014 ON the road ...
posting while traveling ... dérive ... places, cases, memory triggers (at least)
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this is a fast, fast post; it gets online because I want to accelerate (perhaps, even to completely exclude editing) urbophilia; I want to use an actual travel to explore what speed might have to add; I need to see where that might lead (us)
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my earlier urbophilia posts stressed the obvious ... the importance of questions
questioning means – thinking ...
what I am trying now is about thinking and action / thinking as action in these fields which bring us, as architects, designers, artists, urbanists and urbanites together
Lefebvrian spaces (as) conceived, perceived and lived; that, perhaps, is my departure from Jean-Luc Nancy – i.e. not the community, but the totality first ... etc. etc.
perhaps
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(sketches, or texts, or a text – with blurs and écarts, as needed or accidental, as they happen) … thoughts, especially “when there is no time to think”
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in any case, here I use the fact that these days I am (that we are), literally, ON the road
having a luxury of visiting and staying, even being in some truly exciting places
(perhaps only to ask myself what “luxury” means, what “truly” is, what “exciting” is, what “place” could be)
I want to think these places as moments; moments in my life or, much more accurately, places to which all my life is just another, brief moment
I want to think and to try to briefly live them, in the light of this new (new?!) way of writing–drawing–thinking which I need to write–draw–think here
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ON the road posts (except this, first one) will not be sent to urbophilia.Substack subscribers by e-mail; I have to try not to be boring;
ON the road posts will be uploaded in the ephemera, walks+talks folder (which was created in anticipation of occasions like this)
regular urbophilia.Substack e-mails will, of course, remind subscribers that something interesting might be there
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I still cannot know, I do not want to know which form these lateral posts eventually might take'; I wish that they surprise me, bring these writing–drawing–thinking practices closer to where, in my imagination, they should be, closer to the writing–drawing–thinking complexity, the totality without reduction; these sideways could be(come), or they might provide glimpses into some unspoken, uncharted, unthought, unwanted yet exciting gaps ...
let’s see
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I do not want to let myself define, prescribe or proscribe the contents of these posts
I assume that they will mainly be (or start as) photographical, graphics, textures rather than texts ...
let’s see
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these posts could end up as nothing more than information – I was here, this is what I want to share with you but, as you would know by now, that would be the last I wanted
(a kind tik-tokish, instagramish, influencerish selfie-like “look where I am” (and ... you mostly are not); what I want is quite the opposite … thoughts, responses, words, lines, the snaps (in you, not necessarily in me, nor for me)
let’s try
(even if I leave you with snapshots only, I hope that those might be satisfying, inspirational to you – and I promise, all I can do is to promise – not to push the issue of what satisfying, inspirational there is, might be, to you, to me ...)
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that is why these notes (still hoping to reach you) will go sideways ... to the ephemera, walks+talks folder; their titles will simply be weeks/dates and geographic coordinates
at the moment I see them structured in (at least four) weekly – W1 W2 W3 W4 June ‘24 bursts
as for the contents ...
let’s see
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W1 - 001 Bassano del Grappa, 45.7641° N, 11.7347° E
a home of my two old friends … and – we have never caught up here; we used to meet all over the world but never in their city
their city, like the one I was born in has an Old Bridge, Ponte Vecchio, Stari Most
one of the most beautiful buildings which shows how true architecture and true urbanism are never utilitarian only
Bridged connect people, which makes them loved and – hated, desired and destroyed.
My Stari most was imagined, conceptualised, designed and built over the Neretva river (43.3438° N, 17.8078° E) by Mimar Hayrudin in 1566. It is said that at that moment, when it was still nor “old”, it was the widest human-made arch in the world. The Old bridge was destroyed on 9 November 1993 (on my father’s birthday) and rebuilt 23 July 2004.
Natasha’s and Sergio’s Ponte Vecchio was designed and built by Andrea Palladio over the river Brenta in 1569, only three years after my Most. It has collapsed due to the floods in 1748, then burned in 1813 and rebuilt in 1821, and knocked down in 1945, at the end of the 2nd World War and expressly rebuilt in 1948.
We need bridges, bridges need us.
W1 - 002 Lecco, 45.8524° N, 9.3952° E
Lecco will be our base. It also has its Ponte Vecchio (officially the Azzone Visconti Bridge), the dramas of which do not include destruction (oops, I almost added ...; no!). Nearly all photos which I took here focus on nature; on the impossible to capture (and, even more difficult to ever forget) magnificence of Lago di Como.
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