Only on the Background of Everydayness
Thomas Essex-Plath
A single, square window, itself divided in two, punctures the approximate centre of the rear façade. In this act, something approaching symmetry seems to emerge. This unassuming object fastens itself at neither the midpoint between roof extents nor of the wall length. Instead, however, a prominent downpipe marks an implied, extended edge of a surface otherwise circumscribed by the bounds of the wall; the midpoint of the window divides this surface into two nearly exactly equal areas. With this geometrically pure figure in this centroid-like position, a tenuous sense of balance is orchestrated.
The ubiquitous gable-plus-lean-to is the salient figure here. While it may well be ‘balanced’, it shirks the rarefication of any proportional scheme. Rather than 2:1, the composition offers the familiar looseness of the one-and-a-half-ish-ness of aggregated forms, though with a refinement hinting on abstraction.
A downpipe, perhaps appearing slightly larger than typical, galvanised, and standing independent of the support of the facade, looks, for a moment, to be propping up the eave. Seeming to just barely lift up this edge of the building, and as the other end slumps down through the lean-to and to the ground, this mundane object suddenly evokes the image of a Dalí-esque crutch. These two upward and downward gestures, in combination, begin to articulate the plasticity of the mass.
The surface is peppered with a number of active objects, made conspicuous by their near complete absence in otherwise relatively uninterrupted, smooth surfaces of the other façades. Concentrated on this single plane, and in combination with the timber surfaces below, it is as if to say “here – this is where things happen”, and, in doing so, overlays these events with a subtle drama.
None of the features from this short selection are inherently, nor even particularly, interesting. They, furthermore, may merely be aspects only made visible by an excess of caffeine and the onset of cabin fever. What may be interesting, however, is that while any may conceivably have been intentional (plausibly, given the consistent subtle refinement in Stampton’s work) these aspects are all, equally, conceivably complete accident. Given that these moves are made in the elements and modes of ordering of the banal and everyday, they, and indeed the entire façade, could just as easily be that of any anonymous suburban dwelling. In this ambiguity of authorship is where the intrigue of the façade truly lies.
It is no secret that architecture is plagued by professional anxieties underlying imperatives to produce work that is unique, idiosyncratic, and manifests an obtrusive authorship. These precipitate from the binding of architectural works to architectural authors and the expression of their agency - the ways they impoverish architectural production are numerous (shackling architecture to capital in the production of icons and conspicuous consumption, to say the least). Simply put, Vasari may well have been one of the worst things to happen to architecture. Stampton’s Philip Island House, and similar contemporary Australian works, take up the Sisyphean task of reversing his effects.
The house is certainly not devoid of anything beyond ‘the ordinary’. However, only on the background of everydayness can, for example, the explorations of transparency and surface within the project be articulated and acquire a more compelling, perhaps even uncanny, character. In the hands of another architect (one more gripped by anxieties for manifest expression) these gestures would be utterly uninteresting. Here, amongst this expertly articulated familiarity, their effects are enlivening. In tandem, it charges the field of everyday structures beyond this building with a new ambience, bringing their latent poetics to the surface.
THOMAS ESSEX-PLATH is currently a student of architecture, teaches architectural history and theory, and is a freelance writer in Wurundjeri Country, Australia. He has previously completed studies in sociology, including postgraduate research in the sociology of architecture, examining the constitution of architectural knowledge.
Image Credit: Phillip Island House, Richard Stampton Architects. Photograph: Rory Gardiner
Image Credit: Phillip Island House, Richard Stampton Architects. Photograph: Rory Gardiner