A similar game of imagination; navigating near icebergs likens to the fancy of assigning form to the clouds overhead. Both pure in their whites and both traces of their greater surrounds; their form is a resultant of water’s dance with temperature. While the creative mind stretches to assign familiarity to these otherwise daunting frozen beings; this solid existence, approachability in the water, and shear scale leads me now to consider them more like elements of architecture; a cloud never shatters and rumbles. Granted, obviously, both are at the core of my considerations for architecture, but an iceberg, for today, is more tangibly a building.
As if a dream lingering in my current transition back to more speculative work; I have recently been recalling a passing moment in Greenland. Situated amongst icebergs; kayaks are joke-able in size. Guaranteed to be sharing the water; the massive residue of a shedding glacier is to be approached cautiously. Temperature changes; the movement of the water carving it away, an awkward shape from rolling, cracking, and turning. To crumble apart meant instant waves, falling ice, and new barriers. The danger was drawing; to be near to these crisp pure white forms was the obtainable desire and the clear risk. Much caution was taken in the water to maneuver around these buildings amongst the route.
One of my first nights in the settings of these elements I watched the edges of an enormous iceberg crumble away; giving in to the 24 hours of direct sun. The noise, the form, the drama of the instant; it set off a craving to watch more collapse, and an understanding of the paces of change for these giant floating volumes. This breathless observation was over-passed by a gasping smile when an iceberg, larger than the average home, crumbled in front of my eyes. Having held together as we passed, I wonder if our presence was the last few extra laps of a wave that finally left the melting structure too fragile to last. On shore; an observer from solid land, once removed from their setting, the thrill of the crumble was the greatest gift of the surroundings. Bobbing and turning, readjusting to new proportions and volumes, the need to be mass, the underestimated fragility and the pace of fade coming no time soon, is perfectly fitting for a building on a ground that is liquid. And then there was a new form to which I assigned an immediate new spatial relationship.
