Author: cbcrenshaw

C.B. Crenshaw is a musician, artist, writer, coder, gardener, and maker in Alabama.

Architecture is Alchemy

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Here is a comparison. Maybe it means something.

The first example is from Peter Zumthor’s Atmospheres.

Zumthor, the Swiss architect responsible for numerous projects spanning the residential, commercial, and commemorative realms, is interested in how architects use materials to convey a certain affect.

The next example comes from a 17th-century translation of the alchemical works of Geber.

Geber, the European name for a real Arabic polymath named Jabr ibn Hayyan, has become a sort of composite author attributed to a huge number of alchemical texts. This one, from a 1686 compendium, discusses how various Substances make up other Substances in different ways which must be understood if one wishes to transform those substances to perfection.

In both cases, what do we have? Materials in possession of qualities which, combined with other materials in ways that complement these qualities, contribute to a harmonious–maybe even perfect–composition.

Architecture is alchemy.

Poem: Cut-Up January 31

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“I’m with you! Here’s to Ourselves!”

Millions of eyes
Cover the ground
Your footsteps follow
You cannot recall where

The routes of the swallows
Who cut the air 
Their wings a 
wilderness of mystery

Thieves, illicit lovers
Grazing a pinnacle
Guttural howls
From cellars and lofts

Meet me there
Where at the lapis gate
Leaving the city
Riders sing soft

I simply want to be back home
a-eatin' flap-jacks, hash, and ham
With folks who savvy whom I am!

Poem: December 16, 2024

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Here is a thing to consider:
if all that exists is in
our own heads
then, when you
lie your head down
next to mine
and wrap me in your
universal outlook
I exist within you,
a data point
among the millions.

And when you
catch me lovestruck
from the corner
of your eye,
there you are
in my universe, too,
orbiting the blazing center.