Vesper. Journal of Architecture, Arts & Theory
Guido Guidi, Ravenna, Fosso Ghiaia, 1971
Vesper No.
10 Progetto Eden | Eden Project
Call for abstracts and call for papers
For the past ten years I have been dreaming, as
wakefully as possible, of a sort of return to Eden! Eden the biblical myth is
no longer a myth for me. I have always tought of it in a positive,
constructive, cold, and realistic way. To my mind, there has never been any
question of it being an exotic dream! I have ceaselessly constructed this
spiritualized image of this Garden of Eden in an infinite number of probably
unknown dimensions. My life has constantly been integrated into this Eden, I
moved about in it and existed in it just as truly as I move about in the
physical and tangible world.
Yves Klein, Air Architecture and Air Conditioning
of Space
What Paradise and vacation have in common is that you
have to pay for both, and the coin is your previous life.
Iosif Brodskij, Watermark
Eden Project aims to give space and
visual representation to goals. It seeks to explore the ‘essence’
of pursued destinies, the tangible ‘collapse’ of imagined goals,
and the tools employed in the realms of work, life, and thought to achieve
them. Karl Kraus once argued: ‘Origin is the goal’. Eden represents
the origin, eternally lost and only attainable as a goal. In his theses On
the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin referred to ‘progress’
as the project of modernity that compels us to establish Eden as a goal, yet it
is our fixation on this goal that perpetually distances us from the origin,
leaving us trapped in the melancholic state of lost paradise. In Civita,
Giorgio Agamben urges us to contemplate the essence of existence: the possible
responses intertwine elusive ideals, entrenched opportunism, fortuitous
circumstances, and preconceived notions, all serving as the backdrop for
establishing desires and ideals. The goal is an elusive image, encompassing
either the primitive and untainted way of life or the perfect city, influenced
by the interplay between culture and nature. It can be internalized through the
dominance of abstractions or remain unattainable in the face of neo-realisms.
The desired destination clarifies the purpose of the journey, sometimes
rendering the journey itself as the sole means of bringing it into focus.
Eden, the garden of
delights, in its innumerable interpretations and representations, is an
enclosed place (indeed the original meaning of ‘paradise’ is
‘enclosed space’). It exists separately from the prevailing logic
of the surrounding territory, exclusive in nature, safeguarding its unique
contents: a realm brimming with water and diverse forms of life. For Joseph
Rykwert, Eden is both a memory and a promise, tangibly evoked by wresting land
from urban development, imposing exceptions to the rule – like Central
Park in Manhattan; it is often a presence to be rediscovered. Cultural and
urban ideals have allowed intellectual, artistic, and architectural endeavours
to challenge that promise, giving substance to the extraordinary while averting
the perils that accompany it. In his The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian
Architects, Painters and Sculptors, from Cimabue to Our Times, Vasari
recounts Bramante’s fervent desire to redesign paradise. Despite having
achieved his goal, the architect, ridiculed in the text for his megalomania,
remains unsatisfied with merely inhabiting it. Instead, he seeks to make it
even grander. For Iosif Brodsky, Venice represents the closest approximation of
paradise, a city where space contends against the relentless passage of time,
aided by the presence of water, an element that mediates its existence.
However, as an embodiment of the ideal, Venice is also a highly coveted holiday
destination.
In film narration,
Eden’s time intertwines past and future: instant of a distant time that
becomes an image that phantasmically parallels every present – it is the
unforgettable ‘place’ of ‘wild strawberries’, the
Rosebud sled, the ‘woman’s face’ emerging from childhood in La
Jetée – but also an unexpected future produced by a hopeless past,
like the spaceship launched by Claire Denis toward the impossible goal of a
black hole providing an inexhaustible energy source, loaded with lifers who
have nothing left to lose and yet, or perhaps on account of this, persist with
their little garden outside the solar system (High Life, 2018).
In the late 1950s, Yves Klein envisioned
air spaces in collaboration with architects. Initially partnering with Werner
Ruhnau and later, from 1959, with Claude Parent, Klein conceptualized
environments delineated by walls, roofs, and furnishings utilizing compressed
air. These spaces allowed inhabitants to establish a direct connection with the
sky and climate. His reflections on these ‘ethereal’ spaces sought
to dissolve the barriers between nature and architecture, aspiring to return to
an Eden, as the author himself defines his goal, specifying its non-exotic but
realistic characteristics.
In the new
millennium, amidst the proliferation of sprawling megalopolises that seem to be
the true goal or culmination of various defining needs, the terms
‘Eden’ and ‘Paradise’ resurface in the names of various
projects. In 2001, Nicholas Grimshaw realized The Eden Project in Cornwall: two
huge transparent domes that house Mediterranean and tropical biomes. By
introducing enclosure into the equation, the project incorporates the third
dimension, enabling control of the air and allowing exotic flora and fauna to
thrive.
