to see his perception of the real site. He is against any form of representation of this perception, which he believes is only revealed by the work on the site itself. For my office’s practice, conveying the spatial quality of a space trumps all other aims. And because space is an emptiness and in certain ways evanescent – an aura rather than a thing – it is very difficult to convey. Representation therefore is both much more critical to our work and more difficult to understand. It is possible to name the many qualities of the space to be designed, but they are not fixed; rather, the space is shaped for users to interpret and to explore, discovering the ways it can be enjoyed. The space seeks to interlace with all those things around it which can augment life in it and to disengage from what detracts from life there. It may be superfluous to state that this work deals with urban space, whose creation nearly always requires pushing other things aside. It is about opening up a space for the
public – for the demos – and democracy. I recall these words, from 17th-century Germany, which I heard in a graduate school seminar led by historian HH Liang: ‘City air makes you free.’ That is what we seek for our spaces: to have them be like opening a door in a city and letting water and air and people run freely through it. Balmori Associates, Parque de La Luz, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain, 2005. Photocollage. Proposed connectivity between the port, the park and the city.
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