87 Micro
87_Micro to Macro Genius Loci . . .
Micro to macro is a term used a lot in economics for the translation of every small purchase adding to the greater economy.
In this context we are looking at the genius-loci: ‘spirit of place’, in terms of architectural style. The micro to macro genius-loci makes an interesting analogy of the painter putting his or her final touches to a good painting. We can make an envisioned whole, and often incarcerate the whole image through the depiction of a fragment from a number of mono-genius interventions, collated together to make a holistic vision of an Island, territory, town or City. It is the repetition in its finality that affirms the original statement of its end, as if the genius of the first vision was the exact and correct technique to use, in order to inaugurate a new depiction or style of what is to come for that place. To make a collection of functional pockets of aesthetic pleasing – to save an economy and bring about sustainable rejuvenation.
Whether this were ‘Laissez-faire’ or ‘Keynesian’ economics depends on whether you think forward architecture is State entrained, or, independent architects doing building with their own motivations and winning power. The non-governmental method is harder to create with life service building in mind, i.e. buildings that serve life, not an economic function. Still, education, business, defence, health, housing, leisure, and work are all really, economic functions, despite the importance of education as purely a service. However, some new elements of life which are creeping into the architectural fore, mindfulness and meditation are without doubt, useful tools to employ into everyday buildings and to incorporate as pure architecture.
To compare Lanzarote and the UK: Lanzarote is a touristic economy – accommodating hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, multiplying its population, while the UK is fundamentally leisure based and a free market based economy, yet succeeding governments run a bureaucratic, publicly funded national health system, and spend on average 35% of GDP on public funding. The economies are very different, but the art scene is not so different. One may say, on an island it is easy to fenestrate beautifully from fragment to whole, because it is conceived holistically, as if you were flying over-head, Lanzarote being much smaller than the UK.
Damian Hirst, or Rachel Whiteread, would be a good ideal artist to compare to César Manrique, as an idol to reconfigure the UK architecturally. And here is the lead into genius-loci. Lanzarote has such a unique volcanic black dried magma rock, dry desert landscape, mountainous range, exotic plants, and good fresh fish, and other foods, that restaurants, houses, art galleries, cafes and view-points, swimming pools, all deep set into the ground, keep the buildings cool, close to their rooted magma, and with a new take on viewing the sun, sky, stars, beach, landscape, and up-close the rock itself through glazing, or an opening. In the UK we would need good weather protected buildings, maybe that change in the wind and rain would be a good point to jump off. Buildings that are prevented from letting in the damp, whether that is a pitched roof, based on the old farmyard barn, as a form of inspiration, good proportions, composition, art, cafes, restaurants, youth centres, climbing walls, indoor tennis courts, houses, etc. Maybe tar painted timber like the old barns, as we see on Kent’s, coast-line. Something of the ephemeral changing on a day-to day basis, with weather beaten walls.
The scale rule, translating from Lanzarote to the UK, and from the inception of the first new intervention in the UK to its lasting premise, takes the mono-genius to the macro, as a genius-loci, by way of creating its own economy for its identity through form and content. This could be placed as the basis of a design competition or an Architect co-existing with an extremely futuristic, speculative and artistic developer. Painting spaces into thriving Cities, particularly looking at deprived areas. To establish the use of new buildings, or the re-use of old. There are simply thousands of re-use opportunities in the town or City. Like El Tanque, by AMP Arquitectos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, España. (www.menis.es/en/portfolio/el-tanque-santa-cruz-de-tenerife/).
The micro to macro as genius-loci, is about bringing an abundance of good to a given location and making innovation credible to an economic and socially based system, through government implementation as the Congrès internationaux d’architecture Moderne, (CIAM), recommended, some form of government intervention. A continuum of history to inaugurate the well-being of a state doused in subordinate buildings of little pleasure to the Bewohner (dweller) or abhorrent user of a world solidified by degeneration and unfortunate quasi-unfunctional new aestheticism around the world. There has to be the escapology of a unique hand or foot reaching out to the masses making calm and contented interiors of edifices that bring about a reviving and revitalizing paradigm – a pattern or model, of the new in terms of classicism, proportion, composition and angular discernment for a better way forward. CIAM described their planning of towns as stark, this was overcome by a more familiar aesthetic of comfort, but as opposed to function following form, one could say function as form: while they sound the same, the other does not follow, so makes a purposeful new aesthetic of its function.
We should be aware that this is a positivist movement, throughout its struggle, as depicted here. Gallego & Rey, Máximo, Peredis, El Roto, Lanzarote, El Papel de la Crisis, 27th October 2000 – 7th January 2001, Fundación César Manrique, p.173 Note: See p.167 for full English version of pdf. book, by link.
“There can be little doubt that, at the centre of our maelstrom, lie present day democratic practices, so formal and rhetorical as they cling to the old world order, or, to put it another way, as deeply immersed in a crisis as they are in need of a redefinition. The map making techniques with which to conceive and manage the era are in need, of a major renewal, leaving the way open for maps designed to take us beyond the disagreeable experiences resulting from both intellectualness and uncertainty. Collective interests receive their information via unknown perspectives and dynamics.”
In redefining cartography, as we see with so many historical climate change maps. Great leaders can make scientific thinking on geographical subjects more accessible, and not just for governmental leaders, but activists. In the Anthropocene world a temperature rise would be expected, but not due to man-made causes, and so the coherence with the macro genius-loci ever changes into those buildings required to save abandoned communities in flooded, icy, snow-driven, scorched and windy weather. Therefore, we need the micro to macro genius loci, to keep spirits up in people, to accommodate differing socio-economic and eco-friendly projects. For the masses of people to congregate, as anonymous human beings, with shared and unshared experiences. With a shaft of light from source, a movable roof, tactility, changing with the seasons, simply crafted, celebrating life and humanity on this planet. The warmth with the cold, the roughness with the smoothness, the light with the dark, the colour with more muted visceral tones. Something contrasting to commerce, but high-quality space making. Micro to macro genius loci will give us identity again.
FP x
