the consonants in NoW MoToR changes the syntactic meaning of the second clause, still in same order, to form NeW MeTeR As if a wedge had been driven between the two, no part finds a general meaning alone, but is indefinitely interrupted in a language that goes no further than to declare a movement from one character to another. This is conventional, how one reads in detail. The point of the title, is to indicate that a typo goes back on one's word: New is Now misprinted. For, the letters e and o appear similar in text, but their convergence makes a difference in pronunciation, and their divergence - in the interim. While the letter o goes full circle, to close itself, the letter e goes elsewhere. From a writing point of view, one could begin to write the letter o, but in the stroke, change direction to an e. Approaching it as a reader, one might make the distinction between a line and a form. As an ideograph, the letter e acknowledges that it is not to an end.

25 26 27 28

(WA3.96.5,6,7) Further to sentence on line 67 (…one has to come to terms with basic commodities…)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In reference to line 45 (…the administration of an aspect…)

Wilson ”The Dilemma of the Classical”, Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885-1975: The Dilemma of Classicism, p. 11 Latin verse: a break between words within a metrical foot. Modern verse: a pause near the middle of a line.

205

210

215

220

225

230

235

240

245

And neither is the meter. As exemplified in the title, it is in a fair and impartial treatment and judgment of a sequence that architecture finds its progression. This sequence starts with Now Motor, being all that was and all that is at this time: a metaphor for what is current and gone.

If the e represents a state of incompletion, the o represents everything else, all that mattered.

Specialists and architects occupy the same time now, using instruments alike for measuring it.

There is still a sequence, a start, and point when other takes part. This is where the meter is used. To make it new, one must leave room for inference, of fault or approximation firsthand.

In the distinction between specialism and architecture, of making and taking measurements, lie the conflict of realism: between holding on to one aspect of reality, as opposed to making ways to approach a reality that is always changing. An architect is a specialist in nothing in particular, able to bind what amounts to a logic and writing of volume into the non-specific.

At best an architect is mediocre at everything. In writing, or in employing any other type of measurement, the architect can go no further than inexplicability. This is the significance of e.

In the trade of architectural education, what is actually progressing the occupation is a threepart scenario. M: As specialist in non-specificity as a whole, an architect has to draw the line in front of the specialities that is appropriated from. In drawing the line, an architect makes measurements. In this movement, the two practices come to terms, so as to elicit information.

N: in reading the line, a specialist will scan and take measures of any inaccuracies, to resolve them in the form of an answer. R: in researching the line, a student about logic and writing will measure the unanswered and the proposed answer, to give a line the benefit of doubt, for new theories of architecture. At this point, a student is in-between two definitions: 1. That specialities alone cannot account for the sum of all their parts; 2. that there are no architects more than in a nominal sense of the role. To start at all, one should have been an autodidact.

Given the circumstances of having undertaken a programme in architecture, I will propose an option to the education to come. Like architects once left over the responsibility of designing artillery for city defence onto engineers, there is a faculty at school that is becoming a field of expertise, to profound for an architect to avoid specialising in. It goes back to our capacity to undertake projects: the project itself is becoming a particular subject of interest to students.

One should not denounce a project routine altogether, but acknowledge overruling partiality towards coming to an end. This is not to declare that all projects should be left unfinished, but to state that an architect can take a project to the point of being unfinished, but never further.

A universal “Neverest�, acknowledges that the final decision, is to not take the decision at all.

A gesture of the sort is what keeps updating the meter, where specialists mete out the new.

This page can be an example of a project that is written to a greater length, that overwhelms a value. If so, it proves that a text cannot stand on its own, to let the idea win over the architect.

For all measures must be made against leaving architecture out, or to single-out any aspects.

Therefore, it has been said that the future hundred years of education to such a degree will stem from unattainable conditions. For how can impartiality be measured or even examined?

Now Motor works with New Meter - hand in glove.

Mountain Never Rest A Monumental Never

about time: to find other values in architecture

New Meteor Ruler All Measures Now

Mt. NeVeReST

250

255

260

265

270

275

280

285

Bibliography Alison Smithson, Peter Smithson, Colin St. John Wilson, Hakon Ahlberg Sigurd Lewerentz, 1885-1975: The Dilemma of Classicism. Architectural Association Publications (1989) Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago. Signet (1958) Edmund Husserl. Logical Investigations. Ed. Dermot Moran. 2nd ed. London: Routledge (2001) Gennaro Postiglione, Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardiello. Sigurd Lewerentz: 1885-1975. Phaidon Press (2002)

290

295

Janne Ahlin. Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect. The MIT Press; English language ed.(1987) Tomas Tranströmer. Klanger och spår, Bonniers (1966) Ulf Linde. Spejare, Bonniers (1964) Journals Colin St. John Wilson. “Sigurd Lewerentz and the Dilemma of the Classical”, Perspecta Vol. 24. pp. 51-77 Eliot, Thomas Stearns. “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, Perspecta, Vol. 19. (1982), pp. 36-42.

300

Online Articles Interview with Horace Engdahl, Svenska Dagbladet (25 Oct 2011) Available at: http://www.svd.se/6577943.svd

305

Tom Sarazac, How Many spaces at the End of a Sentence? (May 2011) Available at: http://www.tomsarazac.com/tom/opinions/space-after-periods.html Image Sources 1: “Detail showing that the portico is set at a slight angle”, Sigurd Lewerentz: 1885-1975, p. 117

310