ORGANIC UNITY - The Meaning in Architectural Mediations

Sergei Eisenstein and his mentor Meyerhold developed an approach to their cinema and theatre productions which they called Organic Unity. This terminology had many strands to its composition, including observing how things occur in nature, but its overall aim was a synthesis between all the elements of a piece of art. In practical terms for a play or a film this meant that the narrative, set, actors, lighting and music all shared a common theme that was driven by the central precept / concept of the work. This unity of elements would engage the audience more directly and naturally in what they were viewing and thus increase its effectiveness.

In architecture you are confronted, like film and theatre, with the combination of numerous different elements and requirements which need to be combined into a final building or master plan. And like these two other disciplines architects take a story / concept as their starting point for their design. This concept can be anything from something unique about the site, an ongoing interest of the designer, a pattern in a piece of fabric, to a piece of art (written, painted etc.). As a designer with many simultaneous concerns, artistic and practical, it can be easy to lose sight of this story in the often lengthy process of developing ideas into building.

The central concept of Organic Unity, developed by Eisenstein and Meyerhold, I believe gives us as Architects a possibility to reflect on our own design process. How do we create buildings? How do we teach and learn how to design? Could there be rules which would allow us to clarify the processes we all undertake when designing?

Before addressing these questions there is another important point to make. As architects a large proportion of our designs don't actually get built (for example those at university or for competitions) and as such our direct tool of expression is not necessarily the solid reality of a building but possibly more significantly the paper and model representations of our ideas. This observation focuses our attention on the Organic Unity of representation and mediation of our work, a necessary and arguably the most significant part of our job. Approaching drawings, models and other mediations from this point of view allows us to reassess their role. Should a plan just communicate the layout of a building in terms of measurements, material and orientation, or should it speak more broadly of the Organic Unity of a design in the way in which it is drawn rendered or notated?

TBC...

ENDLESS SOMEWHERE - Research in an Undefined Landscape

Staroye i novoye [The General Line] - Sergei Eisenstein (1929)

I am in the process of formalising the literature review for my thesis in order to satisfy myself and others that my research explores new fields and I am not treading a well worn path. Prior to this point the literature review did exist but it largely resided in my own consciousness and was not systematically recorded.

 

As I begin writing my mind wanders and I begin to think about how my research has progressed from initial interests into a more defined subject. Looking back I recall the unnerving feeling of starting off with an idea of your interests but not how you will explore them. A combination of recalling this journey, coupled with a more in depth understanding thesis subject causes a scene from Sergei Eisenstein's 1929 silent film, The General Line, to spring to mind. In this scene, approximately mid-way through the film, the collective farmers begin manually harvesting a field using scythes only to be usurped by the modern technology of the tractor. For me it is specifically the image shown above of one of the farmers clearing a path towards the horizon in a seemingly endless field that seems metaphorically apt for this process of refinement.

WIND THE BOBBIN UP - A Cinematic View of the Industrial Revolution

When you have a young child you find yourself learning a large number of nursery rhymes. Initially you don't question the lyrics as you simply want to please and placate your child. But after an extended period of repeatedly singing them you begin to question what they're all about. The subject matters can be nonsense but the ones that seem to last, aside from having a catchy simple tune, tend to have a significant historical story. For example most people are agreed that "Ring a Ring o' Roses" is about the Great Plague in England in the mid 17th Century.

For our child, and many others it seems, the song of choice is "Wind the Bobbin Up" the lyrics of which are reproduced below.

Wind the bobbin up,

Wind the bobbin up,

Pull, pull, clap, clap, clap.

Wind it back again,

Wind it back again,

Pull, pull, clap, clap, clap,

Point to the ceiling,

Point to the floor,

Point to the window,

Point to the door,

Clap your hands together, 1, 2, 3,

Put your hands upon your knees 

The lyrics hint that the song may have originated from some kind of textile work and a quick search on the internet seems to confirm this, with Iona and Peter Opie tracing its origins back to 1890's in Yorkshire. However the rhyme speaks to me of something different, something beyond its original intention.

The industrial revolution not only produced inventions such as the sewing machines, the looms and the steam engine which created a whole new way of working in the world. Its impact was also felt beyond the landscape of the factory to produce new technologies such as the camera which allowed people to look at the world anew. For me visions of the industrial landscape that inspired the song are fixed in my mind from my experiences of those spaces captured by this new technology of the time.

The industrial revolution is synonymous with the spinning wheel, this was the motion which powered industry of that time. The symbolism of this motion is not lost on the subject of my research who begins his very first film with that very image.  By no coincidence this circular motion, which is both the title and the first two lines of the rhyme, is also the mechanism for how the camera records information on the reel. So for me, embedded in a world of research on cinematic space, the bobbin is the cinematic reel which is showing the world anew.

This is not however where the cinematic metaphors end, in the second verse the child is prompted to point at various features of the space surrounding them (which we also do in the hope that the child will learn through mirroring our actions). Possibly this is just a learning exercise for the child, but for me approaching it again from the point of view of my research this seems like a string of filmic shots, a montage of views that allow us to grasp (via the mechanism of the pointing finger as opposed to the camera) the space surrounding us.

Furthermore for me the views that you are prompted to take of the space are not arbitrary, including mention of window and door which also have significant meaning in cinema, and force you to engage with your surrounding space in an unusual way. When otherwise would you focus you attention on the ceiling, the floor or the window rather than the space beyond it. This unusual engagement with space is one of the features of early avant-garde cinema, where filmmakers were asking how this new technology can help us to engage with the world in a different way.

For me an unusual viewpoint of this short, and what would seem at first insignificant rhyme, has lead me to re-evaluate the world in which it was constructed, the space surrounding me and also my own approach to my work.