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DAVID CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISATION / DESIGN / ART / KITSCH / CHANCE

ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS

VENUES FOR INDIVIDUAL INVENTIVENESS -  PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY ENDORSED 


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INDEX

AN ARTIST'S PUBLIC-SITE INSTALLATION WORKS

IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES

IMPROVISED OPEN-SITE: ("THE NOMADIC COMMUNITY GARDEN")

IMPROVISED VILLAGES: (WANDSWORTH & KEW BRIDGE 'ECO VILLAGES')

ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY INDORSED

TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE: ("FRANK'S CAFE" & "SOUTHWARK LIDO")

VERNACULAR - PRAGMATISM & STYLE: (BERDUN VILLAGE BARNS & HOUSES)

"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - LIV-RM
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - HOUSE

"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA PERSONAL CHOICES   

ART - GOTHIC INTO RENAISSANCE INTO EARLY 20thC

ART - 20thC COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA
 GRAFFITI INTO STREET-ART 
KITSCH
CHANCE & DESIGN

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ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - p1

 

p1: INTRODUCTION
p1: "ONE TREE HILL" ALLOTMENT  

p2: "GUN SITE" ALLOTMENT

 

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INTRODUCTION

 

Allotments present a myriad of invented and 'rubbish' objects that provoke one to examine the junction between improvisation, art, kitsch and chance. They are rich in practical and gratuitous inventions spanning a spectrum of needs that is as wide (albeit below the scale of homes) and more continuous than that which underlies our neurotically compartmentalised suburbs and cities. Allotments offer a plethora of structures and form-conjunctions for containing and protecting, light and heat collecting, growth-guiding, that though specialised for horticulture might be perceived as if 'sketches' and 'models' for aspects of possible town-scale architecture. They also exhibit chance-agglomerations that in the functionally specialised suburb or city would be physically obstructive or aesthetic anathema, but in the purposively simple environment of the allotment are contained in the pervasive aura of potential usefulness and physically bounded within ongoing schemes of work.

 

This web-section shows the products of individuals' initiatives on two south London allotment sites. The Introduction below lays out the terms of the activity of improvising and the route via which it loses its innocence and inverts into cuteness and kitsch.

 

Page 1 shows the allotment "One Tree Hill" (in Honor Oak Park). This is displayed as an informal walk around the site noting interesting/strange objects and formations, especially huts (which are not permitted on the Gun Site allotment). 


Page 2 shows the allotment "Gun Site" (in Dulwich). This site's interesting/strange objects and formations are listed in typological groups.

 

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IMPROVISATION - PRAGMATISM, ART, KITSCH  

Naive improvisation cannot achieve a form that has no task to guide it - if it becomes craft its correlation with the immediate practical task it was serving to satisfy will no longer be its form's sufficient (and temporary) limit, and any result less than art (an object that is a complete and independent experience) will be kitsch. Improvisation produces perfect objects which never reach a conclusion - never, like art, singular, isolated, finished. Like clouds they are always in formation - as perfect as the inevitability of their means. An improvised object cannot be copied, it is a gestalt formed of a practical response to a need in the context of the easiest and most immediate means. If its consequent vitality of intelligence and action is admired as appearance, if its initiator stops making as an act of 'practical-play' and begins to make from an admiration of 'creativity' and beauty, s/he will loose the 'innocence' necessary to form perfection with minimum effort, and to regain initiative must aspire to complete the object for its own sake as art - to do this (like the cost of the Little Mermaid's possession of legs) s/he must work on resolving a unique and permanent form beyond admiration, preference, judgment. However this is rare in societies which depend on mass-marketed products, where individual intelligence and practical experience is usually applied to choosing/buying rather than scavenging/improvising (let alone solving ones products as unique art-works), in fact as soon as object-making becomes 'self-conscious' most people decant their innate inventiveness/impulses/talents into simply choosing among mass-aesthetic 'fossil' (kitsch) forms.

 

Improvisation depends, not so much on 'raw' materials, as discarded parts of manufactured objects: the debris of demolished buildings and broken machines and the primary materials of fabrication trades: boards, sheets, fabrics, containers, formed-wood and metal. A fundamental absurdity [1] of manufacturing/commercial societies is their destruction of these means of improvisational re-use - instead of offering these processed/fabricated objects/materials to resourceful individuals they are dumped out of reach in land fills or reduced by incineration all the way back to their least-differentiated, most-basic raw forms: ash (used in road-surfacing material) and heat (used for power generation).

 

NOTE :

  1. Not 'absurd' of course to the sellers of newly finished products of manufacture. In "advanced" manufacturing/commercial societies the needs and power of sellers absurdly - in terms of absolute waste of resources from raw to fabricated - dictates destruction (on a vast scale!) of materials that are reusable via resourceful intelligence.

