DIAGRAMS UNLEASHED

 

We were developing technical education for secondary schools in post-independence Zimbabwe. I had taught building for a couple of years at an experimental school based at a former white farm. Primarily bricklaying but trying to infuse the lessons with problem-solving and visual skills.

Then I moved into curriculum development, writing textbooks and teachers notes. Finally I ended up at the university running an upgrade course for building teachers. I had to invent my own course and the best technology available was an overhead projector. So I spent evenings and weekends creating transparencies just to stay one step ahead of my students.

These two slides are trying to broaden their thinking about doors and windows. Rote learning was the norm in Zimbabwean schools and "this is the way we do it here" set the boundaries for the most part.

So I summoned up some of my own very hands-on experience of a different approach to door frames. The old-fashioned way of fitting timber frames into completed openings as opposed to pressed metal frames, built in as the work progresses.

Then there is an attempt to show that doors and windows belong to a much broader range of "openings" that have different functional properties and contexts. Technology evolves. It has a history and it varies from place to place.

Use a building course to open up the world to young minds, not to just channel them into a trade.

 

 

Another transparency from 1988 when I was running a Bachelor of Education course at the University of Zimbabwe. This was a module called Architectural Studies which began with a general History of Architecture overview, then reviewed a hundred years of buildings in Harare, drawing heavily on Peter Jackson's book.

Bradlows was a breakthrough building in Harare. The first unabashedly modern structure in the town centre. Before this everything had been some variant of classicism or Art Deco. It was 1938 and the architect was Lynn Driver-Jowett, who later went into partnership with Frank Lincoln.

 

So the building is 85 years old, and my sketch of it 35. I guess I can claim to be a link back to the era of Modernism that is fast fading. Of course, Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) was 10-15 years behind Europe in trying out Modernism. When I moved there in 1981, the same could be said about many aspects of life. It was kind of like stepping back in time, and that appealed.

The collage comprises two views from Google Earth and a drawing by one of my students. I am hugely proud of the work they did when challenged to go out and research for themselves. I had hoped to stay there several years and build up a significant body of original student research, but the fates thought otherwise.

All the same I hope that a new generation of Zimbabwean architecture enthusiasts will find posts like this valuable.

 

Papers from almost 50 years ago. I was a young idealist, "dropout", dreamer. I had completed a first degree in architecture, but spent the second half of that course playing at being a rebel. I hung around in London for another year, living on the margins, squatting, drawing political cartoons, imagining a radical new world in my head.

Then I moved back up North, to Sheffield with a group of friends. Started doing building work and playing music. At times I would sit in the reference library, exploring knowledge at random, making notes and diagrams. Most of my ideas took a visual form.

 

 

 
I was very naive of course, painfully so in retrospect. But happily, I didn't get swept up in anything violent or destructive, although I met people who learned that way. One diagram here shows ideas moving along in a linear way, parallel lines, followed by a perturbation that leads to an explosion of creativity. A kind of magical thinking, a lack of historical perspective, unaware of how lucky I was to live in a society of freedom and plenty.

There were explorations of musical patterns, topology, oriental rugs, tessellation, knots and knitting. I loved to draw crazy things for young children, and slowly my focus was shifting towards learning practical skills. Although I had abandoned architecture as an office job, I couldn't escape a fascination with buildings. How they are made, why they differ from place to place.

Eventually this obsession would give me the sense of historical perspective that I had lacked and a great respect for the cultural heritage we inherit.