Love Letters to Dead Architects: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Architect

Dear Piet Kramer,

I used to think that love at first sight was a silly idea. Sure, initial attraction is easy but typically one sided. After all, real genuine affection is something that can take years to develop. All this talk of love is ridiculous, surely. At least that is what I used to think, until I saw the De Bijenkorf Store. The expression of curve against solid, so elegantly entrancing, so modestly captivating. I did’nt stant a chance. Surely an expressionist masterpiece requires an expressionist response. I am smitten.

Who knows if this will last, after all your other buildings are, how can I put it? Numerous.
I don’t know if the affection will fade, I don’t know if the passion will be gone as quickly as it came, I don’t know, but I’m willing to try.

Affectionately,

Retly Corm

Dear James Strutt,

Don’t ever believe it when Americans say that Canadians are boring. That is just not true. What they are, as a people, is polite and thoughtful. You know, like you are with your architecture. It is not enough to make a statement; you want to balance that statement with pragmatism and nature. Anyone can blast a hole in the ground and pierce it with metal, glass and brick. Rather than fear or worship nature, you respect it as an equal, as a part of your life. It’s healthy James. Don’t let people tell you otherwise.

With Love,

Retly Corm

Ok. William Burges,

I get it. Alright? The flowers, the poems, standing outside my hours in medieval dress, all of this nonsense has got to stop. I’ve tried. I really have. I so want to be polite and respectful to your feelings. You may be short, awkwardly shaped, strange little man, who is obsessed with things that never really happened to begin with, but you do love lovely things, and that is to be commended. So often people walk in the world loving nothing and no one and that is what they believe makes them wise. I’m getting off topic.

Point is Mr. Burges, I can’t live up to your expectations.

Yours is a world filled with nostalgia and the glistening, glittering perfection of chase women and gallant men. Yours is a world filled with people who are good and kind. I cannot live in such a world. Long story short: you are too good for me.

I need you to not be around me, eventually I will destroy you. I know you say that underneath my fatale façade is a something decent, you are wrong. Stop trying to save me. Tell Charles Dickens to stop trying to put me in that “salvation house” of his. I don’t know how to make this clearer: I’m not looking for a savior. I’m looking for a fighter. Oh and tell John Ruskin to beat it, I know he’s a genius but he creeps me out.

Sincerely,

Retly Corm

My Dear Villard De Hannecourt,

These are trying times, are they not my love? It can be frustrating to a believer such as you are want to be. Has God forsaken us? The streets run black with death, injustice reigns and libidinous clergy seem to be behind every door. How can you then, in good conscience hide behind your drawings and diagrams? You are a man of science in a time of witchcraft, it does not auger well for you.

I know you do not fear this age, you are a builder of tools and a recorder of moments – impartial, stoic. I just hope you do not feel that way towards me.

Yours,

Retly Corm

Leon Battista Alberti,

I can’t see you, never again. I’m not afraid of what I’ve done, which is nothing, I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I stay.

Firstly, you’re a priest. Now I know that at this particular time, the celibacy of those who take the cloth is considered more of a guide-line than a rule (Vies-a-vie the Pope).That is except for women, but since when do they get equal rights?

Secondly, how can I trust you? You know that the true mastery of a field requires nothing less than total dedication and yet, you wear the hats of an architect, painter, mathematician, author and philosopher. You are the three-dimentional man who can explain a two-point perspective with single-mindedness.

You brought architecture to the human scale. Rusticating the stone, not out of necessity but out of aesthetics, oh dear, what will the Cistercians say?

Leon, you will drive me either to the road, the bottle or to madness. For my part, I choose the road. Don’t ask me to stay, you can’t teach a moth to reason with a flame.

Ever yours,

Retly Corm

Signore Fillippo Brunelleschi,

Get out of my head. Everytime I think I have come up with a complicated reason why we can’t be together. You find a way around it.

“We live to far apart” – “That’s why they make roads”
“I’m not ready” – “You never are”
“I can’t stand you” – “but you miss me when I’m gone.”

Honestly. It’s exhausting.

What should I expect from the man who figured out the problem of Santa Maria de Fiore’s dome? A dome that what structurally impossible before you got there. A buttress-less dream.

Your hold on me is like an egg balancing on a marble slab. No one, not even I can figure it out. But you just laugh and say its all part of your plan.

Ever,

Retly Corm