Architecture LIVE 8
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| With the help of a neighbour and his horsebox the roofing is collected from the supplier. This proves to be something of a comedy as the horse box is too short and the roofing too long. However with a little ingenuity we manage to secure the load and creep back to Leitrim in one piece. |
| Balanced against the quiteness of the workshop/course scene progressing the roof provides lots of stimulus. Does my future really lie here in Ireland or am I destined to be elsewhere? This question weighs on me as I survey the scene from the roof peak. It is as if the country has gone to sleep, waiting for the situation to change of its own accord. This has a strange and disturbing quality to it mirorred in the calm that cocoons each day. |
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| The perfect roofing weather encourages me past my own resistances, applying logic to my restlesness and soothing words to my fears. Making a roof is like that – the perfect foil for ones desire for a quiet and peaceful life. So it is that the weather changes course and sends a constant drizzle down from the pearly sky. I huddle under the lean-to and gaze upon the two lonely sheets which I have managed to install. This has been something of a drama – wrestling the heavy 4.8m long sheets into position from the back of the horsebox. This requires perfect calm in terms of the weather and in terms of one’s own temperament. Securing the sheeting is something of a joy though – feeling the heavy screws biting into the purlin and tightening themselves against future storms. |
| Now that I have the unloading and installing routine down all I can do is wait for a clearance. I fill this time with work on the EconoSpaceMaking Course – remembering past projects, past traumas and past sucesses. This brings to mind the nature of time and how bound up it is with architecture and space. Creating a building is all about future time, the time when the building will be occupied and in use as opposed to the actual time spent in its making. It is the making time, which reveals so much about who we are and where we are going. |
| Designing and making a building allows us to choose our direction in life. This journey begins long before the first sod is turned or the first nail is driven. By the time we reach these stages our direction has been clearly established. It is very difficult to alter this course once construction is underway. This is why unresolved issues which surface during the building phase can be so challenging. |
| Normally sensetivity is absent from the building site – for good reason. When the fabric of a building begins to enclose the space which will constitute its interior the potential of that space begins to be revealed. If this does not accord with ones own life potential then a conflict is inevitable. This is why ‘self-building’ is so challenging and why most people prefer strangers to build their houses on their behalf. That way one can consign these challenges to a realm beyond ones control. |
| In my case the challenges of my life are felt in every hammer blow. Perched on the roof under the inquisitive gaze of passers-by I am naked and vulnerable though each small forward step carries me deeper into the mystery of life and further from the mundane. |
| The weather feeds my frustration as I clamber down one more time from my perch to shelter from the rain. The internet weather map reveals an Atlantic size bank of cloud drifting in from the west that may take a week to pass. So, I change tack and utilse my frustration to generate forward movement. |
| I move inside the frame and begin the installatiion of the subfloor. In my mind I have been holding off working on the inside until the roof was completed and a fresh ritual enacted to celebrate the opening up of the interior. I sudenly realise that be true to that aspiration if I confine the work to the floor. |
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| As soon as I begin work I feel a surge of energy encouraging me forward. In half an hour I have the first section complete. A new world is arrayed around me. I am floating, held only by the gravity of my thoughts inside the frame. Alanna and the cows witness my excitment. The potential of the future appears from nowhere, raw ingredients to alchemise a new reality. |
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| This experience is contrasted with the dullness of the countryside through which we pass on our way back and forth to Mayo. Everywhere life appears to have been put on hold. Even towns and villages appear deserted. It is on the roads or in the shops where one encounters life. The land seems to cry out for nourishment and attention yet all it receives is indifference. Nowhere can one witness a move towards a sustainable reality. No wind chargers, no solar panels, no vegetable gardens, no cyclists, no walkers, no creativity, no excitment, no love. |
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| I force myself to stare this in the face, to witness my own distraught response as I pick my way forward. Memories of oppression and hunger are everywhere piled high threatening to erupt at any moment. We discover artifacts which bear witness to the past – bullans and sacred stones, ancient places of worship, mountains with summits hidden in the sky. This tesimony stands against the emptiness of the present, reducing it to nothing. |
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| Back in Leitrim I hoist myself skyward once again under this burden of insight. The accumulated weight of knowing presses down on me like a sentence. I struggle to imagine the Irish Awakening birthing a new reality. This possibility seems so remote that it drags me down to earth and confounds my sense of optimism. Where is the hope lurking? In projections? In facts and figures? In the hidden recesses of peoples hearts? |
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| I hear no answer as I drift towards the horizon. |
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Architecture LIVE 9
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| Architecture LIVE 7 |