Ambalam:
Wayside Shelters, Frequent Paths
Wes Janz
(Proceedings of the ACSA East Regional Conference, 2004, presented at ACSA East Regional Conference, October 2003)
An ambalama is a wayside shelter
erected along frequented paths in
I have built several metaphorical ambalam
recently – all influenced by experiences as co-director of CapAsia II in 2001
and as co-director of the three-week Sri Lankan component of CapAsia III in
2003. Each ambalama
offered provisions, each is alongside paths taking me
to new understandings. They exist within
three contexts: with three collaborators (known as 26.26.26.25) in the
To connect to the larger world with one’s eyes, heart, and
mind open is to realize the challenges confronting most people. Many millions live in cities undergoing
extraordinary growth, build houses and places of business made from
re-re-recycled materials, and live in conditions unknowable to others more
privileged.
Paul Hirst in his piece ‘Cities: From Ancient Greece to
Globalization’ offers one wayside, Cairo, Egypt, a sprawling ‘anticity’ filled
with shanty dwellers where growth fueled by uncontrolled rural migration
renders the metropolis all but ungovernable.
‘Such a prospect is disturbing,’ says Hirst, ‘because Westerners have
tended to see urbanization as progress and the city as a force of order.’
Issues challenging
Does what is generally considered to be relevant
architectural knowledge have any traction when placed under such economic,
political, and social pressures? What
can be done as an architect to address these issues? I think and act small. I build now – right now -- in order to build
continuously. I build for one in order
to reach many. And I build with young
architects.
Ambalama 1: Arbor
Following CapAsia II, 26.26.26.25 collaborator Jerome
Daksiewicz and I designed and began construction of an arbor in my
backyard. Made primarily of no cost
materials (cut saplings and downed branches), the structure is impermanent,
incomplete, in need of constant attention.
No electricity and no trucks were allowed, even though there is electricity
and a driveway. A galvanized steel frame
and sapling columns and beams are partially covered with galvanized wire mesh,
a vine, and lights. Details and tools
are simple: wire ties the construction together; pruning shears cut branches and
galvanized wire, needle-nose pliers pull the wire tight. Total cost:
$337.
There’s a lot of living and dying in our backyard. Many animals gather, and flowers BLOOM! All year, now, animals are dying too, and in
the fall, the annual flowers die. My dad
died in 1993 and my mom died ten months ago, both of cancer. I emptied their house last year and found
meaning-filled building material. My
mother’s rolling pin, and wood dad harvested from his own father’s forest and
shaped with his hands now feel my touch.
Here, my parents’ deaths extend the arbor’s life and alter its
character, and mine.
Students Jerome, Sohith, and Brooke contributed early; Nick,
Ryan, Laura, Melissa, Jenn, Kurt and Kevin stop by, for meals, an evening, a
class, and sometimes they build. I move
from what they create; focus my vision through the lenses they provide. The arbor is part of my life – I work on it
every day -- and a frequent stop for others as well.
Ambalama 2:
Bus Shelter
Bloomington, Indiana is a key source of limestone in the US
and world. The
Following visits to quarries and a finishing mill, a design of ‘rough back’ limestone blocks – considered waste material because it is defined by undesirable imperfections -- emerged. To quote from e-mails: “each big rough back block will be cut simply into cubes 2’ on a side. On some blocks, the raw face will be partially sliced off, ‘finishing’ by leaving it partially original. We’ll use the cheapest, lowest grade of limestone raw and make it beautiful. The blocks’ laid up raw faces to the street and bus, the sliced sides to the houses . . . the wall as mass and mysterious structure attacked by futuristic sci-fi japanimation virus of steel lines and folded/sliced sheets of steel . . . Also, to revisit the idea of slowness and movement and buses pulling to a stop, maybe the blocks are much longer at the end of the wall from which the bus approaches, then the blocks shorten as they get to the other end, where the bus stops . .”
In this proposed ambalama, limestone was to reconnect the travelers with the source of the community, the land and the rock, and each other.
Ambalama 3: String Installations
26.26.26.25 created three ‘space sketch’ installations in
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, 30,000 Argentinians were taken away by the military, never to be
seen or heard from again. Our site was
the atrium of the Design and Architecture Building at the National University
of Buenos Aires. During the ‘dark
years,’ students did not cross the atrium, for fear they would be seen by
military sympathizers. Today, the atrium
belongs to the students. Large banners
hang here, including one with names of two hundred former students, two hundred
of the missing, and another large banner calling for the removal of the dean.
We extended the 2D banners into 3D spatial explorations of
line, plane, and volume, imagining a ‘3D book’ for ‘readers’ to walk in, with
text messages projected onto floating planes of fabric, shaping intimate spaces
for debates and discussions. String
became our sole building material. It
was inexpensive (there was no budget for the project) and mimicked the cable
lines of the atrium banners. No tools
were needed.
