“There isn’t anybody nearly as funny, spirited, spontaneous or caring as me in the bloodline… These are the best parts of me, that I also get to serve the world with each day.”
Hey Grandad,
I write these words in hope they find you settled and comfortable in bed or on the sofa. I thought I would take the opportunity to share a few thoughts that have circled my mind recently.
Time is supposed to be telling, but for many it appears confusing. But not for me. Where there is a quantifiable separation, is better yet, a familial bond that keeps me certain. It was in the process of stitching these words together, you were also celebrated. Because I found that there is a bit of you in my every day.
Your inherent humour, generosity and interest. What a pleasure to experience it all so closely. I am really proud to be your Grandson.
- Your spontaneity has inspired me to keep everyday exciting and forward-moving.
- My understanding of what it is to be Jamaican, makes me excited about all of my travels, past and future.
- Waking up at 3am to watch Formula One has led to me to driving a F1000 race car last week, or taking a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Lewis Hamilton drive in Ferrari red in Mexico later this year.
- I’ve inherited your witty dark humour. It’s become the heart of my character and amusement of all of my colleagues, friends and family. They love me for it, and they let me know. I am an extension of you.
While it might feel like your peace is overdue, it’s with each day and every year that’s passed, I’ve noticed a growing internal calm in you. Mostly present in your eyes. It’s like watching you surrender to something beyond you, instead of trying to overpower it It represents something that feels circular, or harmonic maybe. It was affirming to see. Those observations make me happy and trust that you’ve been seeing a promising land like I’ve grown to. I carry this hope with me every day. Being the change I want to see. That’s legacy.
- Waking up at 3am to watch Formula One has led to me to driving a F1000 race car last week, or taking a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Lewis Hamilton drive in Ferrari red in Mexico later this year.
- I’ve inherited your witty dark humour. It’s become the heart of my character and amusement of all of my colleagues, friends and family. They love me for it, and they let me know. I am an extension of you.
While it might feel like your peace is overdue, it’s with each day and every year that’s passed, I’ve noticed a growing internal calm in you. Mostly present in your eyes. It’s like watching you surrender to something beyond you, instead of trying to overpower it It represents something that feels circular, or harmonic maybe. It was affirming to see. Those observations make me happy and trust that you’ve been seeing a promising land like I’ve grown to. I carry this hope with me every day. Being the change I want to see. That’s legacy.
There isn’t anybody nearly as funny, spirited, spontaneous or caring as me in the bloodline… And I got all of that from you. These are the best parts of me, that I also get to serve the world with each day. So, there is a bit of you in my every day.
Cold whispers might sting your ear, or tickle the tip of your nose, but may these words keep your chest warm.
You’ve shared exactly what I’ve grown to understand as the essence of family. And shall it continue to be my life’s purpose. That’s legacy.
Legacy, legacy, legacy, family.
With heavy love,
Leithan
Cold whispers might sting your ear, or tickle the tip of your nose, but may these words keep your chest warm.
You’ve shared exactly what I’ve grown to understand as the essence of family. And shall it continue to be my life’s purpose. That’s legacy.
Legacy, legacy, legacy, family.
With heavy love,
Leithan
“The house has the space and volume to breathe the landscape in, and foster symbiotic relationships between humans and their surroundings.”
Photography - Pedro Kok
The clients, who owned a plot with a fazenda (farm house), commissioned Sao Paulo-based architects Andrade Morettin to redesign a home that has ‘better contact with nature’. Project architect Marcelo Morettin describes the original house as ‘big, but very closed off, where you couldn’t see the landscape’. Instead, he wanted to design a home where ‘even from the inside, you would feel you are outside at the same time’.
The original fazenda was a single-storey, red-brick structure with a eucalyptus-timber frame and a red-tile pitched roof that extended over a veranda on the south side. The porch overlooked the swimming pool below, with views extending further downhill into an array of trees. The old house was demolished; only the long retaining stone wall was kept to separate the expanded terrace from the garden’s steep drop.
