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time flies, slows down, stops and starts again, faster, slower. humans always seem to need more, to not have enough; basically, we love to complain. time perception can even be merely defined as appreciation of time. would you stand still in the middle of a highway to feel the breeze of the air moved by the running cars hitting your skin? would you lay on a rail way waiting to perceive the earth underneath you's slightly shaking as the train comes closer? probably not, or hopefully not, as you prefer. the reason why anyone of sound mind wouldn't do it is because certain areas are designated to different time users: each space has a specific time that defines its function. In a cafe people sit and chat, the tone of the voices is slow and low, the time is scattered in different frames and everyone has his own. On a highway the time changes, is perceived as a physical matter, seconds count and each of them looks pretty much the same as the one that just passed. but if we focus on one of the cars that quickly run one after the other, we could then find another dimension of time, that of the driver closed in the intimacy of his tiny private piece of world, being it is car. Perceived time in the same way as physical time, is relative, as Einstein taught us. There are no such thing as time lines and clocks, galactic time is different between humans. time is influenced by so many different factors that is still a field almost entirely obscure to the modern physics. It is fascinating how much we complain and talk about something that we have no idea of. "connective structures", such as roads, bridges, steps, corridors and so on whatever is designed only to link A to B have a very specific time frame: their users don't pay attention to the structure itself, their attention is focused on getting to point B in the shortest time or to the different stops that can be made on the way. John Pawson gave a great lesson on understanding of time in such structures by designing  Sackler Crossing (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, May 2006); a bridge that is not primarily meant to be the shortest

 way from A to B but that rather represents a sort of stroll on water. The visitor of the Gardens enjoys the bridge in the same way as he was enjoying the walkway, the materials (granite and bronze) are those proper of a sculpture rather than an engineering work, the design is not a straight line but curvy and sinuous. "Connection" is between one bank to the other but also, and more important, between user and surroundings, bridge and water, human made and nature. Time is tricked and perceived at our natural pace.

Birrarung Marr Park's steps are 19 concrete blocks scattered on a green slope facing a Yarra river. No one sits on them, their unappealing look doesn't encourage people to enjoy them as a "space" as well as a link between other spaces. Time when walking on these steps is quick and worthless, attention is focused on the river or on the Melbourne's skyline. The aim of the project is to transform the users' perception of time when the steps. the staircase becomes alive, extruding each step into a different shape, connecting levels and hence people, metaphorically linking stages. to mark the importance of time for the whole design different materials will create the extrusions: time will be tracked with nature, with the effect that phenomenas have on stone, wood, copper and iron. the steps host life, people sit on them, witness the passage of time through the weathering of the materials. the design's aim is to be as simple as possible to enhance the qualities and the potential of the place itself, the people and the connection between them will then create the real final work. ancient greeks and romans had a well-defined idea of how to use steps as a meeting point (i.e. amphitheatres and temple staircases). The design tents to reestablish the ancient perception of inner and outer (natural) time though material, phenomenas and people by acting as little as possible on the landscape, and, most of all, to turn a "connecting space" into a "connection space".

A site model in scale 1:100 is being made for a better understanding of the whole area. 

and then was light

i will spare only few lines to explain this project as I didn't particularly enjoy it itself and the whole class it was part of, but whatever, let's try to establish a democratic blog :) 

the course was called "make", should have been a model making class (has been incredibly disappointing to find myself making jewelery instead...): at first we have been asked to create a wearable object out of paper; the investigation of the shape and peculiarities of it should have then lead to another wearable object, made of timber and metal. 

By working on the same concept we were asked to experiment with acrylic and wood. 

For the final object we should have then have used all the skills learned in the making of the previous prototypes to create something that would have "dressed a space" by repeating itself or a part of it. Sticking with the same shape of the previous models, the final design resulted in a lamp formed by clear drinking straws lined up to form a sort of extrusion of the initial shape. The object has the structuralism of a proper building and the blueish light that it emanates resembles that of the neon of a modern office. 

