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Archive
Terrance
Galvin
Biography
Terrance
Galvin was born in Toronto, and studied architecture first at
the University of Toronto, and then at the Technical University
of Nova Scotia (Halifax). It is here that he initially encountered
community design through his friendship with educator Essy Baniassad,
received his degree from architect Aldo van Eyck (the city is
a big house, and the house a small city) and was introduced to
the work of John Turner (housing as a verb). The year after graduation,
during 1988, he lived and worked with a community in Villa El
Salvador, outside of Lima Peru, during intense activity by the
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorist group. This was the
first of many formative experiences in architecture from the
ground up, and has led to further experiences with community
groups in India, Thailand, and the Middle East.
The humanist critiques of Illich, van Eyck, and Turner would
continue to resurface through a fruitful discussion of architecture
without architects, community design from the bottom up, and
the cultivation of common sense. Using the traditions and history
of architecture as the vehicle for exploring cultural difference,
Terrance then returned to the birthplace of his mother in Montreal
in order to study the history and theory of architecture at McGill
University. The gentle island of Montreal with its two languages,
excellent cafes, and multi-cultural background provides a real
place from which to study and travel.
An interest in the common ground between architecture and anthropology
continued through doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania
with Professor Joseph Rykwert, whose Idea of a Town was first
brought to public attention by van Eyck, closing yet another
circle of influence. He then met Ivan Illich while attending
the seminar on The History of the Gaze at PENN, which examined
the wide spectrum of the human glance in an age of increasing
voyeurism. Although he had read Illich's books (passed down to
him by his older brother) as a teenager, his direct friendship
with Ivan has further led to the sensible writings of Emmanuel
Levinas, Wendell Berry, and Francis Ponge, each fostering a continued
cultivation and practice of the sense called 'common sense.'
Terrance has spent the past three years interpreting the work
of 19th century English architect Joseph Michael Gandy, whose
legacy remains a vast incomplete 2,500 page treatise on the comparative
history of architecture entitled the Art, Philosophy, and Science
of Architecture. Gandy's imaginative quest for the origins of
architecture through a visual compendium led to the invention
of a unique language of representation based on mythography and
emblematics.
As an architect engaged in proportionality, Terrance's CROP offering
will discuss the loss of proportionality through the concepts
of space as 'empty,' as opposed to a relation between the elements,
and the analogies of harmony and sensation, through the work
of French theorist Nicolas Le Camus de Mzires in the 18th century,
leading up to a vote on the very use of proportional systems
in architecture in the mid 20th century. The time devoted to
these discussions on ratio, proportion, and analogy will be apportioned
accordingly. Reciprocity, twin phenomena, and complementarity
remain at the heart of the matter. |