fourth door review ~ Oliver Lowenstein

Issue No. 7

Number 7 The Blue Pollen Issue

	Darwin on the beach: George Dyson and Baidarka histories
	Surface to surface: the textural spaces of Machiko Agano and Anniken Amundsen and Lesley Millar on 'Through the Surface'

	Jan Garbarek: Weaver of jazz dreams
	Beauty and the Brand: Andy Goldsworthy pt 2
	Steps towards an ecology of clothing
	Julian Bell in the Upper Paleolithic

	Gehry – Craft and timberbuild and healthcare design
	Design with care in the newbuild NHS, Scotland’s Maggie cancer care centres take off and Charles Jencks on the Maggie movement so far
	Dundee Calling – Dalziel & Scullion

The latest edition of the distinctive Fourth Door Review appears midway through 2005. Building on the success of FDR6, issue 7 heads into new terrain covering the emerging transformation coalescing around healthcare design, architecture and sustainability, led from the fast moving Scottish based Maggies Centres cancer care movement, while also featuring the significant changes in the NHS. This major Scenario themed section slides into place within a hefty content full issue, drawing together some of the most exciting ecologically related creative work being carried out in the early twenty first century. In turn the connections are expanded between ecology and technology, arts and architecture, design, craft and new media and new music; connections which elsewhere are neither made nor highlighted. Also, once again leading edge artists, architects and musicians are featured alongside local, community based and lesser-known, though equally exciting artists and projects.

Fourth Door Review 7’s initial centrepiece is the Architexts Scenario themed section, sub-titled Design with Care. The section explores the new and recent buildings of the Maggie Centres movement, featuring a Frank Gehry interview, Charles Jencks writing on the whole Maggies story, plus an overview of the related wider field of ongoing research being carried out in the healthcare design field, and a call for architects to take on the sustainable argument for improvements in health to be met with healthy buildings. Alongside the Design with Care section, building on its focus on contemporary Timberbuild in previous issues Architexts features an in-depth interview with Europe’s leading timber engineer, Julius Natterer.

In the arts section, Framework the second part of the interview Andy Goldsworthy interview concludes Fourth Door’s exploration of eco-arts superstar artists work. Further Scottish input comes in the form of Dundee based cross-disciplinary installation artists, Dalziel and Scullion, while the Margins of Music section is devoted to one of the leading Nordic musicians of his generation, Jan Garbarek. In Digitalis, the new media section, the twinpath life of George Dyson is examined in detail, looking both at his advocacy of the electronic edges in his book Darwin Among the Machines, the integration of cad-cam into his primary working life, Baidarka (kayak) boat building and how this, and many years of real life kayaking amidst the Northern Pacific and Alaskan coastal lands has brought to him a visionary, futuristic ecological perspective.

This new Fourth Door also features both the Middleground and Wordwatch book reviews section; in the former the ecology of clothing is reported on, while the Makeshift section is themed around the groundbreaking Through the Surface exhibition, a collaboration between British and Japanese textile designer-makers, a rare interview with the doyenne of Japanese textile sculpture; Machiko Agano as well as emerging artist Anniken Amundsen.Wordwatch includes a review essay by the well known art historian Julian Bell on Paleolithic art. The Dreams of Consciousness (DOC) section Marian Partington’s moving and extraordinary account of her sister, Lucy, who was one of the 12 ‘West victims’ murdered by the West’s in Gloucester. Here Marion writes about the subsequent odyssey of her journey into compassion and her engagement with an unusual prison community.

In this new edition, Fourth Door Review 7 moves on various of the debates which the review has been a forum for since its inception in 1996. The new edition (to be published march 2005) is accompanied by the launch of Unstructured 03, Fourth Door’s new media, design and architecture web-magazine, featuring a themed section on contemporary Finnish Timberbuild. For further information please look at www.unstructured.co.uk .

Previous Fourth Door Reviews include interviews with or pieces on, Andy Goldsworthy, Jon Hassell, Sheila Chandra, Fritjof Capra, Brian Eno, Natalie Jeremijenko, Russell Mills, Susan Derges, Pierre Levy, Chris Drury, Anne Katrin Dolven, William Latham, Helena Hietanen, Morris Berman, Paul Ryan and Holger Czukay, as well as many pieces on new media, new music, arts and architecture, and the relation between ecology and technology. As Susan Derges wrote of Fourth Door, the review “explores the impact and influence of ecology and technology on our culture with more depth and with more integrity than any other journal.”Susan Derges

Fourth Door’s critically acclaimed design focus continues across this new issue. And as with the previous Fourth Door Reviews, it overturns media conventions by concentrating on content and exploring subjects in full depth and constructive sympathy, rather than being compromised by the apparent needs of one-minute culture

