Architecture – Mahalath Halperin
One of the things I love about architecture is the way geometry brings it into perfect balance – a wall, a room, a space – the relationships between them all. Often it is the geometry that dictates the location of that last wall, or the next window, or a single opening, into a space. It is very much about three-dimensional geometry.
But what could be more pure than placing a triangle on top of a square. In Sufi mysticism, the triangle represents Harmony and the Soul, while the square is Stability and Matter. Place one atop the other, and the Pyramid is created – the physical matter in which the Soul of the Pharoah was placed.
I first visited Egypt in 1980, and impressed as I was by the Big Three in Giza, was struck more by the not-so-attractive Stepped Pyramid of Zoser, a mere 25km away, but some 1000-2000 years older. The Stepped Pyramid, also part of a mortuary complex, was the first pyramid ever built. The very first. Ever. And the person who came up with the idea, the architect Imhotep, was the first acknowledged Architect. Go him! So significant is that fact that the Greeks later deified him.
But back to the sands of Egypt and the not-so-deserty desert. Michael Foreman’s etching is typically indicative of our impressions of what they should look like – sitting so gracefully on a bed of never-ending sand, an air of mystery, with their lumps and bumps showing their age, and the silhouette of the once-proud Pharaoh in the foreground. But when I was there, two years earlier than his etching, already, the vista of sand had long gone. With the growth of Cairo around the ancient site of Giza, the three great Pyramids, once sentinel to endless centuries of desert, now sit amidst the hustle and bustle of the (then) twentieth and (now) twenty-first century.
The site is surrounded by a sprawling metropolis of over 22 million. But with a pocket of sand each side, if you move in close enough, you can still manage the obligatory tourist photo in front of a pyramid, surrounded only by sand.
Lorraine Jenyns’ Mummybox, likewise, is more sand than pyramid, again reinforcing the relationship of building to ground, of angle to soft, of white to yellow – with blue sky above. Its simplicity is not unlike some of our Indigenous artists – Mabel Julie comes to mind with paintings of a rock, sky, land – pure and so simple, yet conveying so much.
And then the diorama – I actually went inside the first time I visited – a long sloping hunched-over climb in anticipation of something wonderful at the end – only to emerge into a large and very empty room. The King’s Room, the Queen’s Room, now nobody’s room, long robbed and pilfered. If there really is an afterlife, what must those poor dead Pharaohs be thinking as we stomp around inside and outside their tombs, surrounded by tourists and tour guides, souvenirs, camels, donkeys, horses and buses going everywhere. If their bodies were still there, I’m sure they would be turning in their graves.
Many say that these structures, so pure in form, pull energy towards themselves then send it forth in gigantic proportions – more than just a mortuary, but a life force of what was and what might be. But if the power of three such monumental objects still persists, what does it do to the city surrounding it? Does the choking urbanisation that now surrounds them keep such powers and energy contained, and are they doomed to die like the desert that once surrounded them, and disappear beneath our modern world?
The power, though, must still be there as even today, we continue to be fascinated, enthralled, inspired, curious as ever, even after all these millennia, empty boxes they now may be.
Mahalath Halperin Architects is a multi-award-winning, regional-based Architectural Practice with a holistic approach to changing the world, one project at a time. Based in Armidale, Anēwan and Kamilaroi Country, they have been working throughout regional NSW for over 30 years delivering architecture, seminars and environmental assessments and audits. They strive for architecture that is sustainable in many ways – a focus on energy and environment, society and community, materials and resources, liveability and longevity.
Image credits:
Michael Foreman, An Egyptian Landscape (detail), 1982, etching. Gift of W.D. Thorn 2009. NERAM Collection.
Model of the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza (detail), made by P.A. Watters, 1985, craft wood. MA1985.4.1. UNE Museum of Antiquities.
