Installation
Mês da Arquitectura da Maia 2023
photo credits: Ivo tavares studio
Walking is the original way of perceiving the landscape. Through direct experience, we can construct our own image and awareness of the environment in which we live. Over the last 50 years, the act of walking has diminished, either becoming a leisure experience or an undesirable contingency. Essential travels from home to work, home to school, have largely been replaced by journeys in individual automobiles, transforming into indirect experiences of the physical and social context.
For this reason, urban planning has "adapted" to the needs of the automobile, and as a result, the face of our cities has changed. In the balance between pedestrians and cars, the scale has tipped heavily towards machines, and people as walkers, pedestrians, passersby, have shifted from protagonists to supporting actors.
Today, in a titanic effort, cities hurry to correct the problem, aiming to reverse the paradigm or at least rebalance the scale: bike lanes appear, pedestrian paths, eco-trails, boardwalks. However, the journey from home to school remains an obstacle course...
CARPET aims to capture a snapshot of contemporary reality in an abstract and miniature representation, where we are compelled to measure our movements in relation to the car. Missteps are not allowed, much like when crossing the road, leaving school. Yet, CARPET is also an experience of a reversed stroll, where humans prevail, and the miniaturized and domesticated car ceases to represent danger, taking on new connotations.
The carpet of cars prompts reflection on the overwhelming presence of "individual objects" in public space, each of them occupying 12.5 square meters of surface area. The dominant presence of automobiles in everyone's space obstructs other uses that could foster encounters, socializing, play, and leisure.
Setting aside discussions about internal combustion engines and lithium batteries, we know that regardless of technology, car production relies on finite resources and its large-scale usage carries environmental consequences. The advent of electrification in the automotive industry doesn't represent a paradigm shift in how we move; it's an extension of the status quo calibrated to address a society's concerns about reducing our impact on the world without sacrificing comfort standards.
Hence, CARPET invites reflection on the impact of individual transportation on public space in our cities. As you measure your steps on this CARPET, consider the cumulative consequence of individual aspirations when multiplied by the scale of an urban population: its impact on the community, the public sector, the individual freedoms of those who share the city with us. Without us realizing exactly when it happened, we have become accustomed to the presence of cars in our lives, around us, always.
It seems paradoxical that as a society, we accept sacrificing quality of life, proximity, and the freedom to move in public space in favor of fetishizing individual transportation. The city we all yearn for might be the one that harmoniously reconciles the diverse demands of public space – circulating, walking, playing – activating the life of our streets, seeking solutions that integrate various uses, avoiding functional segregation and territorial theme-ification.
The playful image of CARPET, a rug woven with over 500 toy cars, is a tribute to fantasy, play, and games, while also invoking our collective responsibility.