Trace
Soon after moving to Pittsburgh, in an inspired episode of tropical nostalgia, I free-wrote a short story for my now disused blog . Three years later, I used that to inspire this project.
Competition Nature Observatory of Amazonia (Arquideas)
Date 2014
A rainforest is a city.
Its activity is stratified on a series of levels that are connected by pillars of vertical circulation - Floors around Cores. Each smaller collection of shrubs, trees and animals acts as a unit; connected to others around it but contained as a micro-ecosystem in itself - Buildings. All of this is rooted to the forest floor, a network of resource distribution and lateral circulation - Utilities and Roads. However, the level of interdependence between each of these elements is far more profound than in any of our cities.
Amazonia is a region that takes what we understand as 'urban' and simultaneously makes it more intimate and more immense.
However it is a phenomenon hardly considered. We live in a sight-centric world, and the Amazon’s connection to the rest of the planet, as its “lungs”, is invisible when in effect. The metropolises of the human world are connected by invisible fields that precipitate visible effects (e.g. economy to goods). Every urban centre has left a trace of itself in every other; the Amazon must be connected in similar terms to assert its position as a city on this planet.
'Exporting' the Amazon
The proposal is for the observatory in the Amazon to operate as a base, connecting to satellite structures in cities all over the world. The invisible field of the air, the Amazon’s primary ‘export’, will be the medium through which this environment can be visually embedded into the urban conditions of other metropolitan areas. The trace of this city will be felt in every other.
Amazonian scenes will be integrated into the day-to-day lives of places around the world. As a person in a host city walks onto the satellite structure, a fine mist will be ejected from the panel to form a temporary 'screen'. This momentarily allows a projection of a ‘live’ video feed from the Amazonian base to materialise. That visual trace dissolves with the mist into the air until the next passerby.
AMAZONIAN BASE
URBAN SATELLITES