As previously said, the investigation of the chosen spot has to take into account all the different phenomena that interest it: moon's phases, precipitations, sun position at different times of the day and on different day of the year, crowds movements within the space and so on. By studying the sun path diagram (below) is possible to calculate the position of the sun on site and without using a computer aided design program. Melbourne's latitude is 37 1/2 south  so it falls within the so called "temperated zones", its climate is the same as Italy, Spain and Portugal's, but reverted, being Australia in the austral (southern) hemisphere and Europe part of the boreal (northern) one. 

The earth's axis has an inclination of 23.5° as for the sun; is because of this imperfection that our planet experiences seasons, moon phases, tides, winds, migrations... everything on earth depends from the movement of the planet around its axis (rotation) and around the sun (revolution). Human beings' lives have always been beating at celestial bodies's time before the first clocks were installed on churches' steeples in the XIV Century: from that moment on terms as "second", "minute", "hour" have taken the place of sun and moon. Nowadays, people check the watches on their wrists, don't look up at the sky, and the richest a society is the more it relies on the smallest fractions of time. Once Benjamin Franklin says that "time is money" so is better not to waste it: time has passed from being an useful tool to a moral foundation. In his "social contract" J.J Rousseau explains how our society, in order to gain safety, order and discipline gave away its natural freedom (of which time is a preponderant aspect). We are more organized than we would be if we were living in our natural status but the price we paid is being caged in the grid formed by minute hands. Time is never enough or passes by too slowly; the frenetic rhythm that we are imposed to line up makes us less aware of the surroundings and, as soon as it slows down, we get easily bored. What if a member of our society would be transferred back to a time where "time" wasn't as important as it is now?

Tomas Mann in "the magic mountain" narrates the life of Hans Castorp investigating time from the moment he moved from the lively Hamburg to a sanatorium on the swiss alps. What was unbearable boredom on the first few days become for the protagonist a normal rhythm after a while; his senses awake and every small change is perceived more than ever before. As for Hans Castorp, in the same way for Giovanni Drogo, main character of Dino Buzzati's "the Tartars' steppe", become impossible to think about going back to the pace of a city just after few months spent into a fortress far away from everything. Time can therefore be escaped somehow, and even the more attached to nowadays rhythm will find themself enjoying going back to their natural status. 


The choice of the spots picked is not casual: both places are close to the city but yet isolated.  
The steps leaned on the sloping lawn create an artificial element that the design will try to blend with the surroundings. The few trees that grow at the bottom of the long staircase will be highlighted and will become the focal element of the whole concept. Sun's rays will filtrate thought the structure creating an ever changing pattern that will resemble that of a tree. In the case of the area underneath the sandridge bridge, tides and passage of water will define the boundaries of the structure itself. The installation will follow the nature's changes, not deteriorating but transforming, each day will leave its mark (a material as copper could be used as, if oxidated, it turns to a greenish colour), as to symbolize its importance and individuality.
In both cases emphasis will be putted on nature's cycles and on how it is possible to rely just on them. The aim that the project tents to achieve is to create a space out of space, a dimension in which people can forget their watches and focus on the shadows that the sun draws, on the waters that the river slowly carries and on the different directions from which the wind blows. A place to relax and reconnect with our natural pace, to awake our senses and to appreciated the passage of time thought nature. 

When the society is mainly agricultural, people’s main concern is the weather and the amount of product collected. The weather now has a minimal effect on the machines and the technologies we are not dominated with. The level of development of a Country is directly proportional to the amount of free time of its citizens. The more developed the nation, the less time people have to themselves. Mechanical clocks have first been introduced to mark the beginning and the ending of activities. This has evolved into scheduling and organization of social events. Now, we use our clocks to regulate the speed of our actions. Before the clock, there was no such thing as walking too fast or too slow. You just walked at your own pace. We do what the clocks tells us to. It if is past midday, we have lunch. If it is past six o’clock, we have dinner. If it is ten at night we go to bed. We don’t eat because we’re hungry and sleep when we are tired. 

blade of grass and drops of water

The literal translation of the german term "Zeitgeist" is spirit of time; as for "spirit" is meant the essence (being it political, social, cultural, ethical) of a chronological era. The Zeitgeist is the lowest common denominator that connects certain groups of people in a certain period of time. The term has been coined from the Romantics of the XVIII Century and it is part of the Philosophy of history. The word Zeitgeist, being a romantic term, has to be given the poetic and melancholy verve proper of the era of Goethe and Hegel: the spirit of time is not a fairy but a ghost that hunts society, is an evanescent presence that we try to ignore but we know close to us. The interlingual translation of the term might be expressed as "the main social and ethical issue proper of each historical era". 

