Read Catalog - Charles Simonds

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The Tower of Babel is referred to in the Bible (Genesis II :r-9) simply as "a tower with
its top in the heavens." Herodotus refers to a great temple in the center of Babylon
with "a solid central tower, one furlong square, with a second erected on top of it and
then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed by a spiral way
running around the outside ... " (The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt, Baltimore:
Penguin Classics, 1961, p. 86). Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted two versions of a Tower
of Babel in 1563, basing his image on the written sources above and his visit to the
remains of the Colosseum in Rome as well as contemporary machines. See H. Arthur
Klein, "Pieter Bruegel the Elder as a Guide to r6th Century Technology," Scientific
American 238, 3 (March 1978), p. 134. In both the "large" and "small" Babels (Vienna
and Rotterdam), Bruegel uses color changes to distinguish newer from older construction.
27
Bib. I 1975, Simonds and Abadie, p. 13.
28
" ... I investigate the parallels between the unconscious behavioral patterns (my own,
those of humans and animals) and social and environmental forces, as a means of
provocation and social change. Through new art and architectural possibilities I am
particularly interested in the evolution and psychological implications of sexual interactions
between body and earth, house and body and home, building and growingfrom
the behavior of termites to human social systems ... " (Bib. II 1980, Daval, p. 121).
(See also note 18 above.) " ... and I've learned more from watching the small-brained
genius of the caddis fly larva building its house ... than by studying the work of largebrained
architects" (Bib. II 1980, Foote, p. 29). Simonds admires greatly the beauty and
economy of animal structures, from microscopic animals through shells, arthropods,
and the vertebrates. He has a copy of the classic study by Karl von Frisch, Animal
Architecture, trans. Lisbeth Gombrich, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
The first chapter is entitled "The Living Body as Architect-."
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Simonds's interest in how building reflects living is evident in his work in transitional
neighborhoods and his notes about buildings he sees in his travels. With many artists
he is interested in the "vernacular, anonymous, spontaneous, indigenous, rural"
structures assembled in Bernard Rudofsky's book Architecture Without Architects,
New York: Doubleday, 1964, which accompanied an exhibition of the same title at
the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1965. See also Rudofsky's The Prodigious
Builders, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. An article which expresses an
attitude very similar to Simonds's is Richard Bender's study of mud architecture in
Morocco, "Dust to Dust-The Ultimate System/' Progressive Architecture 54, 12 (December
1973), pp. 64-67.
30
Bib. II 1980, Daval, p. 121.
31
Ibid.
32
See Bib. II 1979, Linker, for an extremely thoughtful and provocative discussion of
Simonds's art, esp. p. 3 7, where she concludes: "Instead of extending art into nonart
contexts, they [his land projects] propose broader, more flexible definitions of art. And
this reorientation of esthetic objectives is perhaps the most important thing that these
objects, like Simonds's Dwellings and models, are about." See also her footnote 17 for
a proposed analogy between the models for Three Peoples and art theories.
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