Front Room Voyeurism

One of the few benefits of densely packed vertical urbanisation, typical of Brasilian cites, is the boundless opportunities it offers for spying on the lives of others. This view from the sixteenth-floor balcony of a tower block in Santos made me think of narrative artworks that puncture the facades of buildings so as to reveal the everyday lives of residents inside. The graphic artist Will Eisner, the Scottish painter and writer Alasdair Gray, and the architect Chris Ware, author of the fabulous Building Stories, are just a few of the figures that come to mind. Not surprisingly  the literary world is full of novels whose plot unravels within a single building. Two of my favourites are the Yacoubian Building by the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Asnawy, and High Rise by the incomparable J.G Ballard, both of which have been made into films. But perhaps most pertinent of all to the possibilities of voyeuristic architectural story telling is Species of Spaces and other Pieces (1974) by the French author George Perec.  Originally planned as a series of lectures for architecture students, the different chapters offer fantastic ideas for a whole number of studio workshops. Bed, documents all the beds Perec can remember sleeping or lying on, which opens up a hitherto unexplored chapter in somnolent architectural history. Chapters on the Street, Neighbourhood and Town are similarly playful in the way they engage with the ordinary and overlooked. Apartment block continues in the same vein and begins accordingly: “I imagine a Parisian apartment building whose facade has been removed…so that all the rooms in the front, from the ground floor up to the attics, are instantly and simultaneously visible: The novel - whose title is Life a User's Manual - restricts itself…to describing the rooms thus unveiled and the activities unfolding in them…” Cut to one of Hitchcock’s most famous scenes. A badly broken leg has rendered you immobile for weeks on end. Bored, you spend your time watching your neighbours go about their daily chores. Slowly you become fascinated by the apartment directly opposite. Something definitely untoward is happening there. Cut to New Year’s Day. I sit whisky in hand and speculate on the cinematic panorama in front of me. Tensions in many apartments are high after a long night partying. At one dinner table a fierce argument breaks out over the legacy of the military dictatorship. It looks like it’s heading for a fight. Downstairs a reclusive middle-aged couple are quietly playing chess.  Both of them are maths teachers and both of them hide dark secrets. Next door, a solitary woman dances ecstatically. She is happy after the death of her abusive husband. Across the landing and unperturbed by the bright lights, three couples engage in unusual sexual practices. Four floors down on the bottom right, a man is unrolling a large sheet of black plastic on the living room floor. He might be planning a Jackson Pollock style splatter painting, but there are no visible signs of paint.