Upon our arrival, we were told the atrium was
off-limits. A controversial presidential
election made university administrators nervous and they did not want four ‘yanquis’ to upset students.
Two other spaces were assigned and string pieces were completed in
each. A third string installation was
completed in
This wayside is the simplest, and still, the most complex of
the five ambalam.
It accepts the limitations of one material, took
no tools to install, adjusts itself to multiple unknowable sites, and flexs in response to the strongest of political pressures.
Ambalama: Settlement, Dwelling, and Platform
Our fall 2002 post-professional graduate studio was titled
“Leftover Spaces, Leftover Materials, Leftover
People.” Seventeen students undertook
two projects. Each was to design and
build a dwelling as part of a larger informal settlement occupied during an
academic festival. The
second, an overnight sleeping platform.
In the first project, found materials were to be assembled
in a busy, but undistinguished open space on campus. Students lived in dwellings (and I slept on a
park bench) for four evenings in late September (one night the temperature fell
to 37 degrees Fahrenheit).
Weeks later, the design and construction of a temporary
platform used for one night to occupy a very public space without permission or
being seen. Favored strategies involved
disguising one’s place as a construction site, enclosing space over heating
vents, or sleeping in modified cardboard boxes
With these shelters, students, and I, took unfamiliar paths,
ones not frequented by many, if any.
When we gathered to talk, I asked: Do you feel more or less like an
architect? The answer: both. ‘More’ as paper designs became full-scale
realities. ‘More’ as the young
architects considered thermal comfort because they were COLD. ‘More’ because curious
spectators respected the architects’ work. ‘Less’ as every dwelling failed
miserably. ‘Less’ meant not wanting to
be recognized as an architect once each realized the tremendous amount of
wasted but perfectly good building material available. ‘Less like an architect’ maybe meant one
didn’t want to be that sort of architect any more.
Ambalama 5:
Sri Lanka Pavilions
In early 2003, along with Nihal Perera and Madhura
Prematilleke, Vijitha Basnayaka, and Varuna de Silva, I led a ten-day
‘build-design-build’ project at the
One team was to create a pavilion made primarily of scavenged wood materials (dismantled wood packing crates, disassembled timber pallets, and hand sawn tree trunks). The other team designed and constructed a ‘mud’ pavilion built of rubble from demolished campus buildings and engineering college experiments, rice sacks, and an earth/sand/cement mixture.
Architecture professors tend to speak of ‘learning by building.’ In this sense, ‘to build’ refers to the acquisition of established knowledge regarding construction, materials, and details. ‘Building to learn’ inverts as it expands the paradigm. CapAsia students worked in a different country, on teams with students who (might) speak English as a second language, in a society with its own perspectives regarding the environment, locally available materials, recycling, and, one should say, America and Americans. In this sense, new knowledge about the design and planning fields is revealed, as new uses are found for existing knowledge. As important, if not more so, for the Ball State students ‘building to learn’ refers to learning about one’s self in relation to the ‘other,’ rethinking one’s place in the world, and questioning, fundamentally, how one chooses to engage the world and its people first as a fellow human being, then as architect, planner, or designer.
In a moment, I’ll return to the ambalam
of
For us, life and
work are a single path with no discernible end. It seems to be a spiraling route which often
returns almost to the same place, merely slightly higher or lower. The work that we do searches for authenticity
by listening hard and then starting down the path, one foot in front of the
other – not very nimbly, with false starts and stumbles – not knowing the
outcome but always learning something new along the way. To be
of use is the name of the path.
Every day in our practice we try to take another step.
Now, to the ambalam. Can we turn our consideration of the ambalama around, imagining ourselves not as the visitor, but as the structure? Might we – and that could mean we as accomplished architects, as professors, as young architects – might we provide a place to rest, a bit of shelter, some provisions for others, even for strangers? Might we define our profession or work as citizen-architects on these terms?
To be of use.
The arbor’s hammock swing for my wife Marcia, my students
working on the structure. The seat and roof of the shelter for tired bus riders. The fragmented barrel vault formed by string
for the design students in Buenos Aires, honoring their long lost
colleagues. The cellist who visited the
informal settlement we designed, built, and occupied. And the timber and mud pavilions in
To be of use,
I think and act small.
I build now – right now -- in order to build continuously. I build for one in order to reach many. And I build with young architects.
To be of use.
REFERENCES
Ehrenreich,
Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
Hirst, Paul,
“Cities: From Ancient
Lewcock, Ronald,
Barbara Sansoni, and Laki Senanayake. The Architecture of an
Williams, Tod and Billie Tsien.