Axis
Journal of the Caribbean School of Architecture
The University of Technology, Jamaica
First issue, No. 1, November 1997
published twice a year.

Editorial

This is the first issue of AXIS. Of course, it is not really the first. The special introductory issue of Axis came and went a happy experiment. It was well received and, inevitably, there were things that could have gone better. In any case, with this first real issue, it would not be amiss to rehearse the program that AXIS has set for itself.

Axis represents the work and mood of students and staff at the Caribbean School of Architecture. As such it is a journal in the true sense of that word: it is the record of a journey through the various degree programs. First of all through the two year Associate Degree course in the Built Environment (Architecture). Then through the BA and BSc Programmes in Architectural Studies and Architectural Technology respectively and lastly through the two-year Masters' Degree in Architecture. The design projects and articles printed here represent a rough cross-section of that journey as experienced by students in the current and previous academic year. The contributions of the staff on the other hand, represent in some way the ambivalent milestones along this road. They are ambivalent only in the sense that these milestones are themselves not stationary but subject to convulsion and movement. In that sense, AXIS can perhaps best be described as a two-way Journal. It is a journal of the traveller observing the place he is travelling through and at the same time it is a journal of the place observing all the travelling that is going on.

That brings us to the purpose of this journal. That purpose is threefold. Firstly, the journal serves as a platform for a broader discourse about good and bad architecture; about the objectives and possible strategies of the architectural profession at large. Secondly, Axis is an attempt to see that discussion within an historical perspective. It is a magazine which uses the students' essays Into history and theory to build up a depository of architectural experience. In that way the journal will help to generate our own view of history, a Caribbean view of history, defined by its own preoccupations, focusing on its own values and serviced on its own terms. This last purpose which this journal tries to aspire to, ties both of the first two together. Here we have students doing real research into real historical, theoretical and polemical issues. Some of that research is simply too good to be thrown away; some of that thinking too fresh and provocative to allow it to languor away in dusty boxes with fading labels.

In this issue we have a sizeable article by Christopher Whyms-Stone which deserves to be taken very seriously as a document. It is a phenomenological description of some seven Tenement Yards, all but one are situated in Kingston. In its quiet, ambling pace, the article cracks open the habit of looking at architecture. Like a true storyteller, the author separates his own conclusions from the story. Not that these are without interest, far from it. But in his descriptions he alows the people he meets with to inhabit the buildings he describes. Their presence is not heavy but revealed in the tiny gestures, movements and words they utter within the buildings. In this way he allows the story to become richly didactic. On reading his descriptions one can begin to form a more complex paradigm on the design of low income housing; one which, by recording the enormous weight of the casual remark thrown away to the wind, poses as a strong complement to the more objectifying quantitative analysis of the sociologist and the geographer. Then there are the Manifestos written by fourth-year students for their theory class. These manifestos are the tentative formulations of an architectural attitude. Some are baffling, some are very sophisticated, all of them shout out the preoccupations of people trying to find a way fonnrard.

All of the articles contained here represent re-worked versions of essays and projects handed in and marked. Some of them, after being recommended for inclusion needed substantial re-writing to achieve a clearer focus while others needed only to be subjected to a critical editor's pen. All of them have something to say, however. Axis, is exactly that, a centre around which the thought of students, assembles, arranges and defines itself giving that thought a clear direction, their direction.

That brings us to the contributions from the staff, the milestones that will not keep still, First of all there is Ivor Smith's article on the design of elevations. In the same category there is a parable by Patrick Stanigar on the use of the computer in design and a short article by Mark Raymond on a project he did with the third year students entitled "The Omeros Transcripts", whereby Derek Walcott's epic poem was rewritten in the language of architecture. These articles are all in some sense normative. In a more historical vein there is the extraordinary account of the Spanish architecture and its role in the conquest of Peru by Salvatore Autorino. I have crept in with a thing on Kingston, Collision and Violence in Architecture.

What I hope is the most mobilising contribution to this issue of AXIS is a series of three articles which represent the first three instalments on a Cyber Agora held at the website of the Caribbean School of Architecture on "Inventing Caribbean Architectural History." Everyone with something to say on the subject is not just invited but strongly urged to say his or her piece and post it to our site. We hope to publish the contributions in later issues of AXIS.

As for the design Projects there is a fair cross-section of works completed over the last academic year. There are two designs by our final year's master's students Howard Ferguson and Christopher Whyms-Stone, One by a first year's master student, Craig Aquart and several from students in the years below. Each is accompanied, as far as possible by an abstract of the original brief.

The concept that binds all the above together in this form is no more than what ties everything else together, time and place: the frenzied rythm of work at a school of architecture.

Jacob Voorthuis, History and Theory of Architecture

Editorial Address:
The Caribbean School of Architecture
The University of Technology, Jamaica
237 Old Hope Road, Kingston 6, Jamaica
Tel: (876) 977 5944; Fax: (876) 927 1925
E-mail: csa@jol.com.jm.