The new RF Residence is a two-storey glass box nestled within a frame of glued laminated timber, or glulam. At the centre of the plan is a double-height living space that opens onto a dining area and kitchen to the east. To the south and west, the living space is wrapped by the L-shaped terrace; large glass panels encased in aluminium frames slide open to connect the two, allowing family meals and conversations to ignore boundaries between inside and outside.
The glulam frame extends out, topped by a light steel structure that holds a polycarbonate roof to provide shelter and shade on the terrace. Light filters down via the translucent polycarbonate, while the large sliding doors offer passive airflow, inviting air to circulate through the house and moderate high summer temperatures.
Andrade Morettin’s use of industrial materials and, in this particular house, the oversized glulam frame, confer the building with a sense of generosity and open-endedness. The house has the space and volume to breathe the landscape in, and foster symbiotic relationships between humans and their surroundings.
“It’s the certain feeling that it’s only the law keeping you alive. It all feels so gloomy.”
I can’t tell you how much easier it is to cross four lanes of incoming traffic here, than it is in London.
We all know the feeling of crossing four lanes of black and blue vehicles lined up at a red light. Daunting, despite them being under the order of a red traffic light.
We’ve all had to use that prepared pep in our step when the green man disappears.
The panicky internal stop-clock that starts when the green man disappears and then stops at the landing of the curb of the pavement whilst presenting external composure and poise because I ain’t a bitch and you ain’t gonna run me over if I take my time.
Yup, that’s what I thought.
We’ve come to live in such an idiot-proof environment. It’s the certain feeling that it’s only the law keeping you alive. It all feels so gloomy.
Vehicles look so much friendlier out here. Western 90’s engineering and it’s revolutionary efforts long ago forgotten have been ‘relegated’ to public consumption on the sunny side of the earth.
Though slightly clumsier in their shape, vehicles are endearing and industrious. Friendly. Moody colours are bedded in by an illuminating earthy fur and Arabic remixes to 50 Cent songs.
Roads are inhabited by mobile phone conversations and taxi drivers on the scout. And it all makes for a calmer experience of crossing 4 lanes of traffic.
If I can smugly waltz my away through oncoming traffic and maintain the perfect poise, I live on happy.
If life’s more thrilling moments come behind the wheel of my instincts and under the baton of my confidence, I will be okay.
If my Clarks can kick their way through gold dust more often, I’ll be great.
“Your front door is your home’s biggest fashion accessory... And my first point of reference when tryna’ guess how much money you have.”
18.03.24
Amazon delivery driver.
My time on the force was so interestingly and painfully insightful. I started to build a profound relationship with front doors. Have you ever thought about how big your letter box is? I had completely forgotten that these things have a function.
There’s something about a yellow front door without a glazing panel that just does it for me. The pinks were nice, orange and yellows were my favourite.
An estate door was repetitive. But, good repetitive. I read it as a collection of homes, as I assume intended. Community is always nice. But it was the heavy steel gates, broken letter boxes and the fading tan from a door number, that brought me back to my favourite topic. Capitalism.
Your front door is your home's biggest fashion accessory, and my first point of reference when tryna’ guess how much money you have. It was fun predicting what kind of face was behind the door. Though, time pressures meant in most cases I was on to the next by the time the door crept open.
The power dynamic is so interesting. A silent war. Both parties, so desperate to meet.
20 seconds too late and there’s a soggy cardboard box with a dent in it. Not behind your bin like I said it was… And that’s because your leisurely stroll to the door means I have 20 seconds less time to deliver the rest of my parcels.
The demand for drivers to deliver 230 parcels in a day, meant we were constantly at war with the clock and ourselves. Just for a net gain of £100. Context reduces the number further but I’ll save that story for another day.
Is there anything scarier today than missing your delivery?
Before my exit I would throw a look back towards the door to check if the parcel was picked up off of the front porch. I would look as far as my vision could reach.
*Correction*
I would throw a look back towards the porch to check if a beige blur disappeared from in-front of the door.
The people that would take a parcel and not say ‘thanks’. Heathens.
Selfish, entitled, snobby. I usually would internalise these types of interactions long enough for it to be reversed by the friendliest of Londoners. Stumbling over their thank you’s as they try to balance the 6 small boxes I just handed over, step backwards and close the door, whilst still trying to keep eye contact and smile. What an episode for the anxious!
