Pictures from Jamaica at Voorthuis.net: Teaching architecture, architectural theory, history and design.

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Bobo

Apart from the pink, which I enjoyed as a background to the icons, I wondered whether the crack had been used symbolically, or whether that was just me.

Trenchtown, very near to the house where Bob Marley lived. The protrait, I was told was done by an admiring japanese pelgrim who left it there as a hommage to the great man, It has since become part of this fantastically layered composition of corrugated iron.

This photograph is, together with the one that starts off this slide collection, one of my favouritse. It was taken right in the middle of nowhere (as one experiences places when driving long distances in a car... cf Marc Augé) on the Road to Ocho Rios and the rest of the North coast. The shop beneath the layer of paint is closed. I suspect the person owning the shop somehow prefered it closed as it brought the point of the painting home dramatically. There is a wonderful disconnection between the painting's composition and the functional geometry of the shutters and doors of the shop. The two ignore each other completely, but it is precisely because of that that the photograph is so magical. (to me that is of course..)

This house is along the same road as the shop of the previous photograph but nearer the north coast. It is among many houses I would like to retire to. I love its formal symmetry, the central door with its blue glass and the cross-shaped assembly it forms with the windows. I wonder whether this is religious intention at work here. I rather imagine it is purely an economy of structure and effort. I also love its heavily mascara'd window and door frames, its side entrance with its small volume set back and stuck on as well as the way the plinth meets the gently sloping grass, and the uncertain strenght of the wavy roofline. And all this set in the glorious and lush Jamaican countryside.

This Greathouse (of which the name has slipped me, but I shall look it up anon) shows what happens when palladianism is stripped to its bare bones. The same symmetrical composition, the same easy proportions, the same clarity of outline and volumetric precision, but everything abstracted and made simple, while the staircase loses the fussiness and sense of excess that symmetrical staircases generally carry. Here just a single one approaching the wooden volume on the high plinth from the right. The windows with their white grill on top also give the whole a rather lively antrhopomorphic look. I like the way the opening in the central projection of the plinth below reaches almost to the top.

This picture comes from Berthelot and illustrates some of the themes in the previous two pohtogoraph as well as another: the accumulative backward growth of a house as it is expanded into the back garden to accommodate a growing family. This one is particularly satisfying because of the litte window abutting the entry volume, creating a rather happy sequence of repeated elements.

This proud fence stands in Riverton City, a neighborhood deserving the name of city, simply beacause of the number of its inhabitants, but in fact built upon the City dumping ground at the edge of Kingston. Here the poorest of the Jamaican poor try to eek out a living, collecting whatever remains of value after a poor country has thrown away what it no longer wants. There is a paint factory not far from the dump. This comes in handy as the desire for dignity as expressed in one's the imaging of one's surroundings is of course no less a concern for these people than it is for any one else, as this and a number of other photographs will show. KOK LOL inscribed in the Christian cross on the entrance to the smal compound stands for King of Kings, Lord of Lords. The door of the shack behind the tall fence is similarly encrusted with religious symbols.

The same fence from a different angle. The men sitting in the shade under the awning were happy to let me take this picture of their homes.

A more detailed version or the bricolated shack with its Kurt Schwitters-like composition of bric-a-brac elements.

Here the interests of a clever one-line morality have completely obscured any possible commercial function of the billboard. The photograph was taken in Downtown Kingston.

The same goes for this one. A better bit of abstract expressionism for this highly controlled commercial venture would be hard to find

Berthelot's version of a caribbean hut.

A house on Heroes' circle. The text next to the portrait of Sellasie reads as follows. "What life has taught me I share with those who wish to learn. Progress must be moral. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement. When this comes to be realized man's journey towards higher and more lasting values will show more marked progress while the evil in him recedes into the background. Knowing that material and spiritual progress are essential to man, we must ceaselessly work for the equal attainment of both. Only then shall we be able to acquire the absolute inner clam so necessary to our well being." Well there it is.

Just opposite the Godbless Supermarket in Kingston I found this cryptic and perhaps rather macabre blackboard painted on the gatepost. There are 910 coming, 26 dead, a lot of them "under" and just 16 live.... Is this macabre? It may have a perfectly mundane explanation. Perhaps it has something to do with the bank. The only number painted in a more permanent way is the 10.000 next to the word bank. I simply do not know what it means. The mind boggles...