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ALLOTMENTS - CONTENT LIMITS
[Written: from 5-2009]

 

In the UK, improvisatory freedom (unless endorsed as 'art') is legal and tolerated only in very limited types of collectively-utilised publically-visible places. 'Allotments' are such venues - where structures resulting from individuals' improvisatory initiatives can be viewed by strangers, however such structures are required to pertain only to the maintenance of a small patch of horticultural endeavor, limited in size, functional complexity and content to sub-dwelling functions - mainly storage (of the tools of gardening); simple workshop tasks (such as plant propagation); the construction of plant habitats; marginal self-referencing social activities (tiny fragments of 'home', like making tea, having a sitdown rest, admiring ones work). Within such limits UK allotments are places where on one hand the virtue and abilities of practical seriousness is admired, and on the other there is no 'aesthetic' control (except perhaps pragmatism) on invented structures (such as that exercised over the exterior of our homes by officials and 'concerned' neighbours through council planners and via commercially originated conditioning [1]).

 

NOTE :

  1. It seems that as soon as a structure's functional category expands to 'home', individual freedom is curtailed. For example, on the edge of Amsterdam (and other Netherlands cities) there are allotment-like fenced and gated areas that host and display mini estates of small dacha-like 'leisure-cottages', each in its fenced plot of garden-land, that provide for the city's flat-dwellers a toyland experience of detached-house living. Because the location is relatively isolated from the city-public's complex and serious requirements and critiques, it could be a collectively maintained area for individuals' free inventions, however it seems that the functional level of a 'home' (which presumably includes its potential sale price) subjects all the individual dwellings to a collective scrutiny and control similar in type and degree to that exercised in 'leafy city suburbs' - most of the structures are stilted, mass-kitsch 'models' of mass-concepts of 'home', stylised panderings to commercialised mass-taste - all the users of this facility seem subjected to the whole panoply of social-neighbourhood interaction: privacy, gossip, wealth/taste display, aesthetic and behavioral 'neighbourly' control. It's as if the rigidity objectivity and standardisation of the pre-assigned environment - starting with measured/divided plots served by pedestrian/bike circulation routes and utility services - automatically catagorizes this escapist 'free-living' creative opportunity as bourgeois suburbia; it's as if, at the level and type of functional complexity defined as 'home', there is no general acceptance of the objective and experiential value of individual personal inventions (on any level from finance to fulfillment) - only of individual choices exercised within the mass-market and thus endorsed by the communality of commercial and familiar products.

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ALLOTMENTS - CONTENT TANGENTS & POTENTIALS

 

Established for the industrial poor or wartime food growing, traditional allotments are understood to be practical agri-enterprises for cultivating vegetables and fruit rather than decorative flowering plants, let alone 'aesthetic' layouts and ornamental garden-like adornments of the plot. However in these times of easily available food and surplus of energy and time, one sees erosion of the strictly pragmatic principle along tangents of sterility or inventiveness:

 

Many allotment plots now include within their rectangular boundary (in addition to a practical seat for resting after work) a patch that signals 'leisure' - quite common is a 'quaint' group of log-seats that seem to declare a 'rustic' discussion-forum; some have a patch of mown lawn, a lily pool, an arbour; a very few completely transcend the practical and aspire to the artifice of a 'fully-furnished' garden, converting their plot into a sterile mass-culture 'model' with bought in (or neatly copied) 'no-garden-should-be-without' commercial-kitsch 'features' - an extremity of leisure inclusion that obliterates the allotment raison d'etre ... fortunately rare, in this last preserve of (scope-limited but) free inventiveness.

 

Free inventiveness, socially sanctioned by 'practicality', nevertheless sometimes exceeds the strictly practical economy of an allotment's purpose and elaborates pragmatism into 'play'. The latter is characteristic of people who enjoy the experience/game of inventive improvising as much as sprouting vegetables, who, without devolving into 'craft' or aspiring to the finality of 'art', gratuitously invent horticultural uses for arbitrary objects and/or elaborate their practical constructions via wit.

 

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"ONE TREE HILL" ALLOTMENT - HONOR OAK PARK, LONDON, SE23

 

The whole site is a magnificent 'presentation-venue' for individually-initiated works of construction from practical to whimsy. One Tree Hill is a steepening slope framed in trees - a mini-mountainside presenting specimen works to a vast landscape view. 

 

Though One Tree Hill is a single site (all is accessible from everywhere), there is a tendency - partly because of the ways of convenient paths that follow its topography and established plots, partly the qualities of its users responses to the opportunities of its geography - to experience it as three somewhat separate 'zones'. Thus for convenience I have grouped the pictures into these: 

 

'EAST-ZONE': This lowest eastern strip has collected the richest soil (washed from the site's rising steepness to the west) and hosts the site's most established plots and huts in a line across its level north-south width. Near the centre of its eastern edge is the site's main entrance.