The worst kind were those that say nothing and just take. Barbaric. Miserable.
(I preface this by saying… I’m aware that I have no idea of what really happens behind a front door. Context is always important.)
But… Not when I’m delivering your fucking parcel! I hate this job and I still smile. Find some internal strength please, and pull a thank you out of the back of your neck.
Short thrills include peaking between the customer’s head and the door frame, to a world beyond. Sometimes it was white walls and a quickly onrushing dog, other times Aesop hand cream and her flatmate Poppy. More often than not, it was a mountain of dirty shoes on an exhausted shoe rack.
I’d usually take a step back. Doors open with a waft of hot air that usually came with a big smell. We are in the winter months, so the cooked smell of unfamiliar food or 14-hour-old breath were potent and destructive. I can drop a box on the door and say thank you from the front gate or further down the deck.
Now, I watch a delivery driver rush off into the distance and hop into his van like it’s a fighter jet from my door as if I’m in some sort of rom-com. I smile and wave off our brave soldiers as they drive off into a not so distant 20 meters further down the road to relive the fight again. I definitely don’t do that, But it would make a good skit.
Oh yeah! I didn’t realise how late I was to the party. Everybody has a ‘Ring’ bell. Is this a homeowner thing? They’re so dull and blocky. They ruin a good outfit.
An old-fashioned bell or buzzer is so much more satisfying. It feels functional. I know they hear when I call.
I also thought door knockers was an old-school a thing. Yeah, they still work.
Apparently, my visits are just as friendly as the police's. A moody resident makes sense now.
I got the job by the way.
“It feels very British. Like an earnest London stock brick, or a ham and pickle roll.”
I see positions of sad and pensiveness. Depression… But also considered them to possibly be poses of relaxation. Up close the forms feel organic. A half-considered arrangement of varying blocks that seem less intentional.
The vibrant but organic looking dirty orange colour brings a covetus earthiness to the polished concrete gallery floor. I felt like I was intruding on an autumn afternoon… We tread carefully between these bodies beneath a warm thick cloudy sky. The bodies have a ‘why is the sky blue?’ kinda’ effect. The room as a whole is so well assembled. At first it was quite overstimulating, but after that first wave, I allowed my mind to engage instead of evade the challenge of experiencing it.
A pile of bricks or blocks? Concrete blocks I assume, due to the variation in size and shape. But it feels very British. Like an earnest London stock brick, or a ham and pickle roll. Purple bruises on each of the blocks personified the gloom I felt on entry. It was funny stumbling across, and then searching for some of the more erotic positions. The work developed into a more light hearted experience as I covered more ground.
I just remembered I didn’t come here alone! Misty disappeared into the patchy grass of living bodies wrapped in black and blues. After a desperate scan of the room I noticed her sat down, in the field of bodies, in all orange, demonstrating her live performance contribution. Seeing her sat down just opened up a new consideration. Closer to the ground. Amongst the still.
My head now just about peaks up over the forms. I’m sat within what feels like a town in warm place and now the architectural qualities to the piece reveal themselves. Rural streetscapes and metropolitan density stand as utopian monuments. I say utopian more so when I noticed symmetry in the forms.
No framework, no joints and no adhesive. These lightweight blocks now feel heavy. Monolithic. Primitive. (I know the blocks are light as the kid in me thought to use my foot to push one). To my success.
I’m so much more excited with this second type of experience. I think my miss and memory of architecture is being stimulated. I feel like an architect again. Comforted by familiar proportions and one of my favourite colours. What does the population look and act like? This is not quite sonder though. I look into the distance and see a skyline. I’m looking for patterns and gradual incline in height. Amongst the 1000’s of blocks/buildings, where’s was the epicentre? The centre? Where does capitalism begin? Who runs this town?
I spent the rest of my time up again and looking back down at each body trying to identify the positions… To then fall into the associated mood and emotion.
Outside the intrusive gander of other people. I thoroughly enjoyed the yard. A giant playground of discovery. Though I didn’t count, I’m pretty certain that each of the pieces were unique.