As the process of developments has become quicker and quicker in the last Centuries so did the Zeitgeist, following their succession, has been changing more often; each year a new issue rises on our society's tired horizons, summing up with all the unsolved precedent ones. 

In the centre of Melbourne, one of Australia's most cultural cities, a fancy promenade lines up with the Yarra river. People eat, shop, walk, chat; Zeitgeists and other beasts are pretty much completely forgotten by the multicultural fauna that crowd the waterfront. But what if there was something that, keeping a edgy appeal in line with the surroundings, could remind to the oblivious passerbys of the "ghost" of their time? An object that acts as a memento and changes with times and situations, just as a Zeitgeist would. A temporary installation that lasts for a year only, from spring to winter, on the Yarra river's banks. The materiality of such an object has to be a prominent aspect of the design, that works as carbon paper of events, recording both artificial and natural phenomena. The wind might  bend it, the current might make it fall apart in pieces, the sun might burn it and the rain might wash it away. Nature will shape it, giving it dynamical textures and patters. To do so, it has to camouflage itself with nature, being at the same time extremely simple and extremely complicate. Materials will serve as silent storytellers, on their surfaces time will draw its map; this map will act as a subliminal message that will draw the attention of visitors. Investigation of the site and recording of phenomena are starting points in a project that so closely involves nature. So, to recapitulate, the creation of an installation that has to be at the same time sustainable, useful and of course, beautiful. to be built anywhere in a 2 km path that lines with the Yarra river in Melbourne; the structure will only last for a year, from starting from September the 21st (Spring equinox), and that has to show signs of passage of time within its walls.

The decision on where to place the installation focused at the beginning on two different spots: a long staircase made of concrete blocks on a sloping area of the lawn that faces the river and the area underneath one of the many bridges connecting the two sides of the city. in both cases the natural elements have to define the experience of the installation: being the places a lawn and a river, sun, water and wind will be the leading elements of the design. 

SLOPING LAWN

the creation of a seating area composed by benches that are extruded from the concrete blocks that form the staircase; benches could be either of the same concrete used for the steps or a different material might be picked to show the beginning of an area and the end of the other; also using wood, for instance, will make the whole thing looking "more natural" and less imposing on the overall composition; wood would be a more sustainable choice as well recycle-wise. The drop between the steps and the trees underneath is of roughly 2.50 mt so the structure might need to be suspended to avoid terrain movings. The piling structure could be creating a continuum with the nature, being in this case trees and grass. the piles supporting the bench area might be made of the same wood of the trees that naturally grow there and the roof might be simulating the foliage (the material used could act as "leaves", moving and making a noise that resemble that of the wind moving the foliage).

BRIDGE

sorry, have no idea on how to rotate images! i'll learn, one day...!

Suspended structure hanged underneath the bridge, probably copper-coated, very close to the water surface so that each time the level raises, the water will leave a mark, by oxidising the metal that will turn from brown to greenish, creating a nice and natural fading. The flooring might be notched with a pattern that will be reflected onto the water. Will be nice if the installation could create a sort of "bridge under the bridge" connecting one bank to the other but the Yarra river is navigable and the structure might be interfering with the passage of boats. A solution to this could be to hang it higher, but then there will be a considerable loss of sunlight that is an element that the design should highlight. 