 

'NORTH-ZONE': Behind the line of E-zone huts the site is narrowed by woodland and begins to steeply rise to the northwest. Plots and huts scatter across the slope and line the poplar-fringed north fence.

 

'WEST-ZONE': This highest portion of the site continues upwards to a hilltop western fence submerged in trees. As one mounts the hill, the thinning soil, the climb away from services and entry, the lonely vulnerability, are offset by the increasing grandeur of the trees, the sense of solitary enjoyment of the sun-soaked slopes and magnificence of the view. Thus on the higher slopes - before one reaches the hill-top where the view-drama narrows and the dark perimeter trees impinge on the clay discouraging the development of plots - there is a multiplication of sun-catching verandaed 'villa-huts' and terraced and luxuriant gardens.

 

ONE TREE HILL - PLAN 
A consequence of its geography is that I tend to experience the site as three 'zones' of differing character.
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EAST ZONE

E-ZONE: FROM ITS NORTH BOUNDARY
(pic 1-3-09 / to S)

The line of huts that define the zone's western boundary is partially visible on the picture's right edge.

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E-ZONE: THE NORTH END OF ITS WEST-BOUNDARY HUT-LINE
(paste-up 2-pics 7-10-10 / to NW)
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E-ZONE: COMMUNAL SIT-PLACE WITH SHELTER 
(pic 16-4-09 / to SE)

This communal shelter did not last, it was condemned as unsafe and by 2010 had been removed. (The two notices strung across its face read "Please do not use this shelter until further notice".) 

This is a lesson on the boundaries of improvisation: Initiatives beyond ones own ('immediate'/'temporary'/'provisional') needs - ie: made for a group - attract generalised assessments administered by the group's representatives. An 'innocent' initiative suddenly enters a realm where 'self-responsibility' is assumed to be diminished. Across the whole scale of making-for-others this tends to select 'safe' choices of familiar means - propagating monotony, idealism, kitsch.
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E-ZONE: COMMUNAL SIT-PLACE
(pic 17-10-10 / to SE)

The replacement - a rather bleak and grandiose 'staging' on an over-large pavement, of the plastic mass-market furniture that formerly hid in the shelter. 
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E-ZONE: WOOD & IRON HUT PLUS NORTH HUT-ROW 
(pic 17-10-10 / to SSW)

A uniquely brutal hut made of thick timber baulks and as if war-torn corrugated metal.
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E-ZONE: THREE JOINED HUTS [01] & PLOT - FRONT
(pic 9-8-09 / to W)

Three huts, fulfilling three different types of function, have grown across the whole width of a plot. 
.

   

E-ZONE: THREE JOINED HUTS [02] - SOUTH END
(pic 9-8-09 / to NE)

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E-ZONE: HUT & GLASSHOUSE WITH SIT-PLACE
(paste-up 2-pics 9-8-09 / to WWS)

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E-ZONE: HUT WITH VINES
(pic 7-10-10 / to SW)

This hut is roofed with two steel garage doors.
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E-ZONE: HUT, GLASSHOUSE & STORE COMPLEX [01]
(paste-up 2-pics 3-4-11 / to NW)

This compressed complex of various containers, like a fragment of a vernacular village, is threaded by a small lane which at its far end climbs up to the higher general circulation path (that skirts the rear of all the huts) via steel clad log steps [next pic].
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E-ZONE: HUT, GLASSHOUSE & STORE COMPLEX [02] - EXIT STEPS WITH STEEL TREADS
(paste-up 2-pics 3-4-11 / to WWN)

This tightly organised structure of logs, planks and sheet-steel is a fitting termination and exit for the access lane that threads this complex. It states the character of its maker like a sign: an ingenuity whose precision and clarity slightly exceed necessity. The balancing and wedging of forces between steps, plank and the logs that buttress the raised path reveals the same craft determination that cut and hammered the steel capping sheets around the lips of the step treads.
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E-ZONE: VERANDA-HUT & PLASTIC DOLLS-HOUSE
(pic 3-4-11 / to W)

E-ZONE: DENIS [01] - VIEW ALONG FRONT OF HUT ROW
(pic 16-4-09 / to N)

Denis' extraordinary complex - the nearest plot in this row - continually accretes and grows.
.

