critical reflections
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critical reflections

Jacques Lemercier: Richelieu, Indre-et-Loire, 1631 engraving by Adam Perelle
Two Renaissance Towns: Two Seasons
2024

Granary, Grimentz, Valais, Switzerland, 16th century © Thomas Deckker 2023
Was Vitruvius Right?
2024

Aurelio Galfetti: Castelgrande, Bellinzona 1986 © Thomas Deckker 1996
Two Castles in Switzerland
2023

Nouveau plan de la ville de Paris 1828 © David Rumsey Maps
The Arcades Project
2023

Derelict Building, Kings Cross photo © Thomas Deckker 1988
Henri Labrouste and the construction of mills
2023

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Barrière St Martin, Paris (1785-1790) from Daniel Ramée: C.N. Ledoux, l'architecture (Paris 1847)
The Barrière de la Villette: the Sublime and the Beautiful
2022

Vauban: Neuf Brisach
Neuf Brisach: The Art of War
2022

Lucio Costa: Competition sketch for the Esplanada dos Minstérios, Brasília 1956
Did Lucio Costa know the Queen Mother?
2022

Vaux-le-Vicomte, Entrance Court, engraving by Israel Sylvestre
Vaux-le-Vicomte: Architecture and Astronomy
2022

Edzell Castle, Ground Floor Plan, from MacGibbon and Ross: The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland
Edzell Castle: Architecture and Treatises in Late 16th Century Scotland
2022

Capability Brown: Plan for Petworth Park from Dorothy Stroud: Capabilty Brown
The Upperton Monument, Petworth
2022

Isamu Noguchi: maquette for Riverside Drive c. 1961
Isamu Noguchi: useless architecture
2022

Jürgen Joedicke: Architecture since 1945: sources and directions (London: Pall Mall Press 1969)
Gottfried Böhm: master of concrete
2021

Thomas Deckker Architect: temporary truck stop, M20
Lorry Drivers are human, too
2021

Marc-Antoine Laugier: Essai sur l'Architecture
John Onians: 'Architecture, Metaphor and the Mind'
2021

Sir John Vanbrugh: Seaton Delaval, Northumberland (1720–28) from Colen Campbell: Vitruvius Britannicus vol 3 (1725)
Seaton Delaval: the aesthetic castle
2021

Jules Hardouin-Mansart: Les Invalides, Paris (1676) Section showing the double dome
The Temple of Apollo at Stourhead: Architecture and Astronomy
2021

Eric de Maré: Fishermen’s huts, Hastings (1956) © Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Library Photographs Collection
Eric de Maré: The Extraordinary Aesthetics of the Ordinary
2021

Iannis Xenakis: score for Syrmos, for string orchestra (1959) © Editions Salabert E. A. S. 17516
Iannis Xenakis: Music, Architecture and War
2021

United Visual Artists: Etymologies 2017 © United Visual Artists
United Visual Artists
2020

Margaret Howell: Campaign 2020 © Margaret Howell
Margaret Howell
2020

Palaces of Darius and Xerxes, Persepolis, Iran
The Plans of Antiquity
2020

Cristobal Balenciaga: Skirt Suit, 1964 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Cristobal Balenciaga
2020

Mathias Goeritz: La serpiente de El Eco, 1953 © Sothebys
Mathias Goeritz: 'Emotional Architecture'
2020

Richard Serra: Weight and Measure 1992 © Richard Serra
Weight and Measure
2020

Tony Smith: Playround, 1962 © Tony Smith Estate
Tony Smith: Art and Experience
2020

Highway Construction © Caterpillar Archives
Landscape and Infrastructure
2020

Frank Gohlke: Lightning Flash, Lamesa, Texas © Frank Gohlke
Grain Elevators
2020

Frank Gohlke: Lightning Flash, Lamesa, Texas © Frank Gohlke 1975
Frank Gohlke: Lightning Flash, Lamesa, Texas
© Frank Gohlke 1975

