Our lingering images

Introducing Issue Nº19

In our individual readings of Openhouse, each of us is continually assembling architectural imagitoriums. The photos viscerally provoke our own memories—not only what we have seen in Openhouse, of course, but personal memories of locations and spaces, approaches, times of day, situated experiences, and everything more. Intuitively curated, intimate and personal, haptic and intellectual, part of a conversation or a history.

These “collections” form a bit like those patiently gathered and displayed by gallerists in this issue: Rosa Park, owner of the Francis Gallery, introduces us to her most familiar and personal world in the pages of Selected By. Trevor Cheney takes us to the universe recreated at Seventh House, while Kate and Ben Lawrence are rewarded with intimacy in the London flat where The Cold Press is located. And Henry Timi prays a Silent Homage by reinterpreting the Italian heritage. Or perhaps we gather, store and reanimate our remembered experience-images in a more space-and-time-defying way through technologies of imagination certain to inspire Blend BCN, “from creatives to creatives”.

When I first saw Salva Lopez’s beautiful photos of Casa Stella they seemed to “refresh” some remembered images from the extraordinary places I, and many of you, have “visited” in the pages of Openhouse over the past few years: Gnarled trees tenaciously rooted in a rugged landscape brought to mind mar-plus-ask’s Olive Houses (“Sheltering the Imagination,” Nº16 ), and Casa Stella’s straightforward authenticity and “localness” evoked José Antonio Coderch’s Casa Coderch (“Refreshing Glance for a Contemporary Paradise” Nº12). The thrust and embrace of outcroppings sent my thoughts back to Albert Frey’s Frey House II (“Thinking on the Ledge” Nº13), while the quiet modesty of a hatch-like window brought to mind Luciano Giubbilei’s Potter’s House (“Keeping Towards the Light” Nº14). And the retreat, literally to an edge—whether the Mediterranean Sea or the Mojave Desert, made me consider, again, Andrea Zittel’s Wonder Valley Experimental Living Cabins (“Invitation at Desert’s Edge” Nº11).

Of course, Casa Stella is itself; it is unique. The built creation of the designing minds of Alberto Ponis and Ivan Baj, it is also shaped by architectural and cultural histories. But it now also occupies a parcel in my mind, part of an impossibly-sized (geographically speaking) “neighborhood” of architectural favorites that lodge in my memory.

However, I think architect Alberto Ponis (“’Within Reach’ at Casa Ponis”) provides the perfect metaphorical structure for memory as a kind of drawer that we might open to its fullness. Before you begin turning the pages of this issue, I invite you to open one of the drawers of your mind—where you might be keeping remembered images, fragments of places and spaces, visited in person, on page or screen, that have stayed close and to which you may, with this issue, be adding more. And save a little room (literally!)—next issue (fall 2023) marks the ten-year anniversary of Openhouse magazine! Perhaps these reminiscing thoughts are the overflowing fullness of this project launched a decade ago!