....HOUSE OF CARDS........

    Oh the rain is falling and the wild wind roars ,
    It will shake your windows, and rattle your doors ..........

Following on from a previous posting and the introduction to my MA course , I should perhaps expand on the intended content and my ideas a bit more . Essentially I had decided to revisit three or four buildings in Manchester that I had worked on and knew reasonably well - I think all of them had been warehouses of some sort , and were all of the same construction - cast iron columns and beams , and really thick - 70mm or so - mill floors. Choosing the buildings was easy , but then how to form a narrative , and an alternate reality , around them ?  Inspired in some ways by Chris Ware's ' House ' series , I realised that the concept of ' house ' would allow each building to be developed in its own way ; each one could tell its own story .

.......And this got me thinking a bit about houses - private spaces , unlike most other other spaces that are built for specific purposes ; house are personal , individual spaces , secret spaces behind doors shutting off the outside world , places of refuge , of sanctuary , places for realising hidden desires , secret fantasies.....places steeped in memory.

' The more a house becomes enlightened , the more its walls ooze ghosts '      Primo Levi.

The Anne Frank house in Amsterdam is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world , certainly in Europe , and more than most houses as attractions , I suppose , its walls resonate with its more immediate history , its memories . A paradox , a house acting as both sanctuary and prison. The house is well documented on the internet , both from an architectural point of view and a forensic , the later calling into question the moral dilemmas faced when curating such a site.

One of the better sites for cross-relating the story to the buildings plan layout is www.annefrankdiaryreference.org/annexe.htm , which even directs you to a live web cam feed from across the garden ; I am not entirely convinced that this modern intervention adds much to the sense of history , but there you go. The conservation of Anne Frank's room is dealt with in great detail at www.annefrank.org/en/Worldwide/Collecties/The-conservation-of-Anne-Franks-room/ , which - from a conservation point of view -   has interesting parrallels with the conservation of Francis Bacon's studio that I commented on some twelve months or so ago.

Finally , one of the more bizarre sites I happened on was ' Anne Frank - The hiding place in 3D ' , which allows you to wander around the furnished spaces yourself . A place of memory and reflection reduced to the level and feel of navigating Laura Croft around Amsterdam whilst avoiding the Germans. Maybe the medium IS the message............for those interested , the link is www.annefrank.org/en/Subsites/Home/ , .....a clue - the secret annexe is concealed behind the bookcase.....

THE

House as sanctuary , house as prison - or as in the case of this second house , a house both representing freedom - of a kind - and despair . The house - or at least the privacy once the front door was closed - represented a freedom for Fred West ( whose house in Gloucester this last illustration is of ) from the usual patterns of accepted behaviour within society and became a killing ground ; the key indicates , amongst hidden doors and rooms , the final location of nine of his victime bodies. A site of death as much as the Anne Frank House is , this house has been demolished , the site turned into a memorial garden.

House as sanctuary , house as prison........................................................................................

They're washing the streets with the blood of your kind

Ah look over your shoulder they are right behind

Oh blow down this house of cards