Grain Elevators

No-one growing up in a prairie town in Canada could fail to be aware of the importance of grain elevators, economically or spatially. One of the strangest memories from my childhood is of driving between the cities of Saskatoon and Regina in Saskatchewan, a distance of about 160 miles, across a perfectly flat landscape on a single straight road; exactly half way there was a small town called Davidson at which point the road divided, for a distance of about 1/2 mile, into 2 distinct parallel lanes separated by a row of trees (this road ran diagonally across the field grid, and thus brought out another spatial experience which I will discuss elsewhere). This town was dominated by - in fact, it was the reason for its existence - gigantic grain elevators. Grain elevators have been linked for me, since then, to the experience of this landscape and the road. It was an experience not only of distance, heat, and light, but of scale and the affinity of objects to specific locations.
Boulevard entrance to Davidson, Saskatchewan Historic Photograph © www.prairie-towns.com
Boulevard entrance to Davidson, Saskatchewan
Historic Photograph © www.prairie-towns.com
Grain Elevators, Davidson, Saskatchewan Historic Photograph © www.prairie-towns.com
Grain Elevators, Davidson, Saskatchewan
Historic Photograph © www.prairie-towns.com
I did not realise the importance of this experience until I came across this photograph by Frank Gohlke (in John Szarkowski's Mirrors and Windows, the book of a Museum of Modern Art, New York exhibition in 1978), as a student at the Architectural Association School in London. I immediately recognised how Frank Gohlke captured the essence of the prairie landscape and the juxtaposition to it of specific architectural forms. Frank Gohlke's 'Lightning Flash, Lamesa, Texas' of 1975 is, I believe, as important as Ansel Adams's 'Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico' of 1941 as a representation of the human condition. It inspired me to make my own trip to Lamesa.

Frank Gohlke came to critical attention when he was selected to be part of the important 'New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape' exhibition at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in 1975. The 'New Topographics' group included Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel Jr. and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The 'New Topographics' exhibition established a new paradigm in the photography of landscape and the interaction of architecture and landscape. Sadly the experience in Davidson is much diminished.: only one group of elevators remains and the town has been bypassed by a provincial highway.
A turning point in the history of photography, the 1975 exhibition New Topographics signaled a radical shift away from traditional depictions of landscape. Pictures of transcendent natural vistas gave way to unromanticized views of stark industrial landscapes, suburban sprawl, and everyday scenes not usually given a second glance.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The exhibition has been recreated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona and the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. At the time of writing Frank Gohlke does not appear to have a website but his work may be seen in Cargo Collective.
Patricia Bazelon: Kellogg Elevator © Patricia Bazelon / CEPA Gallery, Buffalo 1985
Patricia Bazelon: Kellogg Elevator
© Patricia Bazelon / CEPA Gallery, Buffalo 1985
Grain elevators have an important place in the history of architecture. Le Corbusier illustrated grain elevators in Vers Une Architecture in 1922 and their 'engineers' aesthetic' was an inspiration to his Purist paintings and architecture. To use them as inspiration he wilfully misrepresented them, however, as Purist objects themselves. It was not until Reyner Banham published A Concrete Atlantis in 1986, with photographs by Patricia Bazelon, that there was credible evidence that they were extraordinary material and spatial objects and were, in fact, stranger than Modern architects imagined, with, for example, entirely mobile buildings. A Concrete Atlantis destroyed the myth of grain elevators as Purist objects at the time when architects (or at least some) were becoming more interested in the relationship of buildings with their sites. This minority interest was opposed to the more common post-modernism by the emphasis on experience rather than information.

Patricia Bazelon's work may be seen at the CEPA Gallery.
Elevator, Lamesa, Texas © Thomas Deckker 1995
Elevator, Lamesa, Texas
© Thomas Deckker 1995
I was able to visit Lamesa and undertake my own study of elevators. I like to think of them as being subject to weather and time, rather than as heroic objects.
Thomas Deckker
London 2020