"You have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary - your window gives off this nice, quiet light." Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
In literature and poetry, windows are quite often employed as metaphors for human conditions, to hint at opening up and gazing out or at ways to look inward into your heart and soul. In recent posts we have seen that, in fashion, openings on a garment can point towards art or architecture, act as decorative embellishments or as surface elaborations that create a shadow/light interplay. Windows are an important element of the exhibition at the Central Pavilion of the Giardini at the 14th Venice International Architecture Exhibition.
This architectural feature is explored in a room via two major displays - one by Belgian window importer and manufacturer Sobinco and another one that includes several examples of windows from the collection of Charles Brooking.
The Brooking National Collection contains roughly 500,000 pieces (5,000 whole windows, 10,000 window sections and 30,000 sash pulleys) and it's the only museum or collection of this type in England.
"I've always been fascinated by shape and design and by features such as doors, windows, staircases, fire grates and other architectural elements," Brooking recounts. "I know that having half a million items in a collection sounds frightening, but everything started very naturally as a passion of mine and I started collecting when I was a child. In 1960 I focused on windows and, in 1966, I had the idea of setting up an architectural museum."
All the windows on display at the Biennale were rescued from buildings in the UK and come from several centuries and decades - there are pieces from 1500s and 1550s and more modern ones from the 1960s and 1970s.
"I've been around all sorts of buildings, from the grandest ones such as Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Wembley Stadium, to the humblest houses, rescuing and salvaging pieces," Brooking explains. "For the last 30 years I catalogued these elements with the help of my partner who is equally passionate about the collection and helps me a lot with it. I was very lucky to have met her: she saw me on television 30 years ago, rang me up and said she wanted to give me a hand labelling the pieces."
The collection was recognised as a charitable fun in 1985 to safeguard its future, and this year Rem Koolhaas asked Brooking to take some of his pieces to the Biennale. "Rem's ideology is fascinating. He approached me in May, then his colleague from AMO Federico Martelli came to see me, analysed the collection and selected windows. It took a lot of work and it was a massive exercise as I also had to partially restore some of them, but it was an extremely exciting experience."
Brooking enjoyed the division into spaces - Ceiling, Façade, Window, Corridor, Floor, Balcony, Fireplace, Wall, Toilet, Escalator, Elevator, Ramp, Stair and Door - Koolhaas went for in the Central Pavilion. "I liked the staircase section as I cover this element of architecture in my collection and it would be amazing to do exchanges with the Friedrich Mielke Institute of Scalology, while the toilet section is highly amusing with quite interesting engineering drawings."
After this Venetian experience, Brooking will be busy on doing more conservation work, "We are planning to relaunch the collection, but you're all very welcome to come to South London and visit it," Brooking concludes. After all, windows could be another wonderful and refreshing fashion inspiration. As Edith Wharton writes in Vesalius in Zante, "Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."
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