E-ZONE: DENIS [02] - HUT FROM REAR
(pic 3-4-11 / to SE)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [03] - GLASSHOUSE & HUT
(pic 16-4-09 / to NW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [04] - GLASSHOUSE, HUT & MONUMENTAL SCARECROW
(pic 3-9-10 / to W)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [05] - MONUMENTAL SCARECROW
(pic 3-9-10 / to NW)
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 E-ZONE: DENIS [06] - HUT ENTRY
(paste-up 2-pics 3-9-10 / to NW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [07] - GLASSHOUSE & HUT ENTRY
(pic 3-9-10 / to NNE)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [08] - GLASSHOUSE ENTRY
(pic 16-4-09 / to NW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [09] - SMALL SCARECROW
(pic 16-4-09 / to SW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [10] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 1)
(pic 16-4-09 / to W)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [11] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 1) - FROM ENTRY
(paste-up 2-pics 16-4-09 / to SW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [12] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 1) - N-END SEAT
(pic 16-4-09 / to N)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [13] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 2)
(pic 28-6-09 / to EES)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [14] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 2)
(paste-up 2-pics 28-6-09 / to N)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [15] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 3)
(paste-up 2-pics 3-9-10 / to SSW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [16] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 3) - CENTRE STOVE
(pic 3-9-10 / to SSW)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [17] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 3) - N-END SEAT
(pic 3-9-10 / to N)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [18] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE (VER 4)
(pic 3-4-11 / to SE)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [19] - SOCIAL SIT PLACE FROM VINE WALK
(pic 28-6-09 / to E)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [20] - VINE WALK
(pic 3-4-11 / to NNE)

From the social sit-place [pic rt] and glasshouse/hut complex a fenced walk (with a vine arch) exits the plot to the southwest.
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E-ZONE: DENIS [21]  - STORE HUT, GLASSHOUSE, VINE WALK & REAR PLOT
(paste-up 2-pics 8-8-09 / to EES)
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E-ZONE: DENIS [22]  - STORE HUT, GLASSHOUSE, VINE WALK & REAR ENCLOSURE 
(paste-up 3-pics 3-4-11 / to EES)
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NORTH ZONE

N-ZONE: PLOTS & HUTS ON THE NORTH ZONE'S HILLSIDE
(pic 1-3-09 / to WWS)

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N-ZONE: VIEW FROM NEAR THE TOP OF THE NORTH ZONE'S HILL
(pic 3-9-10 / to EES)

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N-ZONE: AGNES - BLACK HUT [01] - FRONT
(pic 3-9-10 / to WWS)

This complex of hut/store/sit-plus-play-place 'anchors' the N-zone's SE corner (however it was established by someone who cultivates a plot against the site's east boundary.)
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N-ZONE: AGNES - BLACK HUT [02] - WITH STORE & LOG-EDGED PLOT
(pic 9-8-09 / to SE)

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N-ZONE: AGNES - BLACK HUT [03] - WITH SIT & CHILD PLAY PLACE
(pic 3-4-11 / to NE)
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N-ZONE: CARDBOARD COVERED & CERAMIC WEIGHTED PLOT
(pic 28-6-09 / to SSE)

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N-ZONE: MAUVE & TURQUOISE NET-ROOM & CABBAGES

(pic 28-6-09 / to S(?))
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N-ZONE: WRIGGLING PINK NET-DRAPE
(pic 28-6-09 / to #)
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N-ZONE: BLUE NET PLANT-TENT, PLANT-BOX & SIT-PLACE
(pic 17-10-10 / to SSE)

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N-ZONE: BATH [01] - WITH STAIN, WATER-LINE, DUCK-WEEDED WATER & VIEW
(pic 9-8-09 / to EEN)

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N-ZONE: BATH [02] - WITH STAIN, WATER-LINE, DUCK-WEEDED WATER, WOOD 'WHEELS' & 'HARNESS'
(pic 9-8-09 / to NW)

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N-ZONE: BATH [03] - WITH STAIN, WATER-LINE & DUCK-WEEDED WATER
(pic 9-8-09 / to E)

N-ZONE: PAUL [01] - LOG PLOTS
(pic 3-9-10 / to SW)
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N-ZONE: PAUL [02] - GLASSHOUSE IN GARDEN-LIKE PLOT
(pic 9-8-09 / to EES)
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N-ZONE: PAUL [03] & ORHAN [01] PLOTS
(pic 3-4-11 / to SSE)
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N-ZONE: ORHAN [02] - SIT-PLACE
(pic 9-8-09 / to SSW)

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N-ZONE: ORHAN [03] - SIT-PLACE 'STAGE'
(pic 7-10-10 / to SW)

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N-ZONE: ORHAN [04] - SIT-PLACE STORE

(pic 9-8-09 / to SSW)

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N-ZONE: TARPAULIN PLOT-COVER [01] - TUBE-WEIGHTED
(pic 3-4-11 / to EEN)

An example of the exquisitely appropriate economy of gestalt seeing/doing when operating in an environment of randomly available objects. 

