Vessels - A floating collider.
Panagiotis Voulgaris
“Vessels”
A floating collider.
In a rapidly changing world that seems smaller and more approachable a question of transportability of space is being raised alongside with its translatability at the contemporary urban environment. Dwelling a floating travelling place becomes a vessel of action, interaction and communication throughout the continent by using its waters as channels of cultural integration, a perennial method of making contact that shaped Europe, history and the cityscapes that people breathe, live and interact. Dwelling a land and making a place is a way to perceive space and the concept of community is characterized by the constant interaction among the individuals and their identities that shape it.
The designation” national” before an identity is achieved through the spatial and temporal memories of a community that we call a “nation». However until recently the term of national identity seemed almost obsolete by taking account the social, political and economic traits of constant mobility, globalization and localized multiculturalism at the post war era and mainly the post communistic recent past of a continent that was scoping to its unification, a multi ethnic, multicultural union based on democratic principles. After all our cities have been shaped as social, cultural and linguistic colliders and our world almost abandoned barriers practically and virtually or at least dared to dream for it the last decades. Europe oscillated between vision and utopia as a manifestation of a new world, the implementation of a vast home, a huge and open metropolitan zone beyond the inevitable problems and complexities. Today after having experienced the recent years of the global financial crisis this utopia seems more and more as a chimera. Different types of barriers seem to be returning to the continent between the countries and inevitably inside our cities and as an immediate impact fear is being incarnated and redefines the societies and dwells the cities by changing them. Fear of poverty, of the different identity, religion, mentality, culture, fear of the other and awaking of ethnicisms across the continent or at the streets of the cities.
Architecture could be the vessel of unraveling the boundaries, to convey an ethos capable of resisting to this difficult period, shaping a broader future and celebrating heterogeneity. Meeting is Architecture and architecture creates a place for meeting, becomes a message of tolerance and hope, a manner of understanding and co existing. “Vessels” is a project that aims to use an old method of moving across the land in order to shape new bonds and re awake the old links as a transparent gathering place, a microscopic building which travels at the rivers and the seas across Europe from the Aegean Sea to Danube River, from Athens to Berlin, Budapest and Vienna. A network of “Vessels” is placed in public spaces, at the banks of the rivers or at the sea and becomes a constellation of travelling places that implements a virtual map, a vast interconnected zone across the continent in a research for a humanistic, social and pedagogical ethos. This journey becomes ontological at this difficult and transitional period synonymous to the recent developments we all have experienced and this is translated in what we are today, the way we perceive our cities and their – our future. Are these people inside the “Vessels” travelers or intruders? Trapped or nomads? Immigrants who hope for the future? Are they capable of extending – communicating their spaces? Is this a manner of inhabiting? Is this a definition of space by the experience of its dis – spacement? Is this a trans-cultural displacement?
By crossing different cities in an architectural way of acting that focuses the interest from the build expression to the landscape, environment and societies this projects addresses broader issues related to a common language, identification and placement in the contemporary world. Shaping a contact web between people, cities and countries is a necessity, a current concern that challenges our ethics and limits by using the element of water as a contact – unifying vessel and applying a ritual procedure in a symbolic dimension. The nature of the project is ephemeral, nomadic and adaptable by emphasizing to the time continuity of the places around it and becomes an urban collider, a travelling language shaped by transitions, different places and people. It is a floating urban space in micro scale, a metamorphic site in a continual game of transformations as it is capable to transform the environment around it alongside with being changed as a reflection of it in an enigmatic dialectic. In a symbolic but crucial gesture those “Vessels” are currying – collecting different waters across Europe and travel with them in this process of making a common space, a meeting place. Future is being shaped by individuals, interconnected and interacting. Cities are “Vessels”.
“Vessels”
A floating collider.
In a rapidly changing world that seems smaller and more approachable a question of transportability of space is being raised alongside with its translatability at the contemporary urban environment. Dwelling a floating travelling place becomes a vessel of action, interaction and communication throughout the continent by using its waters as channels of cultural integration, a perennial method of making contact that shaped Europe, history and the cityscapes that people breathe, live and interact. Dwelling a land and making a place is a way to perceive space and the concept of community is characterized by the constant interaction among the individuals and their identities that shape it.
The designation” national” before an identity is achieved through the spatial and temporal memories of a community that we call a “nation». However until recently the term of national identity seemed almost obsolete by taking account the social, political and economic traits of constant mobility, globalization and localized multiculturalism at the post war era and mainly the post communistic recent past of a continent that was scoping to its unification, a multi ethnic, multicultural union based on democratic principles. After all our cities have been shaped as social, cultural and linguistic colliders and our world almost abandoned barriers practically and virtually or at least dared to dream for it the last decades. Europe oscillated between vision and utopia as a manifestation of a new world, the implementation of a vast home, a huge and open metropolitan zone beyond the inevitable problems and complexities. Today after having experienced the recent years of the global financial crisis this utopia seems more and more as a chimera. Different types of barriers seem to be returning to the continent between the countries and inevitably inside our cities and as an immediate impact fear is being incarnated and redefines the societies and dwells the cities by changing them. Fear of poverty, of the different identity, religion, mentality, culture, fear of the other and awaking of ethnicisms across the continent or at the streets of the cities.
Architecture could be the vessel of unraveling the boundaries, to convey an ethos capable of resisting to this difficult period, shaping a broader future and celebrating heterogeneity. Meeting is Architecture and architecture creates a place for meeting, becomes a message of tolerance and hope, a manner of understanding and co existing. “Vessels” is a project that aims to use an old method of moving across the land in order to shape new bonds and re awake the old links as a transparent gathering place, a microscopic building which travels at the rivers and the seas across Europe from the Aegean Sea to Danube River, from Athens to Berlin, Budapest and Vienna. A network of “Vessels” is placed in public spaces, at the banks of the rivers or at the sea and becomes a constellation of travelling places that implements a virtual map, a vast interconnected zone across the continent in a research for a humanistic, social and pedagogical ethos. This journey becomes ontological at this difficult and transitional period synonymous to the recent developments we all have experienced and this is translated in what we are today, the way we perceive our cities and their – our future. Are these people inside the “Vessels” travelers or intruders? Trapped or nomads? Immigrants who hope for the future? Are they capable of extending – communicating their spaces? Is this a manner of inhabiting? Is this a definition of space by the experience of its dis – spacement? Is this a trans-cultural displacement?
By crossing different cities in an architectural way of acting that focuses the interest from the build expression to the landscape, environment and societies this projects addresses broader issues related to a common language, identification and placement in the contemporary world. Shaping a contact web between people, cities and countries is a necessity, a current concern that challenges our ethics and limits by using the element of water as a contact – unifying vessel and applying a ritual procedure in a symbolic dimension. The nature of the project is ephemeral, nomadic and adaptable by emphasizing to the time continuity of the places around it and becomes an urban collider, a travelling language shaped by transitions, different places and people. It is a floating urban space in micro scale, a metamorphic site in a continual game of transformations as it is capable to transform the environment around it alongside with being changed as a reflection of it in an enigmatic dialectic. In a symbolic but crucial gesture those “Vessels” are currying – collecting different waters across Europe and travel with them in this process of making a common space, a meeting place. Future is being shaped by individuals, interconnected and interacting. Cities are “Vessels”.
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