Teaching A Stone to Talk
“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep - just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don't do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life's length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
(VİDEO OF NATURE CLOUDS MOVING FAST ON STONES, A MOUNTAIN AND A VALLEY. MARDIN)
THOSE RUDE SILENT INFINIT OBJECTS WERE UNBEARABLE SO MEN GIVE THEM A LANGUAGE . A SOFTNESS, A TEXTURE A FEELING AND INCLUDED THEM IN THEIR OWN WORLD OF INTELLIGENCE, FEELING, LIFE AND DEATH. MEN CREATED BUILDINGS OUT OF THESE INFINIT OBJECTS, BUILDINGS WHICH HAD A LIFE, A DEATH....A LIFE CYCLE. MAN HAD INTEGRATED THE STONE TO ITS LIMITED LIFE TIME. HAD SHAPED IT, HAD STRUCT IT. UNTIL IT BECOMES ALIVE UNTIL IT BECOMES A PART OF HIS LIFE.
THEN THE STONE STARTED TO LIVE, STARTED TO TALK WITH MEN. IT TOOK MORE THEN ONE PERSON TO UNDERSTAND. A STONE MASTER, AN ARCHITECT, AN ARTIST, A MINER, A SELLER, A VIEWER…..ALL TRANSLATED ITS SPEACH DIFFERENTLY. IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS SAYING, YOU SHALL LISTEN VERY VERY CAREFULLY.
Alexander Seton’s Marble Sculptures Of Clothing
Mardin Architecture Reliefs
TEACHING A STONE TO TALK: THE BIRTH
Stone Quarry in Mardin
Stone is cut in layers
TEACHING A STONE TO TALK: FIRST WORDS?
Mason of Mardin Working on a Relief
The limestone of Mardin is rather soft when it is first cut in quarry. It is easily shaped and worked. With time, as air and sunlight works on the surface of the limestone. The stone gets harder and turns into a durable material with sound insulation. If used in proper thickness as a masonry wall, it has good heat emissions cycles.
TEACHING A STONE TO TALK: FIRST WORDS?
Even the rectangular blocks have a new language, as words have their place in a sentence. This photo is of an eyvan in a traditional mardin house. A living room like niche space used in hot and dry summers. The language is protective yet welcoming.
Windows which cannot be bigger due climate conditions have a larger affect with stone relieves. Mardin Midyat
In the absence of stone there is a silent interval very much like in music and in the absence of stone light finds it's way in openings. Syrian Orthodox Church in Mardin Midyat.
TEACHING A STONE TO TALK: WORDS
Walls and roof are there to protect us from dangers and from the bad manners of weather. In an international students workshop, a contemporary house and a traditional stone house of Mardin are compared in terms of heat differences in May 2004.
In this limited study with different volumes. It is needless to say that the spaces and dimensions are different. If we can only concentrate on the temperature results, Mungan House is more comfortable.
Thermal comfort zone in a psychrometric diagram
TEACHING A STONE TO TALK: Did the talk turned into a poem?
References:
Yılmaz, Zerrin, Farklı İklim Bölgelerinde Enerji Etkin Tasarım Stratejileri: Türkiye’nin Sıcak Kuru ve Ilımlı Nemli İklim Bölgeleri için Örnek bir Karşılaştırma, Mimarlık Dergisi 373, September 2013
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