Part of a plot is covered with a tarpaulin weighted down against the wind by three objects - a stiffish rubber pipe and two chunks of scrap wood. The pipe is dumped on the tarp and quickly bent into a minimally appropriate shape that, relative to its material's tendency to curve and the shape's rapid execution, presses on the tarp's rectangle in (almost) all the places wind might seek to lift it. Rather than bothering to improve its coverage of the [nearest] open corner its executor, concerned with economy of action as well as completeness of result, dumps a small plank in this open 'harbour mouth', hindering the wind's access and conserving the pipe's weight across the tarp's centre.

The expressive/dramatic and pragmatic precision of the positions of tarp, pipe and wood - the wood so perfectly visually located in a relation of maximum dynamic balance with the pipe's two ends - is not achieved via a priori judgement or the careful adjusting of a crafted 'art' work, but is an automatic/inevitable consequence of the perfection of chance arrangement, here sifted through an immediate application of acquired experience of the dynamics of tarps with wind; the result perceived by a brain selected to represent the natural as meaningful form.
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N-ZONE: TARPAULIN PLOT-COVER [02] - TUBE & WOOD-PALETTE WEIGHTED 
(paste-up 2-pics 12-4-11 / to NW)

By nine days later the tarp has doubled and three (coincidentally blue) pallets have been added to the original three objects that weighted it down. Inevitably their configuration has changed to avail the enlargement and the addition of their pallet colleagues.
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N-ZONE: HUT WITH BLACK DOOR
(pic 17-10-10 / to WWS)

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N-ZONE: 'SPOOKED' HUT
(pic 28-6-09 / to S)

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N-ZONE: 'SINISTER' OPEN HUT [01]
(pic 12-4-11 / to S)

A box of darkness in the sunlit landscape, seemingly open for inspection or entry, as if containing something portentous and discontinuous with its location.
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N-ZONE: 'SINISTER' OPEN HUT [02] - INTERIOR
(pic 12-4-11 / to S)

An upright box of tools (shaped to fit a standing person) can perhaps still be perceived as a strange object in a 'natural' context.

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N-ZONE: BLACK CLEAR-WATER BUTT [01]
(pic 2-9-10 / to E)
A circle of sky lurks behind the bushes.
.

N-ZONE: BLACK CLEAR-WATER BUTT [02]
(pic 2-9-10 / to E)

A green cloud of blanket-weed floats in the blue sky below the bush-branches.
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N-ZONE: WOOD-FRAMED SOIL PATCH 'BODY' 
(pic 9-8-09 / to NE)

Its resemblance to a police-drawn outline of a body on a pavement renders this carelessly framed patch slightly phantasmagoric.
.

N-ZONE: WATER-TANK WITH BLANKET-WEED
(pic 28-6-09 / to NW)

A quite different mode of agriculture (thankfully contained) than practiced on the earth plots that surround it. 
.

N-ZONE: HUT WITH VERANDA [01]
(pic28-6-09 / to EEN)

A standard small hut but for its large window gazing under the shade of an extended, slightly floppy (and thus somewhat hat-like) roof, jauntily supported by three carelessly angled props.

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N-ZONE: HUT WITH VERANDA [02] - VIEW INSIDE
(pic2-9-10 / to N)
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N-ZONE: DUMP WITH BARROWS & POND
(pic 17-4-11 / to SSE)
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N-ZONE: MARTIN [01] - HUT, SIT-PLACE & POND
(pic 16-4-09 / to SE)

A delicate enlargement of a standard small-hut: one side is heightened, a translucent roof is lifted and small windows inserted.

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N-ZONE: MARTIN [02] - HUT, SIT-PLACE & POND
(pic 9-8-09 / to SW)

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N-ZONE: MARTIN [03] - HUT OPEN
(pic 9-8-09 / to SSE)

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N-ZONE: WATER-TANK WITH CAPTURED SUN
(pic 12-4-11 / to SE)
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N-ZONE: HUT WITH DOOR-STOP STONES [01]
(pic 9-8-09 / to SW)

A basically simple solution is absurdly multiplied by 'irrelevant' existential complexities: the bigger stone, which must lean on a door set rather high from sloping ground needs its own brick-stop to retard sliding.
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N-ZONE: HUT WITH DOOR-STOP STONES [02] - REAR PLOT
(pic 28-6-09 / to EEN)

The 'door-stop stones hut' is down the hill (right edge of picture). This may be its associated plot (?)

