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[placesandarchitecture]

Enzo Mari

Italian designer, Enzo Mari, created furniture, household objects, and 2D work such as illustrations. I think he had a good eye and was genuinely concerned about the world. Drawing and shapes seem to be important to his practice, as did high quality materials.

[placesandarchitecture]

Every Monday and Tuesday, while on the train to college, I am going to write a post about design or a designer. I will draft them on the way there and edit them on the way home. These posts will be inspired by something I recently heard an art history lecturer say. He said “we’re not materialistic enough”, and I agree with him. Recently, I think there has been an increase in and mainstream support for crafts, however I think people jump on the bandwagon because it ‘feels good’ or simply because they want to keep up with trends. Wellness practices and activities also appear to be popular and mainstream now, including yoga, which I have taken up. I think that yoga, as it is practiced in the west (including neo-liberal-hell-London, where I started doing it because I felt like my mind was in tatters), is materialistic. I think it is about the material of the body - and reminding the mind that it is simply a material mass on a material planet. So in the spirit of materialism, my first post will be posted tomorrow.

[placesandarchitecture]

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum

In the 1950s actor, gardener and activist Will Geer left New York after getting caught up in McCarthyism and blacklisted for ‘Un-American Activities’. He headed west to Los Angeles, bought a plot of land, and built an amphitheater on it for blacklisted actors. Founded in Topanga Canyon, and named after English botanist John Parkinson’s Theatrum Boanicum (1640), meaning theatre of plants, the open-air theatre is still operating today.

Information about the theatre’s design and architectural drawings of it are hard to come by, but it sits beautifully in a rocky canyon topography. In photographs, the stage appears to be supported by a concrete or brick structure and covered with wooden panelling. To the right of the stage is a wooden building (looks a bit like a lake-side cabin) with an asymmetrical and steep pitched roof and at the back of the stage there is a large tree surrounded by steps which provide various routes off stage. The stage has more width than depth, but the steps that surround it make it look as though it sprawls out into the canyon, and so ultimately its boundaries appear undefined. Although it's kind of 'rustic' and defiantly not flashy, it seems like the whole theatre was constructed with a lot of consideration and care. In fact, Geer studied horticulture and apparently, he planted a sample of every plant found in Shakespeare’s plays on the theatre grounds.

[placesandarchitecture]

Jongensland

Jongensland is a playground of sorts established in Amsterdam during the mid-1900s, shortly after the Second World War. It came about through a government initiative which sought to provide a play area for children without imposed restrictions or man-made architecture. To make things even more utopian, Jongensland was located on an island.

While it was in use, photographer, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, captured the huts, structures and dens alongside their adolescent architects. Schulz-Dornburg visited the island in the 1960s and let her own children play there. Despite photographs of children climbing and jumping on their designs (which don’t scream structurally sound), making fire and swinging over it on ropes, Schulz-Dornburg’s photographs of Jongensland have a sense of calm – like things are taking a natural, intuitive order.

The architecture itself is also impressive. Looking at the larger scale constructions, you can see how the children have sometimes tried to imitate traditional typologies such as pitched roofs and the symmetrical placement of windows.

Not to get too negative, but sometimes I forget that architecture can be a kind of imposition that restricts those who encounter or (and worse) live in it. And I forget this downside because architecture can be seductive in both beautiful and practical ways. But when I look at Jongensland, I like to think about how this restriction must have been overcome, with the children arriving on the empty Island and starting from scratch, nailing together the scraps of driftwood that washed up with them. This romantic vision is fueled not only by my wild imagination, but also by Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s photographs. Her images show the rough materials and hard work that created these structures; but also a deep sense of freedom and independence on the faces of their inhabitants. Looking at the photographs it’s hard to believe Jongensland was real and that many children spent their formative years creating it.