a-ban-don

The human being has the ability of design, love, care about something and then just forget, move on, abandon. Since the earliest times nomadic tribes used soils and lands and after a few years leaved them looking for somewhere else to call “home”; with the coming of the industrial society and the resulting consumerism the concept of never being fully devoted to something as grown bigger: “care” is not a duty anymore, we do not need to spend time fixing things, we throw them away, abounding them. The process of negligence does not spare anything that encounters on its passage, leaving behind small objects in the same way as buildings. A building though is not just an “object” (in contraposition of the “subject”); in an architecture lies the identity of a society, the changes of cultural time and style are reflected on the facades, the frame of a city depends from the accurate disposition of these inhabited masses. A building is home, nest, makes us feel safe and protected; to fully understand its status, a construction has to be looked at from both points of view, the external one (as an element in the urban skyline) and a more specific and internal one (the meaning that space has, its destination and use).

 The ambivalence of meanings of a structure does not fade with the disuse of the latter, as an “object in space” a building always has to be looked at with the same respectful understanding. Places collect memories within their walls and once not taken care of they become “scars” in the landscape. Abandoned can be considered an ancient roman ruin in Rome in the same way as an industrial revolution’s architectural skeleton in London; “abounded” means never being completed in some cases but can applied to structures that have being overused. Nowadays society prefers to knock down rather than reuse, and abounded is frequently linked with the concept of temporary even though most of the times, due to bureaucracy and lacking of plans to repurpose the area, what is meant to be provisional becomes permanent; as semi-permanent structures, abounded buildings get inhabited by new faunas and the one that maybe once back in time were shining surfaces become maps on which the passage of time can be tracked. When walking in the long corridors of that once was a hospital you will feel the discomfort of the pain in the same way as when entering in an old prison’s tiny cells the sensation of stillness of time to which the convicts were forced.

A room is like a sponge, somehow: it blends with the living subjects and transform with them; once what was alive is gone the empty space maintains a certain identity, suggested by the life that used to inhabit it. Such “sponges” are difficult to find in a Country like Australia, a new born from a historical and economical point of view, internationally speaking; being “discovered” in the 17^th Century its present architecture does not have many historical examples: the term “abandon” assume a connotation that is purely related to the present; “ruins” in a city such as Melbourne are mostly mementos of the 80’s or so, skyscrapers do not really blend nicely with dusty facades. To properly understand an abandoned structure we necessarily have to investigate its past use and when it has been designed, why, who was the architect, how many times there has been renewal works within is walls and so on. Frequently such information are not easy to find and very likely the council does not want to be bothered answering questions related to the matter. 

Abandoned places are very likely to be kept just the way they are, the position they hold in the urban panorama is very much like something that should not be there but it is, annoying people who have to take care of the issue of their presence. The simple act of entering in a building becomes nearly impossible when coming to this structures: considered dangerous and tumbledown they are usually locked and those who try to sneak inside can be fined or arrested as the act is considered as a violation, so it is illegal. Remains the fact that the allure of such places is striking; the atmosphere is that of a place that got stuck in time, the stillness and the idea that where now there is only silence and dust once was people and dynamicity is surprisingly disorientating. By visiting places that no longer have a use we get to have a hint of what life was like back in time; I suppose they can be considered “time machines” in a way, proper real life revivals of the past, concrete-made memories that proudly stand out the regular city grid making us remember where do we come from, in a frenetic and ever-changing world such as the one we are living now.

 Strolling in the straight and neat streets of Melbourne, a new born city in a new bornCountry, is easy to spot those “time machines”: the ever-changing texture of a modern city can not rely on crumbling structure and the consumerist society applies its severe laws to everything, buildings included; a new building brings prestige and money to the neighbourhood, its glass facade will make it look more polished and the inhabitants will probably feel safer. Future is built over the past, but is that always the right thing to do? Will not that dusty facade bring back memories from a time that was and can not be again? Its loss will not take away a good deal of both tactile and visual grain from the spotless and sleek continuum of cold glass brought by the new constructions? The richest a society is the more is not happy and satisfy with what has, the more wants to show off its power and status and to do that it focuses on the visual impact: the old has to go, replaced by the new; very few buildings are saved being “listed” and some of them can be crossed out from the list just with some more paperwork. Useless to say that around the act of pursuing a sort of “architectural nirvana” rotates a great deal of money and moneymost of the times lead to shady businesses. 

