Mark Brearley - Determining Places

One of the most familiar fascinations within architectural culture has been with the Japanese palace; the fragile skins and the gentle meshing of space, between a version of the domestic and a version of nature. This has been going strong for over a hundred years, with diverse influence, including the bizarre world of Frank Lloyd Wright's neurotic houses for suburban sub-division plots, and following that the whole North American house in the landscape thing. One aspect of all this which I find interesting, but which has avoided mention, is that these little arrangements aren't part of a continuous flow of space, but work within clearly delimited plots, with a fence or something similar defining the compound. These are set-pieces, once removed, based on a specific, slightly odd set of determinants. There might be another one in the next plot, or hundreds nearby all setting up similar ideal relationships and carrying a specific pattern of significance; but there might also be adjacent parcels which have been determined in completely different ways, based on other objectives. A piece of agriculture, a retail shed, some low cost housing, a cemetery, a football pitch, a road, a factory making vegetable oil, a waste transfer yard, a caravan site; these would all be elements not just different in type, but also in their whole way of being devised and their relationship to location, use and culture.

Activities and significance get spatially located with varying densities, and with specific physical consequences. Places are made up of these diverse compounds and parcels, each with its own form of validity; variously determined. An allotment site, a business park landscape, a council tree nursery, my grandfather's rose garden, a pick your own farm, are all cultivation based examples, but the priorities and requirements which set them up have little in common. The culture of the landscape architect might pull toward scenic or ecological criteria in structuring a public park, but some of the traditions of municipal display gardening will emphasise the object-like quality of specimen plants or a pattern assembled with flowers on a slightly inclined bed of soil. These two just aren't the same, in fact there is little which connects them.

The long life of the Japanese palace fascination is telling, I think, because the eccentricity of its determination makes a good match with one of the modes of determining most strongly aspired to amongst architects; the contrivance of a spatial sequence, con­structed around the idea of an attentive subject moving through and being involved with the spaces, their physicality, and their significance. I think of this as a garden-like conception, because a garden is one of the only places which come to mind when you cast around for examples of where people actually expect to be so focused on experiencing. Gardens are unusual because the expectation of taking in the phenom­enon of the place is strongly rooted culturally; people know that its one of the things to do in gardens. It's interesting to watch those gardening programmes on tv on a Friday evening to hear the really sophisticated way that gardens are talked about, their spaces described and the experiences revelled in. But most locations aren't often experienced so sharply; usually different kinds of focus operate; more incidental, while other things are happening, with ambivalence to any special little intention that may have been part of what set up the place.

But the intention here isn't to add to that discussion about expenencing, rather to emphasise this point about people like architects valuing certain determinants so much more highly than others, setting up a hierarchy which has mundane and expedient objectives at the bottom. Sceptical of architecture and its claim to be special enough to be once removed, I am repeatedly drawn to looking at conditions as they are, considering what has been determined, together with what has resulted, and from that making the judgements about which determinants can be affected, and which ones left alone; deciding where interventions might be made and what it is hoped to achieve.

Each petrol filling station is unique, the result of different site configuration, visibility, road engineering, and tank location constraints, combined with the set of components in use at the time of construction by the particular petrol company. It is generic to a similar extent as are those Japanese palaces, but the basis of decisions as well as the significances have almost nothing in common. The reasons why the culture of architecture has revered one and held the other in contempt should be of interest to us; should lead us to doubt some strongly rooted assumptions about appropriate pre-occupations and areas of focus for our energies.

Somewhere perhaps there is a petrol filling station alongside a Japanese palace, just as in places you can find a flower garden next to a steel stockholders, marshland alongside supermarket, sandwiches in the car next to the wild hills.

How the configuration and culture of places emerges; the range of decisions, the accidents, the moments of generosity and of violation; these all leave their mark on place; the results of what has happened, which will be retained, modified, or erased in future. Observation and engagement with the diverse condition of places, and the processes of change, can help drag us far away from the peculiar neatness of an architectural discourse which separates itself from the rest; where the play becomes a private thing refering to itself above all. A worthwhile objective might be to find the basis for play in the everyday determinants and their results, so that the benefits of our effort unfold with generosity to touch peoples lives.

For these reasons I am involved with luring people with useful skills and enthusiasm into this territory of urban observation and critique; to become involved in the web of processes and significances, the placing and re-placing of use, the arguments of planning, finding simple ways to catch and steer, defining selective strategies for change, making the difficult jumps between desire to save and willingness to erase, and embracing the diversity of what determines places.