N-ZONE: HUT WITH COWSLIP DELL
(pic 3-4-11 / to SW)

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N-ZONE: 'TINY-HOUSE' HUT [01] - PLUS STEPS TO SITE
(pic 21-4-14 / to E)
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N-ZONE: 'TINY-HOUSE' HUT [02]
(pic 21-4-14 / to E)

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N-ZONE: IRIS [01] - PLOT FROM PATH ENTRY
(pic 9-8-09 / to N)

A complex of functional places: flower and veg plots, sitting places, two glasshouses and at the north end, flanking the cemetery fence, her work-space and an extraordinary 'thrown-together' hut (pics 5~14) (called "Baba Yaga's" hut by an observant child).

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N-ZONE: IRIS [02] - FIRST GLASSHOUSE
(pic 9-8-09 / to S)

A linear complex of diminishing objects - a form that typically results from need for access.

N-ZONE: IRIS [03] - SECOND GLASSHOUSE
(pic 28-6-09 / to N)

Sometime since this picture its balloon-like volume caught the wind and it was blown away!
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N-ZONE: IRIS [04] - SECOND GLASSHOUSE
(pic 28-6-09 / to E)
A simple-purpose-distilled form that collects solar heat - a house for plants with human access. 

The clarity of its formed purpose is analogous to the products of natural evolution - however in general it differs in the simplicity of its function and in particular its 'instantaneous' physical manufacture. 

Iris' improvised hut [below] is also analogous to naturally accreting forms, but in its mode of growth unlike the 'artificially instantaneous' greenhouse - however, like the greenhouse it differs from them in the discontinuity of its 'already-formed' materials. 
.

N-ZONE: IRIS [05] - HUT ENTRY FACE
(paste-up 2-pics 28-6-09 / to N)

Here the 'vague' construction of the hut's rear sides [see pics 9~14 below] is focussed via more differentiated uses and is inevitably more controlled.

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N-ZONE: IRIS [06] - SW CORNER
(pic 9-8-09 / to WWN)
.

 

N-ZONE: IRIS [07] - HUT ENTRY
(pic 9-8-09 / to N)
.

N-ZONE: IRIS [08] - HUT ENTRY - INTERIOR
(paste-up 2-pics 9-8-09 / to NW)

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N-ZONE: IRIS [09] - REAR OF PLOT - HUT & GLASSHOUSE
(pic 1-3-09 / to SW)

N-ZONE: IRIS [10] - HUT REAR 
(pic 1-3-09 / to S)

N-ZONE: IRIS [11] - HUT REAR
(pic 1-3-09 / to SW)

An astonishingly 'loose' agglomeration of disparate unit-parts that almost as if by chance, group themselves as 'hut'.

The seemingly manically flung together parts and the undisguised immediacy of the acts of decision, assembly and fixing, can be subliminally interpreted as animate: alive movement or a state of decisive potential.

N-ZONE: IRIS [12] - HUT REAR 
(pic 16-4-09 / to SW)

In the six and a half weeks since the first three pics (ps 9~11) there have been many small non-structural changes.

 
N-ZONE: IRIS [13] - HUT REAR 
(pic 16-4-09 / to S)

N-ZONE: IRIS [14] - HUT REAR 
(pic 9-8-09 / to SW)

 

WEST ZONE

N TO W-ZONE: THE N-ZONE PATH ENTERS THE SE CORNER OF THE W-ZONE

(pic 12-4-11 / to SW)

The main entry path that bisected the E-zone and passed straight across the N-zone's southern point, here, at the 'doorstep' of the W-zone, vaguely meanders up the shallower right-hand slope and dissolves into the grass. A new path, faced by the steepening hill and more fitted to the lurching rises of the land, narrow, sometimes paved and sometimes stepped, has divided from it and heads straight ahead and up into the W-zone's heights. 

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W-ZONE: HUT WITH TREE & COMPOST BIN
(pic 3-4-11 / to N)

The first hut at the SE corner of the W-zone.

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W-ZONE: HUT BETWEEN TWO TREES [01] - LIVE FENCE
(pic 17-10-10 / to NW)

The second hut up from the SE corner of the W-zone defines the downhill boundary of its plot with a fence of live willow cuttings.

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W-ZONE: HUT BETWEEN TWO TREES [02] - REAR
(pic 3-9-10 / to NNE)

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W-ZONE: HUT BETWEEN TWO TREES [03] - E-SIDE
(pic 3-9-10 / to NNW)

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W-ZONE: HUT BETWEEN TWO TREES [04] - FRONT
(pic 3-9-10 / to WWS)

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W-ZONE: MERLYN - 'PERMACULTURE' PLOT [01] - PLATFORM FOR YURT
(pic 7-10-10 / to WWN)

A branch from the path winds down into the zone's east-side woodland - once cleared (and signposted) as a "Permaculture" plot - now deserted by its maker. This stage-like platform was once the foundation for an imported yurt.

