The Loneliness of the Poet

When I saw this, I knew he had me. I could love the building, I could appreciate both the genius and the subtlety, but could never grasp it all. Lewerentz is always going to be a step ahead of me. He is always going to hold something in reserve. He is always going to surprise me and yet his generosity is inexhaustible. The power of his work lies in this--that even when you think you know what he will do next he perturbs your expectation--not gratuitously, but in a way that reflects just how deeply invested he was in every decision. He is architecture's Cezanne. He must have been a profoundly lonely man.

Dreaming Lewerentz

I dreamed about Lewerentz last night. I finally got to meet him and he was very large and quite old. He showed me his house and we walked up a hill together to meet some people who had gathered to hear him sing. There was much excitement and everyone was so pleased to see him. He sang a beautiful Italian song and then wandered back out into the afternoon. We waited with anticipation for his final song but he didn’t return. I set out to look for him and imagined that he felt he had already sung his last song and had gone home to die. I went to his house and walked quietly among the rooms. Half-open dark grey doors, wooden floors, tall windows and a silhouetted rocker…I recalled him sweetly and let the melancholy of his passing slowly seep into me. “What are you doing here?” he asked, startling me out of my sadness. I was embarrassed—happy to see him alive, but very embarrassed. I tried to explain that I’d come looking for him and he assured me that he’d just come home for a break and had every intention of returning. He found me impatient. Just then his wife appeared in a state of semi-undress in the doorway of their room.

I had the best day today.

October 13, 2008


I set out early this morning for Valdemarsvik. I went to visit their cemetery which was designed by Sigurd Lewerentz in 1914. I’d been once before a couple of year ago. It was early November and I’d arrived with little more than an hour of daylight. I remember trying to move quickly and my haste did nothing to dampen the impact of this remarkable site. I watched the full moon rise over the chapel’s spire-roof and then departed reluctantly, shrouded in the early northern shadows. I took the last bus to the last train and landed in my rented room feeling tired and lucky.

I had several delayed realizations about the site, which were verified by the photos I’d taken and I confidently wove them into papers and presented them at conferences.


My visit today was much different. It’s not as late in the year and I arrived early. I have three days this time so there is no sense of urgency. I’d read that Lewerentz had been influenced by Bronze Age burial mounds found near the site and I’d located them in his proposal for the cemetery. I wandered up into the forest above the cemetery to have lunch and I stumbled upon them immediately. The Bronze Age in Europe was roughly from 2000 to 600 BC and in spite of thousands of years of overgrowth they were unmistakable.


I remember following a hand drawn map many years ago to the ruins of an old church in Doolin, Ireland. There were graves inside as well as out and the stone ruins, now deep in green grass, rocked and wobbled as I slowly made my way through them. The profound sense of reverence I felt then struck me again today as I crept toward the mounds. I don’t know if it’s the visceral sense of so much time or if it’s socially constructed or perhaps a fundamental aspect of being human, but it is absolutely halting to walk on hallowed ground.


I took my time today walking through the cemetery and by the time I’d made my way to the bottom children began trickling through on their way home from school. A path half-lined with evergreens cuts through the cemetery and connects the school on one side with a residential area on the other. I’d theorized that Lewerentz had organized the cemetery along two perpendicular axes; this transverse path of the living and the much longer path of the dead running the cemetery’s entire length. The evergreens lining the short path stood out against the brilliant yellow of the lindens that ran in perfect lines along the long path. As I turned around and walked back toward the chapel I was puzzled by a jog midway along the northern border. I’d brought a copy of Lewerentz’s proposal with me this time and I suddenly realized that the cemetery had been expanded. The plantings that bordered the addition, that tight row of evergreens, came much later. My brilliant and by now published reading of the cemetery was wrong. Lewerentz hadn’t intended them at all, they were coincidental, an inadvertent product of a later intervention directed at an unrelated intention.


As this new reality set in it did nothing to diminish the experience I'd had the first time I visited the site. Did it matter who had made or intended the scenario I experienced? Did it matter that no one had intended it; that it was mere happenstance? In spite of being wrong I couldn’t efface that initial experience and I was just as pleased with today’s detective work even though it left my interpretation in tatters. I sketched for a while before boarding the bus back to Norrköping and smiled with the sparkling Swedish autumn all the way home.

It occurred to me while running...

Coupling
In delicate pearls the mist lingers on the spider’s web.

Fragment
How sweetly a stair discovered in the forest guards its secret.

American Longing
An American who has discovered Europe’s splendours secretly dreams of his provenance and pretends he has at last come home.

On the Virtues of Sustained Experience

“After a while the cathedrals all look the same.”

