BOOK REVIEW

Eccentricity, by definition, is limitless. Holly Cunneen investigates its various manifestations and how they’ve been documented in architecture, interior design, the natural world and from deep within our own imagination. What does it mean and what can we learn?

Human kind is made up of artistic beings with constant urge to create, but what, if anything, can we gain from eccentricity in design?

What does it mean to be eccentric? To indulge our creative side? To be free and liberal with colour and form? To push ourselves beyond what is believed to be possible? If you look at history’s most celebrated eccentrics they’re characteristically over the top. Oscar Wilde was the absolute opposite of what Her Majesty the Queen Victoria expected men to be – and he absolutely flaunted it. Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-wilson, commonly remembered as Lord Berners, was a celebrated and immensely talented music composer. One with a pet giraffe and penchant for dyeing his estate doves pastel colours. Sydney’s own Beau Miles was a well-educated woman whose father was a wealthy public accountant. She was widely read and could – and often would – recite lengthy sonnets from Shakespeare at the drop of a hat. Yet she spent two years committed to a hospital for the insane and was known to get around by cab despite often refusing to pay. In 1955 she caught one to Perth and back. That time she did pay.

Is it any coincidence, I wonder, that these people, complete with their eccentric tics, were so widely applauded for their respective crafts? Or is it unfair to suggest that their peculiar tendencies and extravagant nature is such a big part of their appeal? Why are we so drawn to this concept of extravagance? It’s like a form of voyeurism. Whether it’s the artist addicted to acclaim or an audience addicted to awe, it’s captivating, it’s hypnotising and it simply is…addictive.

Within the realm of architecture and design the appeal is no different. To list some of the greats, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, Luis Barragán and Stan Symonds, there’s one, if only one, common denominator. They’re each known for their experimental, unconventional, sometimes crazy, and often polarizing works of art/architecture.

Often what we deem as impressive architecture showcases bold use of colour, unconventional forms, and gravity defying structures. Color in Space is a book full of projects that echo that sentiment. The architectural feats within have used colour as a universal, visual and indiscriminate language to express creativity, convey mood and connect as much with passers-by as with the building’s occupants.

“Color [sic] is used symbolically, culturally, and psychologically to define and articulate connections to artful expression,” writes

Sharon Exley in her introductory essay. Wanangkura Stadium, a multi-purpose recreation centre in Port Hedland, Australia, uses black and blue boxes to create a pixelated effect on the exterior façade of the building while a burnt orange lining mirrors the red dirt that surrounds the building – a classic trope of the Australian outback. The overall effect is a momentous cobalt blue structure visible from miles away on an unforgivingly flat landscape.

A Lutheran Church in Washington, America, reinterprets traditional stained glass windows with thin panels of coloured glass that, in effect, cast colour-blocked shadows inside. By the end of the book the notion that colour and light act as form givers in architecture and design delivering “both architectural and emotional intention” is all but incontestable.

If the exterior façade of a building creates the first impression then, based on the notion that a person will spend the majority of their time in relation to a certain building inside not out, I put it to you that it’s the interior that creates the lasting impression. As a result interior design will often take a slightly softer, more muted approach.

Don’t read that as less inventive or imaginative.

Often when we think of eccentric beings we think of people who take things to the extreme. And when we think of extremes we think big, loud, over the top. But what of the other end of the spectrum? What of holding back, keeping things unbearably simple? Can stark naked design be just as bold?

While Color in Space uses colour saturation to express eccentricity in design Wonderwall, a collection of case studies from an interior design studio of the same name based in Tokyo, Japan, takes the opposite approach; using little to say a lot. “Like a DJ, Katayama samples and mixes the entangled lexicons of high culture, street culture, and popular culture,” says Aric Chen – a reoccurring name in this issue – in an essay he pens on Masamichi Katayama, the principal and founder of the design firm.

Working on residences, retail spaces, offices and hospitality venues alike, Masamichi approaches his projects with a holistic point of view. He considers the history of the brand or company, history of the sector, direction of the brand and future of the sector, not simply summing up incoherent parts in the hopes of achieving a cohesive whole.

Success encourages success so it’s understandable that upon reflection on what one person has achieved, we’re inspired to match it and push our personal boundaries. In design it’s easy to get carried away with what we’re able to do but Wild Beauty looks at what nature is able to do. We can appreciate the impressive, excessive, eccentric, and over the top just by taking a step back – and outside.

Four years spent travelling up, down, around, over and under Australia’s outback saw no state or territory overlooked or underappreciated. And when journalist Graham Lloyd and photographer Vanessa Hunter returned, with them they brought visual essays of 26 of the world’s rarest, oldest and most majestic places; nature’s architecture.

“Seen through the eyes of biologists, palaeontologists, conservationists, philanthropists and lovers of nature, the stories offer insights into the science and soul of wild landscapes, deeply powerful places with a magnet-like pull,” writes Graham. He proves awe-inspiring structures aren’t necessarily man made.

Bringing the onus back onto ourselves, it’s amazing what we can achieve from deep within our own imaginations. Reg Mombassa shows us that the imagination can be just as eccentric. His paintings of fairly typical and unexemplary landscapes covey his eccentric perception of them. Iconic yet relatively banal tropes of the Australian aesthetic are re-envisioned with a child-like imagination and a compilation of these works over the years takes the form of The Landscapes of Reg Mombossa.

What appeals to Reg about the typical, and perhaps unremarkable, suburban house is that they often “resemble a child’s visual conception of a house: a red triangular roof on a white rectangle punctured by a door and two windows”.

“There [is] also a semi-abstract aesthetic to the slabs of even white or pale pastel of the house exteriors, which contrasted interestingly with the busier, richer, darker appearance of the surrounding landscape,” he continues, suggesting we have the ability to create our own situations in which eccentricity prevails. Furthermore that we can interpret the banal or ordinary and just as easily turn it into something extraordinary in our minds.

Is there only one correct – or accepted – way to define eccentric? Colour is used as a means to convey eccentricity in Color in Space, interiors are created to set the mood in Wonderwall, photography communicates the world’s wonders in Wild Beauty, and illustration is used to convey emotion in The Landscapes of Reg Mombassa. So no, I’d argue not. Each of these books, with their individual points of focus, explores eccentricity in its various formats and façades.

Artwork courtesy of The Landscapes of Reg Mombassa, Hardie Grant Books.