The Italian architect and professor at the University of Venezia, Pier Luigi Cervellati is one of the major exponents of the “urban requalification plan”: the main concept of the whole plan is to preserve structures repurposing them to new uses; in such way an  abandoned building ‘s structure is maintained and adapted to the new destination. History and future, past and present come together in a building that benefits from the charm of old times and the technologic improvements of the present. If cared and respected again every structure can rise from the time’s ashes and live a new life; there should be no place for terms such as “abounded” in the architecture’s vocabulary and, in my personal opinion, our Century’s aim should be to retain and improve rather than to tear down and rebuild; this concept, if applied to most existing structures, can save natural resources and improve the quality of our cities. The choice on how to consider an empty and doddering building when we look at one is all ours.

clocks, cocaine and milk

a moment in time does not have to be special, it already is, is its nature.

Buddhism teaches how to live in the present, “mindfully”; it seems such an easy concept, but apparently the human being needs someone else, someone wiser, to appreciate the breeze of the wind or the beauty of a landscape without having any other thoughts in his mind. The human brain is designed to retain memories and, if asked to focus on a particular one, it can remember details more than what we expected. A frozen moment in the past can become as vivid as the present one.

Perceiving time is an innate faculty, but the way we naturally do that does not depend on stop watches and calendars, each of us has an individual and specific way of understanding the passage of moments and everything on earth bases itself on a different timing. The way all this elements come together brings to our perception of a moment. A meteorite has travelled for millennia before entering the atmosphere and we are the result of an evolution process that has started with the first algae on earth; when looking at a falling star we do not focus on all the causality that has brought to that event. Every moment depends on a series of accidental facts and works on a series of different levels, from molecules to planets scattered in the galaxy. One of Leibniz (a German philosopher of the XVII Century) most famous theory was the one for which we live in the “best of all the possible worlds”; how many “what if” are in every single moment? How many future changes can a single event cause?

Maybe is the appreciation of this randomness the key to understand Buddha’s lesson; there is a scientific reason for every event, from falling in love to spot a shooting star but we have an active role in deciding whether or not to make this events influence our lives. I have tried to draw a graph that could have explain some of the many different levels of causality that brought to a personal experience of mine: a night with a person that I love where time froze and stars were falling over the sea that proudly and calmly was laid in front of us.

As previously mentioned, the human being thinks to past and future more than how he actually focuses on present; that is not entirely true when coming to environmental issues: from the last generations (from the advent of the industrial society and particularly in the last 6 decades) we inherit a great deal of problems related to Mother Earth. Since the modern society imposed its linear thinking over the cyclic natural one, wastes have been produced; the concept of “waste” is merely anthropogenic, there is no such thing in a system based on cycles. Nature is an accurately engineered machine in which every bit is used and flora and fauna benefit one from the other; no loops are left open and there is a place for everything. In his book “cradle to cradle”, William McDonough suggests to make our waste system alike that of a tree: by applying nature cycles to human consumption we could turn the linear thinking of using and throwing “away” into a zero waste, natural and sustainable way of living and conceiving the effects that we cause on the planet.

The way we perceive “food” has deeply been changed in the last Century, both on how we get food and how we consume it. We stepped up from our level on the trophic pyramid and our diet has become strongly based on protein and meat, more than what we truly need. To satisfy the ever growing demand of food of the ever growing society, food production has been moved from farms to laboratories: processed, sanitized and shipped throughout the world, genetically modified to not be anymore subject to seasons or weather, ****, the food the last generations have been eating is definitely different from the one that was consumed until the beginning of the last Century. Adding so many passages to a product takes energies and that is way 20% of world’s oil use is spent to make food. Movements have been formed against the growing new food industry from the 1970’s, in particular the eco-survivalist of the permaculture and the rediscovery of the pleasure of food of “slow food”; both based on monoculture and the re-localization of regional productions are opposite to the fast foods’ ideals that focus mainly on the design of the product rather than on the product itself.