I am without doubt a proponent of traveling to see architecture but there comes a point where all the things you’ve seen seem to merge into a single hazy overloaded memory. Architecture is oriented toward experience. And representations, if the architecture has any merit at all, are never adequate to tell the story. It must be experienced in the flesh. Even so, architecture is not art. It is not on display or intended as an object for an observer. It is oriented toward lived experience, which is far less self-conscious and stretches out over a different scale of time in a rhythm of temporal repetition. Trying to take in all the complexities of a cathedral in a single visit asks far too much and visiting multiple sites in a short span of time only multiplies frustration. These buildings are meant to become persistent and loyal figures that support both the quotidian and episodic aspects of human lives. Their content is meant to be uncovered slowly wherein the incremental revelations and discoveries cultivate a relationship that grows richer with age. To expect to take it all in, let alone retain with any degree of clarity is to underestimate the depth of these sites and to miss the import of the experience. This is why sketching and writing are proven tools of architectural study. They require a slow pace and an intimacy of contact that is almost always foregone in sightseeing.

Till Sverige!

It will be two weeks tomorrow that I’ve been in Sweden and I can hardly believe that so little time has passed as it seems much has transpired. It’s a gorgeous Swedish summer with puffy clouds, blue skies and sparkling water. My time so far has been consumed with a rather trying search for housing which I’m happy to say has concluded with pleasant, if expensive results. The housing market is controlled by the government, which keeps rents low but leaves little to be offered to outsiders except illegal and overpriced sublets. Add to that the fact that I arrived at a time when most Swedes are out in the archipelago at their summer homes and it feels like I’ve been looking for a needle in a non-existent haystack. My Swedish friend Katarina came to my rescue by sending e-mails asking everyone she knows in Stockholm if they had a place for me. I’m staying with a wonderful woman named Lotta in Ektorp, which is just a few kilometers east of Stockholm. I’ll be here until the end of August and then I have a place of my own in a part of the city called Östermalm. It’s a swanky neighborhood, high rent, very central and close to the water (though there’s little that isn’t here) as well as several great parks. Djurgården is a large-ish island, very close to my place with miles of waterfront running trails and lots of huge old villas and a palace. Perfect for marathon training. I’ll have to move again, just before Christmas, but the International Programs Coordinator at KTH seems to think I’ll be able to get a student apartment by then. So, a month in what feels like the countryside and then the rest of my time right in the heart of the city. Perfect.

Lotta is a lighting designer and just sent her 17 year old daughter off to Sacramento for a year as an exchange student. She’s probably very close to my age, perhaps just a few years older, and she has a lovely, apartment in a building that was built in the 1930’s. It is contemporary Swedish, lots of IKEA, great wallpaper and minimal detailing. There’s an inlet of the Baltic Sea about a 5 minute walk away and a cycling trail that goes straight into Stockholm. Lotta is away for a couple of weeks, at her summer house near Gavle and so for the moment I have the place to myself. She works in an office with several other designers and has promised to take me there to see what they do. I’m happy for the arrangement as she seems so kind and it’s nice to make some Swedish friends. I’ve spent the past couple of days schlepping luggage and getting settled in—shopping for food, wine, a coffee pot, towels, etc and settling in with a nice bath and and some much needed sleep. I’ll recount my hostel stay another time but suffice it to say I spent six days in a room with a Born Again Christian who felt compelled to espouse her (and God’s) views on Stockholm’s upcoming Pride Festival so you can well imagine how we got along.

Yesterday I did my first serious run in preparation for the Nice to Cannes Marathon in November. It’s six miles into Stockholm from here and so I ran the round trip before it got too hot to be out. Today was my first day of getting to work and I have to say it feels great to get going. I have much to do, but for now at least, my motivation is strong. I met with Torun Warne, the director of the Arkitekturmuseet, and she was very generous in offering support for my research. The archive is closed until mid-August, which gives me some time to read and get back into this material.

My missive wouldn’t be complete without mentioning something about economy, exchange rates and the pathetically weak dollar. Stockholm isn’t the most affordable city to begin with and at 6 SEK to the dollar it borders on ridiculous. I’ve done my best to be frugal.