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W-ZONE: MERLYN - PERMACULTURE' PLOT [02] - SOCIAL SPACE WITH OVEN SHELTER
(pic 7-10-10 / to WWS)

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W-ZONE: MERLYN - 'PERMACULTURE' PLOT [03] - SOCIAL-SPACE - OVEN SHELTER
(paste-up 2-pics 7-10-10 / to WWS)

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W-ZONE: MERLYN - PERMACULTURE' PLOT [04] - SOCIAL-SPACE - OVEN
(pic 7-10-10 / to S)

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W-ZONE: VERANDA HUT ON TERRACE [01]
(pic 2-9-10 / to W)

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W-ZONE: VERANDA HUT ON TERRACE [02] - SIDE
(pic 9-8-09 / to SW)

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W-ZONE: VERANDA HUT ON TERRACE [03] - REAR FROM PATH
(pic 2-9-10 / to S)

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W-ZONE: VERANDA HUT ON TERRACE [04] - FRONT
(pic 3-4-11 / to NNW)
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W-ZONE: PRINCE - TERRACED PLOT
(pic 9-8-09 / to NNW)

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W-ZONE: PRINCE - NEW VERANDA HUT [01] - BUILDING SITE
(pic 9-8-09 / to NNW)

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W-ZONE: PRINCE - NEW VERANDA HUT [02] - IN PROCESS
(pic 3-9-10 / to NNE)

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W-ZONE: PRINCE - NEW VERANDA HUT [03] - FROM WEST UPPER PLOT
(pic 2-9-10 / to SE)

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W-ZONE: PRINCE - LAWN WITH ANIMAL-EATEN SUNFLOWER HEAD
(pic 2-9-10 / to NNW)

A lesson in design: pragmatic-intentions and chance-results ... in process

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W-ZONE: BLUE HUT [01] - WITH GARDEN
(pic 9-8-09 / to W)

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W-ZONE: BLUE HUT [02] 
(pic 3-4-11 / to SE)

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W-ZONE: BLUE HUT [03] - INTERIOR 
(paste-up 2-pics 7-10-10 / to SSW)

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W-ZONE: VERANDA HUT IN GARDEN [01]
(pic 2-9-10 / to WWN)

The rather grand front belies its rather ramshackle rear [next pic] - a dichotomy common to many UK suburban homes - in this case however it is not a contrast between public pretension and private squalor since there is no private space behind; it is all pragmatic: its 'front' is more complex in structure simply because it hosts more uses and most importantly interfaces with a garden and the view - absurdly, in the suburban examples it is often the squalid side that hosts these more complex needs.
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W-ZONE: VERANDA HUT IN GARDEN [02] - REAR
(pic 17-10-10 / to SSW)

After the front the simplicity of the rear is a suprise; its sole ancillary use is to support storage.

W-ZONE: FRAN [01] - PLOT WITH GARDEN & VERANDA SHELTER
(pic 12-4-11 / to SW)

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W-ZONE: FRAN [02] - PLOT WITH GARDEN, VERANDA SHELTER & POND
(pic 7-10-10 / to WWN)

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W-ZONE: FRAN [03] - VERANDA SHELTER
(pic 7-10-10 / to WWN)

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W-ZONE: FRAN [04] - GARDEN SCULPTURE & POND
(pic 7-10-10 / to EES)
The view from the sit-place: a carpeted (!) patio with sculpture, lawn and pond. 

This sculptural object has less affinity with art than the next object-ensemble. This one appears to have accumulated via example - the 'decorated geometry' and ironic uselessness of the rusty scraps evoked memories of 'modern sculpture' - the object is an illustration originating in memory of already achieved forms, it does not seek a resolution in the future or have any present active role beyond nostalgia. Unlike the next example its components have no indispensable interdependence, their relations are passive, governed merely by an aesthetic visual patterning endorsed by familiarity  - thus this object tends to kitsch not art.
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W-ZONE: FRAN [05] - WATER BUTT SYSTEM
(pic 7-10-10 / to WWN)

A 5 element object - 4 have been gathered from disparate sources and 1 (the stump) is included solely via use. The choosing and placing of each element represents a purely practical intention and act: the raising of the butt on 2 pallets (designed for heavy loading) allows containers under the tap; the brick weighs the lid against the wind; drooping the hose on the stump enables quick/easy handling and eases its tendency to tangle. However, the prior part: the stump, poses the question: was its present role as a minor hose-convenience sufficient to attract the accumulating of this whole 'water-sourcing' unit - if not why was it constructed there? This harmony of forms, achieved only via a tangential practice, display a complex mutual real-time active interrelating of otherwise independent things, and thus this conglomerate object manifests a large portion of modern sculptural (art) expression.
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W-ZONE: FRAN [06] - TWIG TRELLIS
(pic 17-4-11 / to N)
.

