This gravestone is next to Farahy Church near the village of Kildorrery, County Cork, Ireland. It is one of the small number of older graves in the churchyard which seem to have been retouched in the last couple of decades. The groove of the original calligraphic carving has been cleaned and reinscribed with black pigment. The result is this striking combination of a weathered slab with the crisp new lines of recent re-etching. The facelift draws attention to the fact that the slab would itself have originally been a pristine near-white, and so the writing would have been even more impressive in 1799.

Strange to our eyes are the haphazard-seeming abbreviations, particularly on the right margin. Given the quality of the lettering, surely the stonemason could have foreseen the lack of space for the final letters of some words? In fact there is sufficient space for the letters in question, it just has not been used. Two explanations for these abbreviations come to mind: 1. the mason was charging a per-letter rate and the client saved some money and still got the vital information on the slab, or 2. they simply did not see these abbreviations as anomalous in the way that we might now.

Over 120 years later, the Kelly family erected another headstone alongside, this time in the Celtic Romanesque revival style that had taken hold in the 19th century. This type of gravestone is in imitation of the surviving Irish monastic high crosses, which date from as early as the 7th century. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, resurgent Catholicism and nationalism cherished the early monastic tradition as a key source of indigenous (pre-English colonization) Irish iconography. Stonemasonry had clearly undergone some changes in the intervening years, as the newer grave seems to have been mechanically lettered in a standard font and with a modern respect for left and right margins, and for consistent abbreviation. It is also worth noting that only the lower section of the newer grave has been tailored to the Kellys’ needs, the small connecting part and the cross itself being generic. A further change is in the kind of information that is conveyed and emphasized. Whereas the more recent grave simply lists the names and death dates of the dearly departed (the most recent member of the family was buried here in 1994), all of the flash-bang lettering of the older grave is used to record the name of the person who paid for the grave (Dan Kelly), and not for the poor old dead father.

7 October 1969. High above the representational void at the heart of the bombed city, the Telecafe at the top of the TV tower is set in rotational motion. This celebratory carousel of solo entertainer with organ and some selected guests draws out first circles around the representational center of a fledgling republic in honor of its 20th anniversary.

It is the architectural equivalent of the refrain as a strategy of place making: “A refrain…is like a song that creates the beginning of order in chaos – as in a child singing in the dark…the beginning of the refrain is fragile. Next, a refrain creates a territory, an organization of a limited space with a circle drawn around it.” 1

Centripetal forces of the first refrain soon draw others – circular follies as markers of places and commerce: the C&A sign, the Weltzeituhr, the Berliner Verlag, a spinning display of rare Döner meat, the rings of Saturn, the spiraling logo of Media Markt.

If the surveying tool of Cartesian town planning is the groma, the strategy of place making by refrain is best represented by the dreidel:

More dreidel with Ira from Jesse Morros on Vimeo.

I remember this conversation I overheard once in an architecture office in London.  This was when I learned of the profession of party wall surveyor for the first time. It made me think of a gaunt private detective type with trench coat and hat. I couldn’t think of a more kafkaesque, sad facet of the building industry. Did he put it there? Anyway, it’s really mind boggling when representation occurs so close to what’s represented, when the signifier actually contains the signified. A bit like imagining a monk clapping with one hand, I think, before these thoughts fade in hectic traffic on Leipziger.

I’m tempted to think this gem is in fact a club or a design-firm or something cool like that, and it’s called (lowercase) ‘garage’. Or else, the word ‘garage’ is kind of a descriptive tag or label, as if it describes the style of the structure. So people would say, ‘Hey, that building’s really garage, you know what I mean?.’ The graceful lamp-post stands in front like an overdesigned question mark, as puzzled as we are.

But the light-heartedness is tired, and lamely draws attention to what it is trying to disguise. Meanwhile in the foreground the yellow stripes on the railway track bring a much more stirring, industrial danger-zone feel to the place, which is more fitting. Looking back at the cylinders, the multicoloured stripes now seem, despite themselves, to warn of danger inside.

My dudes, it’s all out there. You just have to find it.

I was taken by the matter-of-fact look of this, a map provided for drivers who would otherwise try to take a short cut around the big Schönhauerseralle / Eberswalderstr / Kastanienalle / Danzigerstr / Pappelalle intersection in Berlin. Its the work of LVT Verkehrstechnik, based in Riesa, Sachsen (Germany).

The aesthetics of survival, it seems. This totally bare-bones look, meant only to communicate a set of relationships in the most diagrammatic manner, in a manner in which aesthetics are incidental.

But I wonder if it all doesn’t critically fail to actually help anyone understand anything. Like, where’s the location of the sign on the map, what does the circle signify, what’s the name of the street on the left hand side? And why’s the sign pointing directly out into the street instead of in the direction of oncoming traffic? Is the red circle the location of the road work? Shouldn’t it be an ‘X’?

I wonder if this sign actually helped anyone avoid driving down the blocked road.