Hobbit style magic
Catarina Araújo
"Notes from Underground", allusion to the work of the same name by Fyodor Dostoevsky
José Carlos Oliveira
Founder and Manager of Noarq
The ever auspicious New Year’s Eve brought an insidious, poisonous, cowardly stowaway with it (...let’s see if it’s a stowaway or an unwanted resident).The sky covered over with ash, houses were closed, the streets deserted. The city lost its sense. Time consumed us.
Architecture has been tested to its limits. Inside houses, idle and bored, people in conflict experimented with floors, walls, furniture, objects. They reinvented their functions. They recreated spaces for work, recreation and delirium. While they exhausted themselves in their limited space, which each day squashed them against the floor, people out-foxed fatality by peering through the crack cutting through the floor, exposing them to virtual space. They had never realised before just how comfortable and ample the space for meeting, recreation and work in the ether could be. This hypothetical place, in the middle of nowhere. Plato could have hardly imagined that the quintessence of the dodecahedron would allow crowds to meet. No, people did not escape the limits of architecture.
The harbingers of virtues born of the cataclysms quickly appeared, suggesting new directions for each and every profession. Even architects had to learn lessons and adapt their projects to periods of pandemic.
No virological problem can be solved with architecture if not with the appropriate immunology for its active principle. Nothing to do with architecture.
- Perhaps the verandas, the balconies, the porches, the courtyards, or better yet, the gardens or the backyards are all justified!
They were needed, but they are placebos, they don’t solve the essential: the city.
Never has the civitas been so imperative to escape the underground of Dostoyevsky, where the walls were not only an obstacle to the perverse-hearted men.
Never has emptiness been so desired. Never has urban space been a source of attraction as in the harsh months between March and July, to escape the captivity of architecture - a vile manifestation of one of the finest expressions of humanity.
The desire was now the city. The city became purple and forbidden, where only Ming emperors and special servants were allowed to enter and spread erratic news, ambiguous actions and incoherent ideas.
Without a solution between walls, the population expanded the creative excesses and broadcast live the suspension of their lives that without them knowing were more than perfect.
It was no different in the Skene of architecture. The attention on architecture has grown – for the better, I’d say! Usually on its more alluring, more frivolous side, fuelling the narcissism of the creators and the greed of the alpha population. Platforms, awards and distinctions appear daily. But in the face of the state of alarm we realise that beauty only alleviates the discouragement in which we live. Nowadays trend is of no interest. The trend that matters is how families can live without the city - the meeting place. The trend lies in preparing the cities to exist and live, for everyone, and not just the few.
Architecture has been tested to its limits. Inside houses, idle and bored, people in conflict experimented with floors, walls, furniture, objects. They reinvented their functions. They recreated spaces for work, recreation and delirium. While they exhausted themselves in their limited space, which each day squashed them against the floor, people out-foxed fatality by peering through the crack cutting through the floor, exposing them to virtual space. They had never realised before just how comfortable and ample the space for meeting, recreation and work in the ether could be. This hypothetical place, in the middle of nowhere. Plato could have hardly imagined that the quintessence of the dodecahedron would allow crowds to meet. No, people did not escape the limits of architecture.
The harbingers of virtues born of the cataclysms quickly appeared, suggesting new directions for each and every profession. Even architects had to learn lessons and adapt their projects to periods of pandemic.
No virological problem can be solved with architecture if not with the appropriate immunology for its active principle. Nothing to do with architecture.
- Perhaps the verandas, the balconies, the porches, the courtyards, or better yet, the gardens or the backyards are all justified!
They were needed, but they are placebos, they don’t solve the essential: the city.
Never has the civitas been so imperative to escape the underground of Dostoyevsky, where the walls were not only an obstacle to the perverse-hearted men.
Never has emptiness been so desired. Never has urban space been a source of attraction as in the harsh months between March and July, to escape the captivity of architecture - a vile manifestation of one of the finest expressions of humanity.
The desire was now the city. The city became purple and forbidden, where only Ming emperors and special servants were allowed to enter and spread erratic news, ambiguous actions and incoherent ideas.
Without a solution between walls, the population expanded the creative excesses and broadcast live the suspension of their lives that without them knowing were more than perfect.
It was no different in the Skene of architecture. The attention on architecture has grown – for the better, I’d say! Usually on its more alluring, more frivolous side, fuelling the narcissism of the creators and the greed of the alpha population. Platforms, awards and distinctions appear daily. But in the face of the state of alarm we realise that beauty only alleviates the discouragement in which we live. Nowadays trend is of no interest. The trend that matters is how families can live without the city - the meeting place. The trend lies in preparing the cities to exist and live, for everyone, and not just the few.