W-ZONE: FRAN [07] - STORE-PLACE
(pic 12-4-11 / to N)

The attention grabbing colours of manufactured products set in the very limited range of natural colours recall the 'kitsch-art' trick of focussing a dull scene with bright "accents".
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W-ZONE: FRAN [08] - STORE-PLACE SEAT
(pic 12-4-11 / to NW)
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W-ZONE: VIEW-FACING SEAT [01] - IMPROVISED 
(pic 9-8-09 / to EES)
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W-ZONE: VIEW-FACING SEAT [02] - IMPROVISED 
(pic 9-8-09 / to NNW)
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W-ZONE: VIEW-FACING SEAT [03] - IMPROVISED 
(pic 9-8-09 / to NNE)
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W-ZONE: VIEW-FACING SEAT [04] - REPLACEMENT BROUGHT IN 
(pic 2-9-10 / to NNW)
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W-ZONE: STORE-PLACE [01] - BOX & BLUE-BARREL
(pic 9-8-09 / to SSE)
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W-ZONE: STORE-PLACE [02] - BOX
(pic 9-8-09 / to SSW)
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W-ZONE: STORE-PLACE [03] - BOX & BLUE-BARREL & CHAIRS PLUS PALLETS
(pic 9-8-09 / to SE)
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W-ZONE: WATER-TANK NEAR HILLTOP
(pic 3-9-10 / to SE)
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W-ZONE: WOODEN BOX & TREE
(pic 9-8-09 / to SW)

A wooden box and a tree as found in their almost completely seperate positions - identical by substance, irrelated via origin.
.

W-ZONE: BLUE-BARREL PLUS SLAB & BRICK
(pic 9-8-09 / to EEN)
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W-ZONE: PAUL / SARAH [01] - DUG PLOT WITH WATER BUTT
(pic 12-4-11 / to NE)
.

W-ZONE: PAUL / SARAH [02] - WATER BUTT WITH DUCK-WEED & FENCE
(pic 3-9-10 / to WWS)
.

W-ZONE: PAUL / SARAH [03] - TERRACED PLOTS
(pic 12-4-11 / to NW)
.

W-ZONE: PAUL / SARAH [04] - DUG PLOT WITH WATER BUTT
(pic 12-4-11 / to WWN)
.

W-ZONE: MUDDLE GARDEN
(pic 12-4-11 / to WWS)
.

W-ZONE: CIRCLE GARDEN [01]
(paste-up 2-pics 12-4-11 / to EES)
.

W-ZONE: CIRCLE GARDEN [02]
(paste-up 2-pics 12-4-11 / to NNE)
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W-ZONE: VERANDA SHELTER
(pic 12-4-11 / to W)
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W-ZONE: HUT AT THE EDGE OF THE W-PERIMETER WOOD
(pic 3-9-10 / to NNW)

At the peak of the hill, backed into the perimeter trees, there is a somewhat bleak loneliness verging on fear. Thus this severe hut, so purposefully constructed on shallow flats cut into the dry clay soil, evokes for me a hutch of dangerous dogs.
.

W-ZONE: NW CORNER - A PLOT RECENTLY BEGUN
(pic 2-9-10 / to N)

The hilltop clay, the lonely distance from the site's communal entry, the impinging dark perimeter trees, thin out the development of plots.
.

W-ZONE: TENT IN THE NW-PERIMETER WOOD [01]
(pic 2-9-10 / to NW)

Also in the terminal western fringe - semi hidden in the perimeter trees - is the dwelling of an allotment interloper.
.

W-ZONE: TENT IN THE NW-PERIMETER WOOD [02]
(pic 3-9-10 / to NW)

The reciprocation of this exquisitely utilitarian and economical industrial mass-product with its 'natural' environment is almost perfect to the point of invisibility.
..

 

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INDEX

AN ARTIST'S PUBLIC-SITE INSTALLATION WORKS

IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES

IMPROVISED OPEN-SITE: ("THE NOMADIC COMMUNITY GARDEN")

IMPROVISED VILLAGES: (WANDSWORTH & KEW BRIDGE 'ECO VILLAGES')

ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY INDORSED

TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE: ("FRANK'S CAFE" & "SOUTHWARK LIDO")

VERNACULAR - PRAGMATISM & STYLE: (BERDUN VILLAGE BARNS & HOUSES)

"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - LIV-RM
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - HOUSE

"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA PERSONAL CHOICES   

ART - GOTHIC INTO RENAISSANCE INTO EARLY 20thC

ART - 20thC COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA  
GRAFFITI INTO STREET-ART 
KITSCH
CHANCE & DESIGN

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