Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Public Engagement – Festival/Exhibition
Description
Saltcities: Drawing the City of Unsure Ground, (Associated Project, Lisbon Triennale 2013)
The SaltCity Master of Architecture studio, led by architectural academic, Suzanne Ewing, works with the southwestern edges of
Europe as an empirical anchor for exploration of contemporary questions of material, spatial, environmental and metropolitan
fragilities and resiliences. ‘Cadiz: Field and Work (2006-2008) and ‘Marseille: Irrigations’ (2009-2011) uncovered distinctive
topographical and morphological urban and sea/port conditions which were explored through city speculations: collective
consolidations and detailed inquiries tested through architectural design propositions. The current studio, ‘Lisbon-Tagus: City of
Unsure Ground’ (2012-2014), positions the ground of the city as geological, aqueous and atmospheric.
The SaltCities: Drawing the City of Unsure ground exhibition includes work on Lisbon-Tagus: Composite Ground:
"Constructing the ground of the Lisbon-Tagus metropolitan area as sites for studio speculations began with the construction of a
series of City: Field maps. When these are overlaid, the layers reveal consolidations of morphologies as well as surprising adjacencies, juxtapositions, slippages, densities, and scarcities.
The safe harbour and strategic rocky vantage points of the Tejo river estuary in this area are uncovered in the walled areas and
protected ports of the Phoenician city, Roman city, Moorish city.
The geological ground shows the solidity of the rocky ridges and the softer territories of the estuary rivulets. Rail networks brace and reinforce the estuary edge; road constellations remain land bound until the two significant bridges of the twentieth century (1964 and Vasco de Gama) include the southern side of the estuary as part of the Metropolitan Area. The shadows of flight paths mark the
prevailing wind directions.
This composite map drawing is not an aerial view of the city, a city
portrait, or an exhaustive survey. The tissue-like traces and lines of boat crossings and built city streets are held in spatial and
environmental relation to material ground, sea flows, and
atmospheric occupation. Attention is drawn to distinctive and complex city thresholds - of sea, land and air - which raise
questions of the limits, reach and dependencies of the
contemporary city."
515 visitors to the exhibitions over 2 weeks in November 2013.