The full contents

Framework

Dalziel & Scullion’s juxtapositionals

At the forefront of Scotland’s art avant-garde Dalziel and Scullion are alone in mixing multi-media with installation art practice for environmental ends

Thomas Riedelsheimer – Nature Documentary maker

The Andy Goldsworthy film, Rivers and Tides was a surprise documentary hit of 2003. Its maker, Thomas Riedelsheimer, is interviewed

Andy Goldsworthy

Part two of the in-depth interview-essay begun in FDR6, exploring elements of Goldsworthy’s work less usually dwelt on in mainstream interviews

Architexts

Architexts 1 Design with Care special Scenario cubed section

I Research and new projects are beginning to show the way towards the transformation of healthcare design and architecture

II Charles Jencks on the Maggie Centre’s cancer care movement post modern complementary healthcare

III Frank Gehry interview on the warmth of wood, landscape and the hospital environment

IV Environmental architecture and health building, the materiality perspective by Fionn Stevenson

V A range of innovative moves are being made in the new wave of NHS newbuild towards greater sustainability says Susan Francis

VI Two buildings point a way for timberbuild futurism: Maggie’s Highlands and Dundee enrol complexity into care

Architexts 2

Holland’s Smart Architecture Foundation movement

Small, smart and sustainable, the Smart Architecture redefines the meaning of environmental architecture. By Jacques Vink

Architexts 3

Timber-Engines for growth

An interview with Europe’s leading timber engineer, Julius Natterer at his I-Bois Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland

The Timber Construction Manual,

Review of the recent first English edition by Steve Johnson

Margins of Music

Jan Garbarek – Master of Nordic atmospherics overviewed by his biographer, Professor Michael Tucker

Middleground

Towards an ecology of clothing

Fashion and clothing eco experiments by Kate Fletcher

The lost rivers of London

Mapping the city’s waterways by Kate Dodd

Ireland’s the Yoke eco-zine

Recipe by Manna From Heaven: beautifully illustrated Fourth Door recipe for the foodies amongst you. Illustrated by Kate Dodd

Freeze FRIA: German product designer, Ursula Tischner’s, revolutionary redesign of the ubiquitous fridge, which halves energy use even as it is embedded in the fabric of the building.

Gardening by Ages: London’s Museum of Gardening History tells the story of gardening from Roman times up to the present day.

Digitalis

Darwin on the Beach

George Dyson’s journey from building baidarka space-age skinboats to diarist of the evolution of electronic intelligence

+ Aleutian Baidarka Stories

+ Skinboat School for Baidarka boat building

Ink on the screen Denis Brown’s sWordsmanship calligraphy CD-Rom explored

Craft over software

Frank Gehry’s first use of model-making before the computers get in on the act is unusual for architects these days. By Mark 0’Connor

Makeshift

Found in translation:

The recent Through the Surface exhibition crosses continents joining British and Japanese textile makers and designers in this ground-breaking project

I Surface’s curator Lesley Millar on the cross-cultural consequences of her meeting of heads, hearts and hands

II Interview with leading Japanese textile designer-artist, Machiko Agano, whose wispy cloudlike textile creations redefine interior space and bring an entirely new dimension to ambient environments

III An interview with the British based Norwegian artist Anniken Amundsen, whose otherworldly biomorphic textural forms have been one of the hits of the Through the Surface touring exhibition .

Dream of Consciousnesss (DOC)

Dyslexia and the evolution of bureaucracy. John Wood argues that dyslexia could be a response to the cultural pathology of runaway bureaucracy

Marian Partington’s extraordinary account of the odyssey of her journey into compassion and her engagement with a unique prison community, after her sister, Lucy, died, one of the 12 ‘West victims’, who were all murdered by the Fred and Rosemary West in the nineteen eighties.

Wordwatch (book reviews)

Julian Bell on the David Williams book, The Mind in the Cave, a new interpretation of the paleolithic origins of art.

Renee Lertzmann on a history of The Miraculous Fever Tree and the wondersome curative powers of its quinine chemical properties.

Review of Water Music, by Marjorie Ryerson. Interviews and observations by musicians on water.

Double review of Earthworks by Suzaan Boettger, and Avant Rock by Bill Martin reviewed by Oliver Lowenstein exploring the cultural connections between avant garde rock music and sixties and seventies earth artists.

Short handwritten review of a book on the Tortoise, reviewed by Oliver Rathmill.

Armless Heroes, book of interviews with people involved in reconciliation and forgiveness. By Heidi Watts