My Black Mariah and the White Chapel in the Fields: A Dialectical Cartography

In the immediate proximity of my house there are four places I indivertibly attribute deeper meanings to, in which I either found traces of human interventions or intervened myself - as an architect - through built and fictional architectures. However, these places are an inconsistent set of separate micronarratives, drawings and reflections, remaining too anthological. I need to come to a cohesive understanding, meaning and depth in order to more deeply inscribe myself - as an architect - into the palimpsest of histories of the place and the house, its traditions of lacemaking, gardening and drawing, finding how this culture of making becomes making culture. This project was instigated by my search for a connective layer of meaning that carries these four places and the 'separate' meanings I attribute to them. In order to come more closely in touch with these places, I make architectural drawings by hand, because this slow process resonates with the mood of the site. The exhibition material revolves around designing a desk and a window in a topographic section which connects two places that become involved in a dialectical process of making meaning through the eye and mind of the architect: My Black Mariah and the White Chapel in the Fields. Drawing by hand is a patient act that goes through the body. The draughtsman's fingers palpate every place in the drawing, which may lead to a deeper, embodied understanding. Drawings, sketches, textual annotations, each highlighting another aspect, form a patchwork of overlapping documents that represent the palimpsest nature of this place and this theme and connect with the drawing and lacemaking history of the house. The work raises awareness of how a place's palimpsest of histories lends it a singularity that can be slowly deciphered, and of how this singularity can attune - through meditative drawing - with the singularity of the secret self and contribute to deeper well-being.