It's been a while since I've written, and that perhaps reflects that what was exotic is now normal, and that I have settled into Washington University. That my students are a joy, and I am enjoying them is a fact. In the time I have been traveling I have been reading, revisiting books, old and new. Of greatest note I've re-read several Ursula K. Le Guine novels. That The Left Hand of Darkness is etched into my mind from my teenage years is a fact, that it means more to me now is even more certain. The dispossessed and the Lathe of Heaven fell not far behind in my reading orgy.
In the course of this semester, I had to abandon one of the four projects I planned to undertake with my students, lengthening another, and skipping ahead to the last. It's all working for the best. The project I abandoned was to construct a ruin, to imagine a past culture and infrastructure, a fictional one, in a known site. The intention was to create a grain, a basis in the site on which we might build. The imagined world would invariably encode understandings of this one. While my initial reason for abandoning this project had to do with time, complexity, and “stretch” (my expectation of how far I would take the students), I see now that the idea might have been best saved as the kernel of something new, another studio. Upon re-reading the Lathe of Heaven it made even more sense to me—that this might be part of a larger studio of shifting realities—of working on a single project in a consistent place, but changing the ground rules as a way of propelling the work forward.
Such a studio would require an immense amount of trust from the students—and a willingness to be bold. Should I return to Washington University next semester, I think I may well be able to garner that trust—given the results of the current studio so far. Following is my first draft of a studio description—unrefined and by stream of consciousness:
The Lathe of Heaven, a possible design studio:
Ursula K LeGuin wrote The Lathe of Heaven close to the year of my birth. I'd like to think that something of the time of my making was encoded in that book. The world, however, has been re-made many times since then. Worlds and ways of life have ended while others have been created, again and again. Yet the truth of the book persists, namely, that the pursuit of durable perfection, be it in society or architecture is a fools errand, and that any construction, no matter how perfect, is destined to be reconstructed by world as the world re-makes itself. Stability, in Le Guine's novel and our own world comes from the relationships we create, from the acceptance of human activities and motivations.
That is not to say that we have nothing to say, in fact letting go of notions of finality more likely empower the architect to better ends. Paraphrasing and borrowing from a comment made by Le Guine, Architecture is mortal, it is a relationship that lasts for a period of time, long or short, and our relationship with it may change. Le Guine said that books are mortal—that literature is not information but relationships. Books, like relationships, last for a time and eventually fade. How bold and true a thing to say in an age when people believe that we might be reduced to information as a means of cheating death. Literature is not information, nor is architecture.
The notion of the Lathe of Heaven, while attributed to Chuang Tse by Le Guine is perhaps better attributed to Le Guine herself. She later learned and reported that the translation was flawed, that the Lathe did not exist in Chuang Tse's time. It's a fact that I find utterly delightful, because it frees the name and the title tto be a product of our own age, to amalgamate what was and what is. It's a blessed error, for the misquotation would have surely slipped into oblivion had Le Guine not cited it:
“Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven. —Chuang Tse: XXIII”
–Ursula K. Le Guine, The Lathe of Heaven
As much as the quotation might suggest about the world remaking the architect, it bears more fruit when one steps further back, and considers the implications in the realm of design itself, long before the concrete is cast and steel erected. That is to acknowledge that the strongest forces we might harness as designers require us to exceed rational processes. It is that exception that stands at the center of this proposed studio. Whether you believe, as I do, that metaphysical processes are at play or you believe that there is a deeper, subconscious experience that is not easily understood, heaven's help is part of design.
In a way that is not dissimilar to the plot of Ursula K. Leguine's Novel, students will design an architecture on a site in a world subject to change. At various intervals within the semester aspects of the project will shift. Alternate histories, material and cultural conditions will be explored as a means of propelling a work forward. There will be a mixture of beginnings, ends, and middles to draw from. The destabilizing effect of these shifts will be calibrated to bring the participants in contact with different aspects of architecture. Conventions architecture and common saws associated with the design process will be subverted giving participants have the opportunity to employ hidden aspects of their own creativity.
That the lathe is cited as the fundamental tool of heaven's ends, of its remaking of the world is apt, even if it is a misquotation. The lathe is the most fundamental machine tool. It is spinning and rotating. From that rotation one can cut level, one can make square by the act of drawing a braced tool over the surface. From the lathe comes the mill and all other tools, each making the next more precise: rotation the infinite beginning. So it is for us as well, understanding our own beginning, that from which we draw.
