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Use of comparison in Paul Goldberger’s “The Heatherwick Effect” (pp. 330-331)
In both ways, the author emphasizes the architect’s concern for relationships between humans
and their environment. The article “The Heatherwick Effect” appeared in The New Yorker in
2008. The title refers to a controversial British architect and urban designer, Thomas
Heatherwick. Author Paul Goldberger uses comparisons in several different ways in the article,
especially to present Heatherwick’s approach to design. This approach emphasizes the human
dimension, including popular appeal. Goldberger says that Heatherwick is driven “to make his
work comprehensible to people who don’t know a thing about design.”
Most of the comparisons are the architect’s own words, while some are made by the author.
Two types of comparisons, metaphors and similes, are employed. A metaphor is a direct
comparison between unlike things for effect, while a simile uses like or as.
A metaphorical comparison employed by the architect emphasizes the difference between the
small, human scale of personal ornament and the vast, unfortunately impersonal scale of a
building. Heatherwick compares an earring to a building’s façade, noting that items made to use
on the body are often more carefully attuned to the user.
One simile that Goldberger uses compares a café and a whale. He says that a seaside café that
Heatherwick designed looks “like a beached whale.” He implicitly likens the steel strips used to a
whale’s bones. Another simile compares a Japanese pagoda design to paper craft, saying the
building looks “like a piece of crumpled origami paper.” Describing the interior of a New York
building, Goldberger uses a simile comparing a three-story steel backdrop to cloth that was cut
up into “strips like ribbons.”
Another
Paul Goldberger's New Yorker article "The Heatherwick Effect" examines the work of the British
designer, Thomas Heatherwick. The article is based around an interview with Heatherwick, and
some of the comparisons in it are quotations from or suggested by the subject. The author
begins by describing a footbridge which folds up into an octagonal shape on one bank of the
river to allow boats to pass. Heatherwick says that he designed this bridge to look attractive both
when it was spanning the water and when it was folded up, commenting that most drawbridges
look "like a footballer with a broken leg" when they are open.
Heatherwick also makes a telling comparison between a building and an earring when explaining
his philosophy of design. He describes the sterility of buildings by saying that an earring, a tiny
object by comparison, generally has more complexity in its design than the exterior of a building.
This is a strikingly effective way of highlighting the lack of complexity in the largest objects most
people see on a daily basis.
The author is sympathetic to Heatherwick's aims and wants to explain his ideas on design to the
reader. However, he does make some of his own comparisons, with which the designer might
not necessarily agree. Describing one of Heatherwick's buildings, he says, “Last year, he
completed a seaside café, in the tiny town of Littlehampton, that looks like a beached whale
made of strips of rust-colored steel. It is less a building than a sculpture in which you can buy
lunch.”
Writing about the large- and small-scale commissions Heatherwick has accepted, Goldberger
remarks, “At the large end, he is designing a Buddhist temple in Japan, which looks, from the
plans, like a crumpled piece of origami paper.”
The second of these comparisons might not be thought very flattering to Heatherwick, but both
accord with the designer's own descriptions in being highly visual, helping the reader to imagine
structures which are not illustrated (since the article contains only one photograph, showing the
façade of a London hospital designed by Heatherwick). The comparisons the author uses, both
Heatherwick's and his own, succeed in allowing the reader to visualize the buildings and
therefore to think about the principles of design discussed in the article.
Use of definition (including classification) in Paul Goldberger’s “The Heatherwick Effect” (pp. 330-331)
According to Paul Goldberger in his article "The Heatherwick Effect," the magic of Thomas
Heatherwick's design is "his drive to to make his work comprehensible to people who don't
know the first thing about design."
Heatherwick's designs are "empathetic," imaginative, or avant-garde structures that can be used
intuitively, like a hospital complex that leads a sick and elderly person directly to the front door
or a creative sculpture that makes people want to see what's on the second floor of a shop. In
his article, Goldberger uses definition to verbally describe these complicated structures without
compromising how easy they are to use or understand.
In the first paragraph of the article, Goldberger describes the Rolling Bridge as someone walking
down the street would see it. First, there is a simple definition of a bridge and a description of
the materials it is made of ("steel and wood") and how it exists in space ("crossing the water in
eight short sections"). Next comes the second impression, an imaginative description of the
bridge in use:
“When a boat needs to pass, it arcs up and back from one side like a scorpion's tail, and folds
itself into a neat octagon on the opposite bank.”
When looking at an object, people often see the materials and shapes it is made of before
anything else. This can be a pitfall of innovative modern design, when an object that is supposed
to be used is made out of something uncommon or moves in an unusual way that obscures its
function. Goldberger wants to emphasize that this is not the case with Heatherwick's work, so he
defines the look and construction of a design and clearly connects it to a simple description of its
use or movement.
Goldberger continues to use this strategy to convey the harmony in Heatherwick's work
throughout the article, defining the creative or eccentric materials and shapes of a design
alongside an imaginative but perfectly clear description of its function.
Use of cause and effect in Marla Cone’s “Dozens of words for Snow, None for Pollution” (handout)
In Marla Cone's "Dozens of Words for Snow, None for Pollution," cause and effect can be
observed in the degree to which human pollutants and toxic chemicals have concentrated in the
Arctic and poisoned the people that live there.
Ultimately, if we were to trace cause-and-effect, the root cause lies in the Industrial West and its
history of pollution. As Marla Cone writes:
"atmospheric and oceanic currents conspire to send
industrial chemicals, pesticides, and power-plant emissions on a journey to the Far North,"
where these same chemicals are essentially frozen in the extreme conditions. Meanwhile, there
are the local and indigenous populations of the Arctic itself, whose diet is centered on the
consumption of marine mammals whose bodies have been contaminated with these chemicals.
As Cone reports, in the late 1980's, Dr. Eric Dewailly tested samples of breast milk from these
regions and was shocked at the chemical results; further testing confirmed that "
Arctic mothers
had seven times more PCBs [Polychlorinated biphenyls, a type of manmade chemical] in their
milk than mothers in Canada’s biggest cities." More recently, a 2002 report from the Arctic
Monitoring and Assessment Programme, found that
"the average levels of PCBs and mercury in
newborn babies’ cord blood and women’s breast milk are a staggering 20 to 50 times higher in
Greenland than in urban areas of the United States and Europe."
Cone later reports there has been debate over whether these populations should be encouraged
to abandon their traditional diets and start importing western foods. However, the answers are
not so easy; such a switch would have its own drawbacks, given that western processed foods,
"
loaded with carbohydrates and sugar," are far from healthy themselves. One doctor
characterized them as "
worse than poison." What we see in this story, where cause and effect is
concerned, is the degree to which these populations are feeling the impacts of decisions made in
the industrial world.
Use of narration (including description) in Marla Cone’s “Dozens of words for Snow, None for Pollution”
(handout)
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