Architectures of Chance by Yeoryia Manolopoulou

Author:Yeoryia Manolopoulou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

MASONS AND BRICOLEURS

One day something appeared in the studio which looked like a cross between a cylinder or a wooden barrel and a table–high tree stump with the bark run wild. It had evolved from a chaotic heap of various materials: wood, cardboard, scraps of iron, broken furniture, and picture frames. Soon, however, the objects lost all relationship to anything made by man or nature. Kurt called it a column.14

This Gothic-like architecture (column, tower, tree or house) was never imagined as a whole. It grew relationally as an assemblage. It spread to the adjoining rooms, cellar, balcony, second floor, attic, and eventually filled almost all Kurt Schwitters’ house. Left unfinished, the legendary Merzbau (1917–43) was completely destroyed during an Allied bombing raid over Hanover in 1943.

Masons combine pieces following a systematic logic, but bricoleurs work with what they have accumulated or accidentally have at hand. Combining precision and chance, architects take the roles of masons and bricoleurs in turn. Their buildings are unfinished assemblages which the users may extend to more complex assemblages, based on their habits and ad hoc design practices. ‘Adhocism’, a concept explained in Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver’s book Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation, is based on the user’s creative improvisation. As a design technique adhocism combines pre-existing elements to achieve new design results. The selected elements are not necessarily designed for the use to which the ad hoc designer puts them. Jencks and Silver write:

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