technē and poiēsis

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...

How does material acquire value? This question has informed many of the explorations on this website. It is a difficult question because value can have so many meanings. Leaving the definition of value aside for a moment, we can say that material can have value in its substance and/or in its craft. Gold has value in its substance; even a pile of raw dust will be worth something. Many materials, however, have little or no value in their substance, and must be transformed and worked in some fashion. This transformation allows the material to become useful, beautiful, or ideally, both. Due to efficiency and disinterest we often make generic products fit specific needs. Not many people stop to ask if their home, their furniture, or their clothes are actually what they want, or if they were simply the easiest to access or the best of the limited options. Think about it. Is your desk actually the right height for you? Is your chair the perfect fit for your body? Is the window where you...

J'ai eu l'occasion de passer une semaine à Montréal. Ayant déjà visité plusieurs fois la ville, je tentais cette fois de découvrir un peu son côté industriel en visitant une usine de contreplaqué. Ce qui m'étonnait c'était la quantité de main-d'oeuvre nécéssaire. Chaque étape du procès reqiert une inspection visuelle et qualitative, qui ne s'effectue que par des oeils humains. Malgré l'automatisation et l'optimisation qui existe dans n'importe quelle usine, je dirais que la fabrication du contreplaqué est plutôt un art qu'un procès industriel. Je n'avais pas le droit de prendre des photos. J'ai alors tenté de faire des petites illustrations pour que vous pouvez comprendre les étapes, mais je ne vante surtout pas mes abilités de dessin... Les billots qui arrivent à l'usine sont coupés pour faire des longueurs d'exactement neuf pieds. Ils sont cuits à la vapeur pour 24 heures pour qu'ils sont saturés d'eau. Ensu...

It works. I feel like the cave person who discovered fire. After all these months, now I finally see it come together. One of the decisions I made recently was to have a stovepipe instead of a brick chimney. I am very glad I did. The black metal contrasts nicely with the brick and it leaves the point open for the view to the field. The other part I am working on is the door to the fireplace. Here I have it in place, but it fell apart when I tried to lift it back.  What you can't see from the photo is the smoke coming out of the chimney. It draws the air through, under the floor. I spotted some small smoke leaks but I can fix those with mortar. Next step- sleep in it! It has been so warm here these days that I barely need the fire though.