IN
THE MOMENT: THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF LIVING AND GROWING
IN DESIGN.
THE COLIN LAIRD HOUSING PROJECT, TRINCITY,
TACARIGUA, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO CIRCA 1960’s.
On June 28th
2012 the National Museum was host to Public Spaces: an exhibition of architect
Colin Laird’s living designs. The catalogue read as follows:
“Through an
exploration of the social, development and the environmental aspects of design,
Public Spaces links the works of Colin Laird to the development of Trinidad and
Tobago over the past 50 years.
As post-independence Trinidad and Tobago developed as a
dynamic and vibrant nation, architects played a key role in the country’s
social, economic, cultural and physical evolution – literally building the
nation, Laird was at the vanguard of this movement, devoting much of his
working life to major civic projects.
Colonial architecture projected authority, order and power, expressed
through architectural styles, which asserted the superiority of the colonial
system over its subjects. Laird’s work sought to redress this spatial order,
through architectural strategies that instead encouraged participation and
inclusion.” (Public Spaces:
The Architecture of Colin Laird, June 28th – July 16th, 2012).
The exhibition, a
first of an architect’s collection was installed at the Carnival Room of the
National Museum, a small room left of the Main entrance. It comes at an interesting
time as the Museum is currently reflecting on its role as cultural custodian of
the country’s cultural forms and functions. The exhibition was also held in the
shadow of the new edifice – The National Academy for the Performing Arts
(NAPA). NAPA ignited a fire storm of debate concerning the state, artists,
excess, politics, local creativity, architecture and culture. Some say this
public discussion, often critical, may have contributed to the fall of the last
government. The exhibition Public Spaces
re-ignites the intellectual debate on art-design and architecture in our urban
and rural environment in Trinidad and Tobago.
The exhibition presented
the seminal public works of Colin Laird - Queen Hall St. Ann’s -1956, the
Hasley Crawford Stadium Woodbrook - 1982, the Brian Lara Promenade Independence
Square Port of Spain – 1993 and The National Library Port of Spain – 1995. The
work poetically sat in the quietness of the room speaking softly, eloquent
lines, ideas, reshuffling morphing into a conceptualization of political
aesthetics and economics, driven by a philosophy of life, in life.
These projects weren’t
small, they where large in scale and determination. They dealt with the state,
the mobilization of people, resources and land. These projects interjected into
the very skin of our existence. Bottoms would have sat there for the USA vs.
Trinidad and Tobago, the infamous oversold match at the Hasley Crawford Stadium
on November 1989. I remembered watching Steel Pulse in the Jean Pierre Complex,
drinking and liming on the Promenade, Friday’s afternoon sun setting, like good
poets, cigarettes and drink languaging life as it passed us by, gaping. These
projects sit firmly in the imagination of every Trinbagonian.
The exhibition
presented the enormity of these projects, maybe not the importance of them and
this is my concern. Presence is beautiful; relevance of presence is something
we need, thirst for. How does architecture, intellectually well-crafted design,
painted canvas, the written word make our social project even more fulfilling?
Why should we invest in this as we head into an era where the re-colonization
of our imagination is imprinting itself into our political essence? Remember Public Spaces was held in the National
Museum next to NAPA, a controversial design project. NAPA happened almost 15
years after the National Library was started on Abercromby Street, Port of
Spain.
The story of NAPA’s
construction proved that we had little understanding of the personal relevance
of architecture, art, craft and design in understanding our “tropical modernity.”
We have also lost a sense of our own aesthetics and of being ‘cultured’.
The exclusion of the
Trincity Housing Project from the Public
Spaces exhibition was unfortunate. Personally I felt that this project
tells the story of how design influences the psychological and physiological
maturity of the soul of those who experience the design through certain stages
of their life, my life. I grew up in a Trincity house.
THE
TRINCITY PROJECT – Life Experiences
A suburban housing project, which threw in a
mixture of people seemingly following the same trajectory - upward mobility,
young, average family of two to three children. One neighbour mentioned years
later:
“dat was the problem with Trincity, dey put too much
different people in here” .
I felt he was alluding
to class as he stressed that there should have been the same class of people in
Trincity, it would have worked better. Who knows? But Trincity worked and is
still workable as a social project.
 |
| Here we can see the roofing galvanize sheeting. |
THE
HOUSE.
Materials
.
wood, bagasse (roof), galvanize sheeting (roof),
aluminium, concrete(floor), brick.
Date : 1960’s (I moved there as a newborn from Belmont
1966/67)
It was designed as a patio house, a capital I, in a square, that square lot sat at the corner of Flamingo street, which
wrapped around to meet another street, called Cocorite Street. The North
horizontal had the main bedroom at the far left, with a bathroom that opened into
another room which sat centre. At the right end of the horizontal was another bedroom.
These two rooms used another bathroom and toilet, which where separated. Off
the master bedroom (South) was a storage area. The North horizontal was
connected by an open walk way that ran left to right. All the rooms had doors
that opened unto the North (backyard) and South (the patio).
