Contents
The contents of Chez Etym. is bookended by an introductory precis which presents the understanding of place that forms the book’s foundation, and a closing retrospective on the similarly-themed exhibition and panel discussion ‘site (n.),’ which Chez Etym. hosted at the 2018 Architecture Fringe in Glasgow. Listed below are brief synopses of each section of the book, and biographies of their authors.
Brit Andresen, Royal Australian Institute of Architect’s Gold Medal recipient, writes two reflections on the poetic relationship between architecture and landscape in two career defining works: The Burrell Collection (Glasgow, 1970-1983) and the Mooloomba House (North Stradbroke Island, 1995).
Studio Positions is Associate Professor Lisbeth Funck and Assistant Professor Matthew Anderson of Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo (AHO). With rich prose, photography and collected ephemera, together they recount a studio excursion to Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in an effort to explore and inhabit the periphery of place
Thom Walker, British printmaker and writer, composes a quiet rumination on the English farming town Laxton, where medieval farming practices are still used, and reflects on the cultural bearing of agricultural practices.
Matthew Doran, architecture graduate and photographer, presents a rich thesis on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Through striking photography, gestural prose and mapping he explores the boundaries of human and non-human place, pushed to their alien extremes in the Arctic.
Together, published poet Kenneth Steven and photographer Alastair Jackson afford a vivid image of the Scottish Highlands and Isles in a pairing of their work, gleaning in duet a most personal account of a place and its distinct and individual character, identity and history.
Associates, an award-winning architectural office based in Brescia, consider the frame as a tool to temper landscape, weaving a narrative born from architecture, art, film and work from their own oeuvre.
An assembly of drawings, texts and interviews from the contemplative floating artwork Nomanslanding, created by five internationally renowned artists: Robyn Backen, Andre Dekker, Graham Eatough, Nigel Helyer and Jennifer Turpin. The artwork was a poetic reimagination of the place-void created by conflict, and a performative meditation on spatial impasse.
Holly Gavin, Lebanese born painter, writes a series of reflections on home, memory, and relation between place and identity. Each paired with a painting, these musings weave narrative which is at once deeply personal and symptomatic of Lebanese diaspora communities.
Lily Parsons, architecture graduate and co-founder of Chez Etym., writes a persuasive essay on the collective amnesia, incongruous bodies and aural resistance which underscore Singapore’s dazzling modernity.
Samuel Stair, architecture graduate and co-founder of Chez Etym., presents an essay exploring the correlation of death denial, and passive versus active nihilism. Expanding the philosophical notion of denial to encompass extinctionary and cosmic dysphoria, he considers its relationship with place, society and architecture.
Paul Stallan, architect and winner of several RIBA, RIAS, RSA and international awards, considers the social and urban plight of the city of Glasgow. In a polemic touching on modernism, Thatcherism and contemporary politics, he draws on his own architectural practice to contemplate a solution through education reform.
Faulds Stark is architecture graduates James Faulds and Tom Stark; together, they consider Antwerp in an effort to reveal the character of the Flemish city’s rich grain. Through drawing and text, they both illuminate and analyse the strata and flux of Antwerp’s vernacular.
Images: a) Matthew Doran, b) Brit Andresen.
