A DIALOGUE BETWEEN PRAGUE AND GDANSK
Verónica G. Sotelo - Agata Ruchlewicz-Dzianach, Prague - Gdansk
In Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma, Piranesi imagined a continuous space only limited by the built environment where private and public intermingle.(1)
borders
What does it mean to cross the limit?
We can enter or penetrate. Brach-Czaina distinguishes a cold way, even hateful character of entering with quite a blind attitude towards knowledge, totally opposed to what we can gain through penetration perceived as a similar experience to love cognition.(2)
Can we only choose between entering or penetrating?
Even if their appearance is of a boundary, as Richard Sennett discloses, porous walls and borders can create liminal spaces; spaces at the limits of control or in other words spaces for things to happen.(3)
bans
Do not pass?
Ingold’s simple freehand circle experiment shows that lines don’t have to divide. We are free to interpret. At first, there is neither inside nor outside, there is no boundary between areas. The meaning of the division is given post factum.(4)
infrastructure
What is “infrastructure”?
As Pablo Sendra writes, depending on who is talking, the term infrastructure can be interpreted differently and is both social and physical. Urban infrastructure has the potential to become an open system and create new relationships between people and the city they
inhabit.(5)
affordances
the space is fluid but we limit it,
fog dilutes the limits of the space,
snow consolidates divisions,
blurring of zones occurs.
Natural elements such as fog, snow, leaves on the ground… dilute the built environment and can teach us to understand it as a space of new possibilities. An unlimited space.
p.s. are architects afraid of new gestures?
As Brach-Czaina notes, the first move into the unknown is always associated with the transition from the known and familiar to the unidentified and strange. We cannot avoid uncertainty but simultaneously we are tempted, excited, and we cannot resist it. Taming the unknown with individual touches disturbs and fascinates at the same time.(6)
References:
1) Piranesi, G.B.(1762).II Campo Marzio dell’antica. Rome
(2) Brach-Czaina, J.(2018).Szczeliny istnienia. Warszawa: Dowody na istnienie.
(3) Sennett, R., Sendra, P.(2020). Designing disorder. Experiments and Disruptions in the City. London: Verso
(4) Ingold, T. (2008). Bindings against boundaries: entanglements of life in an open world. Environment and Planning A, 40(8), 1796-1810. https://doi.org/10.1068/a40156
(5) Sennett, R., Sendra, P.(2020). Designing disorder. Experiments and Disruptions in the City. London: Verso
(6) Brach-Czaina, J.(2018). Szczeliny istnienia.Warszawa: Dowody na istnienie.
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