TRUTG dil FLEM
Flimser Wasserweg as a Museum of Time
Space can be measured in time.
A weg [understood as a bridge or a tunnel] to walk and a dorf [or simply a house, a shelter or a refuge] to stay are both programmatic founding elements of Swiss constructive, economic and political culture.
Originally, weg holds our nomade condition while dorf comprises our troglodyte one.
While we walk to shorten [or overcome] a distance, we stay [or delay, or dwell] to lengthen it. If we walk up [from Flims to Naraus] destination is further, while if we walk down [Naraus to Flims] it is closer.
Architecture offers devices to expand or compress space and time.
In this sense a bridge plays the opposite of a bench; in the same way that a weg opposes to a dorf. Actually there is a vast group of devices related to the founding function of a weg, to support the flow of people and, an uncountable group of elements unfolded from the idea of a dorf, to provide facilities to rest, slowdown and delay. However, this opposition is what we call complementary: there is no weg without dorf, there is no crossing through the Gotthard by walking because the path must be modulated according to life, according to the seasons, weather and time.
The Wasserweg in Flims was modulated by seven bridges designed by Jürg Conzett. Although functionally those bridges perform as a weg, symbolically [because in fact it is not the case nor the scale] they act as a cornerstone to a dorf. Thus, on each one of those seven bridges both complementary concepts were merged.
Beyond understanding our own pace by walking up and down, the Wasserweg unfolds as a museum of time because it offers us countless scales of time: the hasty water falling at waterfalls or running down the riverbed or finally resting on the lake of Flims; the crucial change between day and night; the alternation of seasons; the layers of snow that refers to the time of glaciations; also, in Fil de Cassons we can experience the result of the largest landslide in Europe; the geological event that we cannot see but we can clearly infer through the monumental scale of the surrounding mountains. Finally, the astronomic scale of time of the night sky.
What is requested as design topic?
Spaces to experience time. In other words, places to stay, to postpone, to observe, to look, to listen, to read, to rest... as if we had exploded a house, or a dorf, isolating its activities and spreading them out through the Wasserweg into rooms, capsules or modules. Devices to spend time, to expand the size, perception and the meaning of space.
INTRODUCTION February 18th, 10:30h, ONA
GUEST PROFESSOR ANGELO BUCCI
Assistants
Ciro Miguel ciromiguel@arch.ethz.ch
Karina Hüssner huessner@arch.ethz.ch
Download Semesterprogram: PDF
14.01.2014 webmaster@arch
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