Coast

September 2015

 

After so many sketches, there is one that remains. Made almost two decades ago, the connection that very sketch has set in motion is still vital. An elastic connection with that land of rocks and water, of trees and human, architectural gestures. The sketch set in motion considerations about landscape and city, about edges between land and sea, about how to read the layers of a place. It set in motion collaborations, connections, stories. This sketch, and the place it represents, inhabits me.

My hand remembers that coast line, can draw it from memory: the walk from the city to the southern harbor, I hear the water, the seagulls, I feel every step, I see the seascape changing with every curve: islands, opens water, boats, and then the facades of the residential neighborhood rising up as a city wall.  I keep returning.

Last month, by bike, the ground moving fast beneath me, I found it changed: part of the rough rocks have been removed to form a neatly designed public space, a bar was initiated at the other edge of the bay- previously a place when hardly anyone would come-. From there,that evening, the sight was different: behind the water, the rocks, the trees, the city appeared, its towers, its lights, its invitation.

 

 

KH