The North horizontal was connected to the South Horizontal by a thin
column that acted as the living area, looking out onto the centre of the house
to the left was the washing area, which was blocked off by a translucent brick
wall.
 |
| This drawing shows the original look of the house. from the backyard to the front. The backyard faces North. It is not drawn to scale. |
The South horizontal
from left to right held a guest bedroom with its own shower and toilet, the garage
for one car, the kitchen, and then the living/dining room. Like the North
horizontal, they both had walkways at the North and South.
 |
| The photos below are of the renovated house and may represent and altered state of the original design. Although the original intention was kept. |
There was a back yard with
two main trees, an avocado and Julie mango tree, at the centre was an open washing
area and the open patio garden. There was a front yard that the living/dining
room opened onto and at the end of the yard stood the boundary wall. The
boundary wall, which was approximately (seven feet) acted as a sentinel running
right around the house. The main gate exit led you to the public front yard
that had ‘stinking toe’ tree, very large, a canal that empties all the wash and
rain water into the main canal, another horizontal piece of grass, then the
street.
 |
| Here we see the the materials. Aluminium, wood and glass. |
The North and South
Horizontal were made up of panels - wood, aluminium and louvers (aluminium) - 14
panels at the back, 17 at the centre and 13 panels at the front. These panels
where joined to a roofing system that was made of bagasse and galvanize
sheeting and to concrete flooring that was mixed real tough.
 |
| Looking into a room, from the backyard. |
This is where I grew
up: slap dab in nature, playing in the open drains, hanging out in trees that
lined the street, swimming in the flooded canal on rainy days. Here nature met
me at my bedroom door; nature was literally at my feet, on my feet! Garden wildlife
were equal members of the household such as our dog Jojo, the rabbits, the
parrot, the fish, my tom cat Thomasine and the turtle that walked away, came
back and wandered off again. Birds made nests, lizards would walk through your
room, and bats would zip by you in the patio. The mist of the rain settled on
your cheek in your room as it fell bucket a drop.
 |
| The walkway that connected the rooms |
Looking back at the
experiences that I had with the house, I have realized how the design of the
house, inadvertently equipped me with certain skills.
The open design house
means exactly that, it is open constantly to nature, dust, rain, wind, water,
bird droppings, bat guano, mud tracks, burning cane ash etc. My skills
developed from maintenance of the house - cutting the lawn, cleaning the louvres,
weeding out the wash room (which had stone slabs as it flooring and stones in
between the stone slabs, do the math there). Mommy and Daddy grew ivy on the
boundary wall which had to be cut once every two months. There was this
continuous rhythm of labour which gave me the ability to buss up a job, quick,
quick, quick, quick, when you have to go out with the boys but you have to get
the chores done. Friends will help, sometimes with instructions from the adults.
I learnt how to immaculately present a job at its best, when you clean 44 panels
of louvres: it’s an education through the necessity of parental insistence,
sometimes at a high tonal level.
 |
| The walk way to the back wasnt covered. This was an added feature. |
It is as an adult now with
my partner or as an artist working on projects, that I have gained this insight
of how the rhythm influenced me. Those
chores allowed me to multi-task, to conceptualize a project, size it up, put it
away and present it.
In this present house
I feel the need to have nature near me, not only to hear the birds, but for them
to sit next to me and they do come in and land on the fan, get stuck and I have
to pick them up and let them out, I have become a little neurotic towards dust
and clutter and must insist that we keep a close eye on this.
 |
| This wall that looked onto the patio, was added. The block was original feature. |
Design holds within it
a sensational gift to guide the human form into a greater expression of itself.
“In the moment of design,” we experience both physical and psychological
imprints that sit at the edge of our subconscious, quietly awaiting an opening
for expression. When confronted with external forces that go against our aesthetic
conditioning, our memory suddenly steps in to resolve the design dilemma. We
obviously cannot look at this in isolation but we can look at it as a political
tool to reverse the decay of our physical and intellectual morality. How simply
“in the moment of design” can we moralize our imagination? In the moment there
is a cerebral mechanism of transformative possibility, which births wonders. The
stillness of sanded raw wood meeting fingers; smooth form, lines running
effortlessly to settle on an iconographic symbol stirring within us, soul
regeneration, harmonizing wounds. In this stillness there lies the possibility
of re-birth. This tranquillity is always obstructed, due to the lack of consistency
in our stillness of aesthetics, this
stillness is constantly being corrupted, by objectionable expletives of art and
design that have made us callous to our expressions, poetry, design, music,
dance, food, painting, language...... life. Where are the renaissance people,
lost in their dreams? Lost is our fingers ability to sensitively feel its way around
form, to nurture, to love, to make love, to touch another skin... A man...A
brother... a father...a son...a woman, a daughter...mother...stranger...lover.
The Colin Laird
Trincity Project brought back the stillness.
Dean Arlen
26 July 2012,St. Augustine.
