It's all a facade

Courtesey of Dan

Started this mid 2025 now getting around to posting it. I cannot be held accountable for the views held in this piece as it was a different time. Everyone said things like this back then, it was normalised. But it was wrong then and it is wrong now. For the sake of the historical record these views have not been edited because to do so would be to claim that they had never existed. 

The hut I live in now didn't always look this good. You know how terifying a face looks without skin on it? Oh you didn't watch those videos when you were younger... Well it doesnt look healthy. And that's all to say that with the guts of this building on display it didn't look great either. I've been re-evaluating a few opinions recently. Confronted with a German visa process that requires you to specify exactly what you are, i've had to do just that. Jake of all trades has been the working title for a while, but that just won't cut it out here. Here you're a carpenter, or an electrician, or a stonemason, or a plasterer, or a toe tickeler, and nothing but. This means that the quality of work is high but also parochial. I had a conversation recently about how language shapes the individual, and it's hard not to draw the a line between the precision of the german language, and the specificity required in so many facets of german life. For example in english you might say "I saw them fall on the stairs" when describing how you saw someone fall on the stairs. In german the same sentence would not be complete unless it described whether they fell up or down the stairs, where you yourself were standing when you witnessed the action (at the top or bottom of the stairs), the colour of the stairs themselves, and of course the date, weather, and your age the day it happened. I wish i was exaggerating. They get off on this level of precision. The more precise you are, the more likely a german is to respond 'Geil' which literally means 'horny', or 'i am horny and want to fuck'... don't let them tell you otherwise. How did we get here? Re-evaluating opinions? well in all honestly the specificity of the german language has nothing to do with the facade, but it is important information, and remember the geil thing when you're here. The opinion I was re-evaluating was actually to do with facades in general. When i was at Uni and a wanker, i was all about 'honesty of form'. That basically just means not finishing my work. I think 'finishing' as a concept is a little misleading because in my mind these things were finished, but in a sort of confrontational, fuck paint, fuck sanding, sort of way. It meant that if it wasn't functional, it wasn't neccesary. I wasn't trying to hide what i'd made behind a beautified facade, because that felt like a form of deceit that actually alienated people from the process of making. When you can see how something is made, you can begin to understand it, and perhaps engage in those processes yourself. It was around this time i got super into transparent enclosures, often seen on electronics in the 90's. I guess having written that all out, I do still agree with myself to an extent. But the truth of the matter is that finishing, to a large degree, is actually functional. Wood is sanded, painted or stained, to protect it, and make it nicer to handle. Metal is oiled or blued to prevent rust. A facade is placed on a building to protect it's innards. Florid decoration is perhaps another matter, but my opinion is changed there too. Decoration is fun. it's an opportunity for free expression that more easily crosses the boundary between craft and art. Perhaps precisely because it's functionality is less apparent, and more closely aligned with the undefinable qualities of feeling that art taps into. Perhaps this is also why, ironically, the less functional a piece of design is, the more intriguing and 'art worthy' it becomes. I'm thinking of marc newsoms lounger, and that stark teapot.. I don't think i'm naive enough not recognise the tradition that these objects come from, particularly the lounger which has a kind of eileen gray one off visionary energy to it. I imagine it in the woodlined office of a 30's airline magnate with a coked out flapper lying on it. a vision of the future from the past... jesus where's marc newsoms dick when you need it?

Boy would i love to make tea with this chair!

boy would i love to sit on this teapot!

What happened there? Anyway the facade is a prototype for the big house so I tried two different widths on the front board. I prefer the wider board as it's just the standard 14cm width cut straight down the middle. It also does a better job of covering the nails that are holding the board underneath on. I'm very pleased with the metal work, and the window frame frame. Neither job is particularly complicated but I certainly made it appear otherwise. This is the burden the generalist has to bear. It takes a long time to get good at something you don't do consistently! anyway lets look at some photoes.  

Cute yeah, but also an example of the green shit the hut was wrapped in before i moved in.

Rat proofing