technē and poiēsis

I have been living with the shelf in my apartment for a couple months. I am quite happy with the way it divides the small space into two distinct areas, as well as the way it draws attention to the high ceiling. I am still not convinced that staining was the best idea- it is still sometimes a bit sticky. But I am also happy that I chose to make wooden connections. I think they are truer to the idea I had conceived. L'étagère avec tout le bordel du quotidien!

I recently visited a factory that makes prefabricated concrete parts. I was astounded by the amount of handwork and artistry is involved in making the pieces, just as I was at the plywood factory . It turns out that brick - which has the connotation of being close to the hand and human scale - is in fact the construction piece that can be fabricated with the least human contact. (see here ) Concrete, the actual substance of cement mixed with aggregate, is the least of the ingredients. Prefabricated concrete parts are actually made of a lot of carpentry and a lot of metalwork. The density of metal was impressive. Each rod has to be bent to the right shape and tied into place with wire. The bending of the metal is done mostly by machine, especially for the repetitive pieces. But the wiring is done by hand. I watched a worker deftly twist many pieces using a kind of large crochet hook. Reinforced concrete is probably the construction technique that has had the most impact on ...

When I tried to express my concerns for changing and disguising materials (see previous post), a colleague replied very aptly: "But it's not about disguise. When they add a coat of lime to stone walls, it's not a question of hiding the stone, but of protecting it, and reflecting the sun." So she knew intuitively the conclusion I came to through experience. For the shelf I initially wanted all the pieces just to slot together or hold by friction. I changed my mind because I wanted to be sure they would stay straight, even with heavy books, and my sawing skills were a bit too approximate for my liking. Then I was thinking I would use wooden dowels to peg the pieces together. Finally, I decided I would assemble it with screws first, just to make sure the pieces fit, and then make the wooden connections. But it has been several weeks and I have been using the shelf with the screw connections, trying to decide if I want to take it apart to put it back together with wo...

I am staining my pine boards with a pigmented oil. The label on the can says "oak". I am quite conflicted about this.  This blog began from the premise that every material has essential qualities that should not be imitated. These qualities are much more than visual- they include texture, density, reaction to outside forces (weather), and methods of working and tooling. There is absolutely no way of making an oak shelf from a pine board.  In French, the word for "species" of wood is "essence". But in English, the word means a core substance that concentrates all the qualities of something. By colouring my boards, am I denying their essence- in both senses of the term? But it is sometimes hard to decide what actions suppress the essence of a material, and what actions simply bring out its latent characteristics. For example, when I oiled my door handle , the wood became darker and more lustrous. I was amazed to see and feel how different the walnut wa...

My current project is to make a set of open shelves to divide my one-room apartment into 'eating' and 'sleeping' areas. I've learned from experience that when it comes to making, I have to simplify my initial concept until it can be reduced no further- economy of labour, material, and the clarity of the finished object all dictate this minimalism.  I thought for these shelves I had done my thinking well. One vertical post. One inclined post. Five horizontal surfaces. One inclined surface. I just need to make a few cuts and it will be done, right? Of course, it seems simple, but there are a whole series of small tasks that take time to do properly- time that I don't often have between working full time and not being around a whole lot. As a result, four months later, the few cuts I need to make still need to be made. Well, I've done most of them, but there are still some left. I've been learning a lot about working with pine. The difference betwe...

I have a memoir by Simone de Beauvoir by that name. It traces her journey as a young woman before the Second World War. She starts by describing what she feels is absolute freedom- having her own apartment, making her own decisions, exploring Paris. As the memoir progresses and France is occupied by Nazi forces, she realizes that her individual freedom is completely conditioned and circumscribed by her environment. In her case, 'la force de l'âge' is a pun- it means both her physical age, as she grows older and wiser, and the era, its Zeitgeist. Both of these affect the way she understands 'freedom' (liberté). I find myself in a similar position as Simone (I think we're on first-name terms!) at the beginning of her oeuvre. I, too, am starting out in my working life, living on my own, exploring the city of Lausanne which I now call home. And I find I am also discovering the force of age in two senses. The first is the real history of the constructions and t...

Perhaps due to my recent visit to a plywood factory , I have been interested in plywood and its properties. I wanted to try bending legs for a chair, just to get a feel for the material and how it works. This being my first time bending plywood, I made some foolish mistakes. The first one was to cut the strips along the grain, which made them much harder to bend. I used 1/8 inch, which was the thinnest I could find, but it was still pretty tough. I soaked the strips in a bath for a few hours to loosen them up.  When they were wet, I clamped them in position and left them to dry out a bit. They took a long time to dry, though, because they were clamped together. After a day or so, I took them out, glued them, and clamped them back. The glue on the top of the leg was dry after a few hours, but the bottom, where it touched the base of the jig, was still sticky. I took the piece out of the jig and clamped it separately. But, here was another mistake: I was afraid the le...

I have recently bought myself a carving knife and I have been testing it on some walnut that a friend gave me. Due to my interest in the tactility of architecture - or maybe due to Vancouver's new bylaw banning doorknobs - I decided to try carving a door handle. After deciding on the basic outline I cut the shape with a jigsaw. I could really feel the fibres of the wood as I was carving. Pushing up from under them would cause it to splinter easily, and shearing them downwards took more force but was more controllable. Walnut oils really nicely, completely changing the character of the wood. I used olive oil because I didn't have any other kind. To fit the existing latch of the door I had chosen I used a dowel carved into a square rod. The part I had the most trouble with was the spring mechanism. I tried first with an elastic threaded through the centre rod: That did not have enough force to pull the handle back up, so I tried next with a clothespin spri...