S3 E2 Tilting: Conversation with Robert Mellin
Part Two
“Understanding construction in reverse” A sample of Tilting architecture drawn by Robert
We continue our conversation with Robert about the vernacular architecture, bricolage and lifeways he documented in Tilting on Fogo Island. Here we touch on antique glass, rag rugs, vernacular furniture, the hard scrabble lives in Tilting, and foreground the voice of one of its residents, Ted Burke, as originally recorded by Robert.
Styles of Houses in Tilting
As bricoleur/oddcaster, Jack remarked “vernacular achitecture is architecture without architects.
Below: Hooked mat by Catherine Kinsella; Rocking chair made from oak barrel; famously uncomfortable day bed; contemporary bricolage in St. John’s, a greenhouse cobbled together by Jack using recycled windows and lumber from and old fence palings and discarded decking.
Robert’s edited transcription of a recording of Ted Burke talking about hospitality. Middle: Ted Burke with homemade snowshoes. Bottom: the original audio recording of Ted which Robert ‘hears’ when he re-reads the text.
References:
Books:
Robert Irwin, Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, University of California Press, 2008.
Robert P. Armstrong, The Affecting Presence, University of Illinois Press, 1971.
Michael Merrill, Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out. Baden: Lars Mueller Publishers, 2010.
Don McKay, “Mediation on Antique Glass,” Apparatus, McClelland and Stewart, 2014.
Essay:
Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, December 13, 1968.