The strength points of fast food companies are affordability of prices and the addiction caused by the huge amount of sugars added: on www.changingdiabetesbarometer.com can be seen how the percentage of diabetic population has been consistently increasing in the last decade and the forecasts show that is a problem that won’t be solved quite easily. It won’t be completely foolish to say that sugar is our Century’s drug; for this reason when asked to produce a table setting that would have make people think I decided to make “lines” of sugar treating it in the same way as cocaine. Mints were part of the scene as well in the role of ecstasy pills. 

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In one of Melbourne most central streets, Bourke Street, at the ground level of a building there is a 25 square metres empty room that is waiting to be given a new destination after having being a cafe. We have been asked to repurpose that space turning it into a shop that would sell food of our choice; the food has to be related somehow to the topics that we have been discussing in the previous weeks, “food for thought”, as it has been called. Firstly I wanted to design a frozen yogurt shop, an healthy product that doesn’t need much preparation so that the kitchen wouldn’t have massively compromised the tiny room. Frozen yogurt’s toppings are mainly fruits and that brought me to design a vertical green house that I could have installed on the glazed windows on one of the walls; the customers who have a membership will have got a berries plant from which to pick their garnishment and, more important, could have chosen to adopt a cow with a donation. To decrease the number of wastes the frozen yogurt would have been sold in eatable cones or the customers could have bought their own container. It would have been called “mmm...ilk”.

I started to get documented about ingredients and preparation of the frozen yogurt and found out that is not as “healthy” and “unprocessed” as I thought it was and, as simplicity and natural taste were two were the main aims I wanted to achieve, decided to go back to the origins and sell pure, simple milk. Most of the people never tasted a glass of real milk, in the same way as drawn from a cow, and in a class of a French kindergarten most of the children, when asked to colour a cow painted it in lilac resembling the “Milka chocolate” one as they never saw a real one. What I have tried to achieve in my design is to make customers aware of issues such as the conditions of cows in the modern stalls, wastes and seasonal fruits in a way that they would have enjoyed. The escamotage of the adoptions would have both been used on a merely material level to aid the shop finances its cows (hosted in a farm close to the city to which tours are organized so that the cows’ patrons could have met their beloved animal) and most of all to establish a strong relationship from man and cow, final consumer and initial producer, city and countryside. By knowing the cow with bulletins on her health status and pictures hanged on the shop’s walls as family portraits, the customers would be sure of the complete traceability of the product they are consuming.

 To accentuate the blending of the border between city and countryside, the shop is furnished as an extravagant living room that could resemble that of a grandmother: wallpaper and frames on the walls, warm white oak (mounted on a floating flooring system) to absorb the noises, comfortable couch and armchair and a large, red maple wood table. I wanted the table to be the main element of the shop: in the same way as in a house all the activities are centred around it so at mmm... ilk customers are served and can order, eat and stay, all in the same place; it connects the “dining room” open to the clientele to the kitchen (that can be seen from the customers). Instead of chairs I have decided to have a bench in front of the common table so that people are more likely to start a conversation or just enjoy the pleasure of their meal with someone else; the overall atmosphere of the shop becomes more friendly, informal and “familiar”. The products sold are healthy and simple, not much preparation is required; they are just four: milk, milkshakes made with seasonal fruits (a chart of the fruits of the month is hanged on the wall), ricotta cheese garnished with honey or cocoa or lemon and a condensed milk and honey lollipop with a colour pencil instead of a stick (once again to avoid wastes and to augment customers’ loyalty to the shop as the whole set of 10 colours can be collected). The milk is poured in the glass directly from the industrial milk container hanged in the kitchen and visible from the area open to the clientele. Customers are welcome to stay to read a book (that can be picked from the shop’s bookshelf), navigate on internet, chat or just enjoy their purchase. What I was really keen to do is to bring back the charm of a time lost in time, to give the possibility to escape from the noises of the city in a peaceful and homey cosy space and to put people together in a aware but yet playful way. The overall atmosphere is at the same time nostalgic and innovative, the perfect place where to enjoy a glass of mmm... ilk!

hi, i guess... and welcome to my head.