Resiprocal Permeability: Let the Sea Come Inside the City

Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West, and cometh from the Sea.

~J.R.R. Tolkien,The Silmarillion~

 There is in that land a haven that is named Avallónë, for it is of all cities the nearest to Valinor, and the tower of Avallónë is the first sight that the mariner beholds when at last he draws nigh to the Undying Lands over the leagues of the Sea.

~J.R.R. Tolkien,The Silmarillion~

The first land creatures were fish that could turn their fins to paws. More and more fish move to the land, especially the young. The land-dwellers change and adapt, separating the more fish-like from the reptilian. Qfwfq's family is almost all dwelling on the land. Only Qfwfq's great-uncle, N'ba N'ga, still lives in the water.

“The Aquatic Uncle”  - Italo Calvino

The Sea, the Land, and the Land-dwellers

If men believe in reincarnation and the oneness of spirit, could it be possible that we would all remember of what Calvino said about our being on the land? Or maybe, by chance – it was by a risen deepest memory that Tolkien wrote about the land beyond the sea in the Silmarillion?

The fact that the sea-water covered two-third of the earth is something quite recognizable, that sometimes – by ignorance, we fear her so greatly and walked away from her grasp. Yet somehow, we longed for her nice cuddle and look for a gentle wave that comes along the beach. We, the land-dwellers change and adapt. We change and we move, adapt and defensive – that at some point we reject the fact that the land was and always be part of the sea.

Walking along the Gothic quarter in old Barcelona, one might wonder of when would she reach an opening where she could see the sea. The dwellers itself, the people live in the neighborhood – might already be so used to the view and one perspective of what the streets would bring at the end. The routines and perfect layering are what we could see when we reach a section of Ronda Litoral and space that stretched along Passeig de Colom from Colon Statue to Via Laietana. Moll de la Fusta, as all the touristic advertisement would calls it.  A very well-designed space, if I may say – for circulation and connectivity – of the LAND.

Moll de la Fusta

·         Moll: Catalan - Noun

moll m (plural molls)

1.       quay, jetty

2.       breakwater

·         Fusta: Catalan – Noun

From Latin fustis.

fusta f (plural fustes)

wood

 “Moll de la Fusta” = Wooden Quay; Wooden Wave Breaker?

Is there any wave here that we need a wave breaker? Where is the sea, anyway? What can we possibly sense in this kind of space? Is the city stands next to the sea? Is that why we’re so concern about the EDGE of this city and playing around try to build a perfect wall? We, the land-dwellers – are so proud that we forgot that the city we built, stands accidentally on a piece of land on the sea - that rise a couple more meters so that it slightly higher than the sea level. The ignorance is so great that we also believe that the sea is not a liveable place. 

What if…

What if… the wave breaker becomes the water gate? What if… the landscape view of this part of land merges with the other part that reflects them? What if… the EDGE that is actually imaginary – becomes ENTRANCE? 

A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.

Martin Heidegger, “Building, dwelling, thinking”

 Imagine to live where there are no such thing called the EDGE of the city, where the city being a part of the sea and the sea as part of the city; where the landscape view is intact.

Proposal.

1.        Put a reflection on the view of the sea seen from Moll de la Fusta onto the building façade along the way
2.        Open the city for the sea to enter and change the wooden wave breaker into sea water gate

Strategies

Provocation Campaign: postcards about the proposal, distributed to people especially those in the neighborhood. 

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

There’s no such thing as what we called the EDGE,

When the Metropolis stand as an osmosis membrane

And the reciprocal landscape stretched along the lane…

per·me·a·bil·i·ty/ˌpərmēəˈbilitē/Noun
1.       The state or quality of a material or membrane that causes it to allow liquids or gases to pass through it.
2.       Permeability or connectivity describes the extent to which urban forms permit (or restrict) movement of people or vehicles in different directions

Intervention Proposal

for Metropolis - In-situ 2011

Agnes Stephania___Lilach Gibori

Muchas gracias a:

Tuhan YME

Lina Aboureslan and her kitchen