If you’re in London at the moment, you should find some time to go to the current exhibition at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, which finishes this Saturday (the 27th of August). “Wright to Gehry: Drawings from the Collection of Barbara Pine” is a collection of drawings by architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Michael Graves. A lot of them are just sketches, scribbles almost. So why are they so interesting?
Most of the time, all we see is a building, usually a finished building—a complete object. Unless we live or work in the area, and watch it being built, it will spring into existence apparently ex nihilo. A completed object is often mysterious, offering few clues to its development. This exhibition is a chance to open it up and take a peek inside, to catch glimpses of the minds of the creators. Plus, at a fiver, the excellent exhibition catalogue by Neil Bingham is a steal (for those of you not living in London, you can buy it online—obviously it’s preferable to see the exhibition in the flesh, but the reproductions aren’t bad at all).
One image that struck me with particular force was a faded pencil sketch by R. Buckminster Fuller, entitled Study for the Ten-Deck House, c.1927 (cat. 20). The Dymaxion pentagon is made mysteriously, tantalisingly alluring by the caption:
[I]t was supposedly so lightweight that it could be delivered by air, by a dirigible, and dropped into a hole in the ground, like planting a tree.
The idea is fascinatingly poetic and playful. What is the difference between a building and a tree? Not individual survivability. Not complexity. No, it’s self-organisation, replication, repair: the realm of the organic; a realm which buildings may, in time, inhabit. We are now within reach of a future where we will sow the seeds of buildings, water them, and watch them grow.
I don’t want to appear too utopian about nanotechnology, or technology in general. My future is no more than a daydream. But the idea of planting a building is a beautiful one.