One Blood with a lot of pastry. And what does P.Y.R.O.U.R mean? Downtown Kingston

A view of ** next to Tivoli Gardens, an fine example of the horribly degrading and inhuman south african social housing schemes imported during the seventies. Despite all the arguments for this kind of nightmare, all of which do indeed cut grass: "it is better than nothing, it is better than a shack (perhaps, depending on where and of what material and what amenities there are in the vicinity). But what is an argument that says "it is better than nothing". That is the kind of argument used by people who know that what they are delivering is way off the mark, reducing people to objects just as surely as slavery did. Give people dignity and the chance to build their own lives, by setting up power mechanism which check the power mechanisms of greedy bureacracy and the law-gving violence of strong men. I cannot accept this kind of social housing scheme as anything but the most dismal. In the foreground the parked market carts resemble the owner's dream: a fast car, the first one called Godzilla, just after the film of the same name was released. These are more than objects, they are the material investment of a wish.

Very near the castle (see no. 14) We came upon this Obeah Sanctuary. The surfaces, including the ground, were littered with mysterious vessels, bottles, sayings and signs. The lady was extremely friendly and was very happy and to show us round her healing chapel. The table had been decked for the coming ceremony. (see No.s 35, 36, 70 & 71 and Edward Seaga's diagram of a Pocomania ceremony cf. Jamaica Journal **)

"Jesus save 30 Bolivar avenue"

The flags call particular angels to visit for specific reasons. Note the cross from the previous photograph now visible right in front of the entrance so that the direct axis of entry is broken: an abstract machine.

The lord's prayer concluded with Selah. Surrounding the prayer it tells us that the precinct is a habitation, a sanctuary and a healing temple.

Bed heads, reused in a fence along the barbican road

A window in Trenchtown, Kingston. For some reason the paint had not obscured the construction of the louvres which are off set against the white wall and the dark brown window frame above as well as the casual log on the sill with its shadow.

"Peace and Love, no idlers" surronding another example of an extremely efficient shop front where control is paramount and offset with semantic and decorative generostiy.

This, apparently, is the building where Bob lived. It is in the same courtyard space as photograph no. 3 and will eventually become the focus of less casual pilgrimage. Whether the people of Trenchtown will profit from this remains to be seen. As it stands it is a monument to something way beyond the stardom of this the greatest lyricist of Jamaica.

Good old Bev, always happy to show her wares. I was tickled by the declaration of intent posted over the door, as well as the curious juxtaposition of the landscape frame over Bev's left knee.

Trenchtown, Kingston

Trenchtown. I am not sure i am right to feel sceptical when confronted with these rather more formal expressions of soacial ambition. It all sounds so good. And the centre is the nicest building in the neighbourhood. That fact alone worries me. The argument that this statement, here in its rather pompous formality should be written in the language of the people, might not hold water, of course, but even so. The words gardens, constantly popping up in the names of these areas, might well give rise to a wry smile. When these areas were planned during the first half of the 20th century, the intention was no doubt to make Kingston into a huge garden city. There is nothing garden-like about any area in Trenchtown, or Tivoli Gardens for that matter. Note the emphasis on self, discipline and dignity. Tha does strike a chord.

Trenchtown. This is, I think, a worrying example of the potential for picturesqueness in poverty. It is wrong to sentimentalise poverty in such a way. I know that. However, I think I believe (I am cautious; my thoughts about something I am in the comfortable position of knowing nothing whatever about are apt to change) that I do not have to feel ashamed about appreciating this picture. It does not necessarily sentimentalise or idealise the poverty it represents. In visual terms there is a beauty in the rough edges of colour against the material of the wood, of course, but the story goes deeper than that. Ultimately this picture, does participate in an aesthetics of poverty, it cannot escape that. For its roughness, it ready-to-handedness of its genesis, all tell the story of an attidude and a prioritisation. It shows people making do, the effort people without means go to to invest their dignity in their surroundings. The freshly painted red staircase is very important in this instance. From that perspective this picture is a sign of respect to their effort to appreciate that in combination with the simple compositional beauty that they have achieved with the materials at hand. Am I talking bull***?

A fnely decorated shed.

Papine. Tall Buildings, one with a crane, and one especially tall, looking something like a stacked caribbean hut, arbitrarily punctured by windows looking on to a scene of a dove and a unicorn in a mortal struggle, or so it looks. The whole rather neglected corner arranged like something of an altar. A portrait of a hero is beyond the frame to the right. He is not identified. The whole thing seemed to refer to something in the US, but i couldn't unravel the mystery.

Note the shoe at the centre of this fabulous composition involving Mr Rodney's dental lab.

South Side

Seville Great House from the air. This is not my photograph. But I couldn't resist showing it. Not the the roof is composed, and the entrance loggia, as a separate volume with its symmetrical staircase, leading on to the generous verandah.

A Robert Rauschenberg or Kurt Schwitters patchwork Shack.

Washing hanging up should be seen as the "bekleidung" of a work of architecture, giving it movement and dynamism. It is the contingent in architecture, whereby a house and its aspect can constantly change and move (see also No. 1).