In 2014, through
the project Aegean Paradise. Tourist Accommodation in a Garden, amid.cero9
explored an alternative spatial model for hosting mass tourism on the Greek
island of Symi. It envisioned an island within the island, serving as a
communal house, an extensive public space, and a landscape. Amid.cero9 states:
‘In this strange induced Third Nature, filled with the intoxicated air of
new and expected forms of beauty and pleasure, a series of artificial, bizarre
and excessive pieces are intended for the other part of life, the
contra-routine, a hallucinatory and temporary compensation for the everyday
life, the grey and unsatisfactory reality’. An isotropic and
simultaneously fragmented system is envisioned within a bubble of earth,
encompassed by a slender roof originating from a column – oscillating
between nature and project – conceived by the French Renaissance
architect Philibert de l’Orme.
Paradise
City is a recently built new tourist hub in Seoul, less than a kilometre from
the international airport of the metropolis. It comprises six buildings
including hotels and tourist attractions. Nightclub and Wonderbox, two
buildings facing each other, designed by MVRDV, are characterized by their
windowless structures, their distinct forms instead offering glimpses of golden
accents and radiant entrances: paradise here lies absolutely within.
Every holiday
implies seeking refuge from a familiar, perhaps comfortable, and necessary
place in favour of atolls surrounded by crystal clear waters, lush exotic
flora, and lunar stillness. The tourist village was conceived precisely to
encapsulate and regulate this great alternative to urban life, allowing for
moments of respite and unconventional, refreshing ways of living, to immerse
oneself within a confined space while enjoying an expansive horizon. In the
context of seeking an escape, the island (much like an oasis) remains the
tangible embodiment of Eden: difficult to reach, ostensibly unspoiled, yet
habitable.
While The Line, a
linear city being constructed in Saudi Arabia, promises an extensive, exclusive
Eden carved out from the desert, the Terrorism Confinement Center is
simultaneously taking form in San Vicente as the largest prison in Latin
America. These two contrasting city concepts, one linear and the other dictated
by ‘rational dispositions’, re-emerge from distant pasts and
dystopian interpretations, and present themselves as attainable goals. The
prison structure, designed to accommodate 40,000 inmates in a manner
reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, reveals the other side of Eden. Both
projects invest in an apparent infinite development, shaping or negating
perspectives regarding the surrounding territory, and giving space to the
drowned or the saved.
According to neorealism, altering the status
quo is difficult, with only the potential to scratch the surface, offer
commentary, or introduce contamination. But perhaps the desired goal is already
within reach; all that is needed is the ability to see it. Perhaps we need to
heed the transformative potential of The Milk of Dreams (evoked at the
Venice Art Biennale in 2022), which manifests its influence in tangible ways,
or focus on radical visions such as those depicted in Liam Young’s epic
video The Great Endeavor, where an army of mega-structures and a
multitude of workers engage in a great environmental counter-offensive to
rejuvenate the air. Alternatively, we can also turn to resources like the
delirious solitude depicted in Guido Morselli’s Dissipatio H.G.,
that imagines the resurgence of environmental architecture, where the golden
city and the vacant yet intact black houses in the valley come into focus; or
zoom in on details, as in Marina Ballo Charmet’s work dedicated to
anonymous street corners, in minute and monumental detail, to find different
perspectives.
Vesper is structured in sections; below the call for abstracts and the
call for papers according to categories. All final contributions will be
submitted to a double-blind peer review process, except for the section Tale.
Following the tradition of
Italian paper journals, Vesper revives it by hosting a wide spectrum of
narratives, welcoming different writings and styles, privileging the visual
intelligence of design, of graphic expression, of images and contaminations
between different languages. For these reasons, the selection process will
consider the iconographic and textual apparatuses of equal importance.
Vesper is a six-monthly,
double-blind peer-reviewed journal, multidisciplinary and bilingual (Italian
and English), included into the list of scientific journals compiled by the
Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research
Institutes (Italian academic areas 08 - Civil Engineering and Architecture and
11 - History, Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology, with the exception of
their bibliometric subfields).
Vesper is indexed in SCOPUS,
EBSCO, Torrossa and JSTOR.
Call
for abstracts and call for papers >>
Timeline
Sections: Project, Essay, Journey,
Archive, Ring, Tutorial, Translation, Fundamentals
Abstracts must be submitted by September
1, 2023
Abstracts acceptance notification by
September 15, 2023
Papers submission by November 5, 2023
Sections: Tale
Papers submission by September 1, 2023
Papers acceptance notification by
September 15, 2023
Publication of Vesper No. 10, May 2024
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