Here are some specifics:

taxi from Central Station to Hostel (1.5 km) 140 SEK $ 23.33
one night in a 6-bed dorm 240 SEK $ 40.00
glass of wine 46 SEK $ 7.60
Emmental cheese 350g 40 SEK $ 6.60
small Barilla pasta sauce 23 SEK $ 3.80
zucchini per kg 20 SEK $ 3.33
milk 1 liter 8 SEK $ 1.31
baguette 17 SEK $ 2.83
load of laundry 35 SEK $ 5.83
my running shoes ($95 in US) 1200 SEK $ 200
hair gel 40 SEK $ 6.60
one month of internet 295 SEK $ 49.16
fee for taking cash from ATM $ 5.00

February's long good-bye

The shortest month of the year nearly burst its seams. It began with preparations for an interview with Juhani Pallasmaa focused on Lewerentz that will be published later this year. The result exceeded my most optimistic expectations and now the task of transcribing over 2 ½ hours of audio awaits. Paper deadlines followed, pushed forward by my family’s arrival here in Helsinki. My sister had barely been here a day when as bad timing would have it, we happened into a large multi-story shopping center just minutes after a middle aged man had jumped to his death. A rather inauspicious, not to mention morbid and disturbing start to her vacation. My brother and his wife arrived that same evening and after a day of seeing Helsinki we all piled into a train bound for Russia.

I watched Viipuri run out through the window and after a long stretch of forest we emerged on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Everything was huge. Giant apartment blocks, wide streets, big skies and hundreds of filthy little cars. From Finland Station we walked across the Neva. It was as wide as the Columbia and frozen solid. 18^th and 19^th Century buildings lined the banks in various states of grandeur and colorful disrepair. Canals cut through the southern part of the city making it into a caricature of Venice inhabited by stinking automobiles and filled with noise. Every block had a little booth, sometimes sturdy other times cobbled together, from which someone kept an eye on the street. Suspicion lingered in the frozen exhaust infused air. Crumbling courtyards overflowed with piles of dirty snow and twisted and rusty debris. Uniformed men filled the sidewalks and alleyways. Around a final corner a plaza that could hold a half dozen Place de la Concordes opened up, the beautiful and strangely green Hermitage on one side and an endless arching yellow building on the other. From time to time a furious motor would propel a car or van straight from the last world war around the vast space. People scurried out of the way scolded by hollow aggressive horns.

Nighttime and crisp air cast a surreal glow on the city and its gleaming gilded domes. Cyrillic signs kept even the most benign and banal shrouded in their secret code. Pectopah repeated over and over. It must be something serious and related to the government, I mused. I was intrigued and tried to crack the code. B as in van. H as in Napoleon. P as in restaurant. Or Restoran or Pectopah.

Wanders through miles of art filled hallways and arrays of strange 17^th century medical specimens were punctuated by sifting through old coins, worn icons, hat shops and plates of dill. Minus 18° C, again. Fur starts to make sense and vodka for breakfast sounds good. We descended deep beneath the streets and into old blue metro cars and made our escape.

We emerged in Tallin, which puts Disneyland to shame. It was perfect. Our apartment was gorgeous, stone walls and timbered ceilings with a view to a medieval church and its accompanying 18^th Century chapels. Friendly faces, familiar words with mixed up meanings, wooden toys, wool socks, linen everything and cozy coffee shops. We wandered, cooked, took saunas and regrouped. Then back into the unknown on a bus bound for Riga.

We pulled in from the east and it looked like we’d perhaps landed back in Russia but that first impression was quickly dispelled as we walked past the medieval center, through the 19^th Century parks and boulevards to our apartment. Riga was a balmy +1° C and after what we’d become accustomed to it felt like spring had arrived. After some minor difficulties getting into our apartment we wandered back out to find dinner. For just a few Lats we found great food (only a little dill this time), amazing beer and BALZAM! Balsam is an herbal concoction that our guidebook described as “thick as custard and guaranteed to knock the hind legs off a donkey.” They may have exaggerated a little—not so thick and as we don’t have hind legs that part of the theory remains untested.

Riga is home to one of the longest running markets in Europe. It was originally in the medieval town square before it moved to the banks of the Daugava where it flourished for over 350 years. Having grown so large, the city bought 5 zepplin hangers in the early part of the 20^th Century to house the market. The buildings are incredible and you can find any kind of meat or fish imaginable, as well as some you might not want to imagine. Clothing, jewelry and magazine stalls mix with butchers, bakers and sellers of canned goods, coffee and tea. It was a feast for both the eyes and the stomach.

Riga’s medieval town is mostly intact and a few buildings have been rebuilt to replace ones ruined in the various and many conflicts that mark the city’s history. It was part of the Hanseatic League and guild houses mingle with churches, schools and some newer art nouveau apartment blocks. But the surprise highlight of Riga was the unbelievable Jugendstil buildings built by Sergei Eisenstein’s father, Mikhail. Turns out he was an architect, and a rather prolific one at that. Concentrated in just a few blocks are more buildings than you could shake a stick (or three cameras) at. Most were in pristine condition but a couple were mildewed and falling down—heartbreakingly beautiful! I must have run through 4 rolls of film in less than an hour.

My family has gone home now and I said good-bye to Juhani yesterday. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Just a few days left to bid farewell to this sparkling gem of a city and this European dream. Thank you Valle! It has been unforgettable.