Present Continues - Liminal Urban Lands (pages)

“place”, “city”, cyprys

mood // project title

present continues liminal urban lands 1

Architecture Department, UNic

Architecture Department, Bezalel

Afra Omidi Andreas Foteas Andreas Prokopiou Anna Athanasiou Anna- Maria Stylianou Antonis Ioannou Ara Tozlikian Christiana Christofidou Christina Galanou Christina Kouloumbri Christos Xenofontos George Kartsakas Georgia Stylianou Ioanna Tsigeni Louis Agamemnonos Maria Kyriakou Pantelis Sofos Raphaella Psaroude Rasha Zeneddin Rodoulla Konnari Shahad Ali Stavros Chrysanthou Stefanos Farmakis Stefanos Panteli Thomas Flourentzou Valentinos Charalambidis Vasilia Ioannou

Adrien Renborn Anna Ivleva Chaya Sudri Estrella Castiel Jonathan Rßtzou Mais Al-Mokhtar Maram Dawud Nils Reinke-Dieker Osama Abu Jaber Paul Poizat Rasmus Svane Høj Rikke Helbo Simone Rasch Viktor Forchhammer Mortensen Zehava Gobaw

Workshop teachers Nilly R. Harag, Bezalel Uriel Kon, Bezalel Asaf Bivas, Bezalel Angela Kyriacou-Petrou, UNic Maria Hadjisoteriou, UNic Fabienne Hoelzel, ETH

“...the image is always nostalgic for the text and the text nostalgic for the image.�

- Jean Baudrillard

5

Present Continues: Liminal Urban Lands Student Workshop, Nicosia, Nov 11-14, 2016

This was not only a workshop about contested lands. It was meant not only as a detailed investigation of the political and spatial legacy of the 1974 Turkish occupation and the resulting division of the island, but as a journey for reflecting on our daily life in Jerusalem1. The visit to the neighbouring island of Cyprus was a vital tool for questioning one contested reality via the divided reality of the other. We need a distant mirror in order to see ourselves.

The Nicosia buffer zone “negative map” was the basis for the students’ architectural projection. We starting by mapping the missing part of the city, using this defined space to see first-hand the quintessence of the project, or in other words, the very centre of the architectural performance – a place where paradoxes, tectonic reality, and textual research come to light. Unlike in Jerusalem, the naked scars and division of Nicosia are visible: One can find the barrier wall while having a drink at a local bar or on way to school. It seems to me that the city is waiting for a reunification.

I cannot avoid comparing Nicosia to how I comprehend my city, Jerusalem2, another contested city. It is not a city we can comprehend first hand. It takes time to find the visible and hidden borders, some of which seem to be deliberately put out of sight. Neither is it a city whose complexities can be sensed through map-reading, where some facts are hidden and others exist only on paper. The well preform in different ways. It can be a high concrete wall or a garden.

It is a city we must read through our senses and direct familiarity, as well as through detective tactics. Jerusalem is a city which hides its reality behind lines and divisions—some visible, some eluding first sight. For some it is a united city while politically it keeps on dissecting the frail coexistence of its citizens and neighbourhoods. Nowadays it is a city where the concept of “heavenly Jerusalem” comes crashing down onto the daily struggle; political sovereignty driven by nationalist dominance of religious strongholds.

In Nicosia, architecture was the backdrop – while establishing a common ground – to the concept of a city of the mind and the concrete locus of our bodies.

Nilly R. Harag

Critical observation of oneself is not always an easy task. It was evident with the low enrolment of Israeli architecture students in our studio. As a result the group gained diversity by the enrolment of Danish, French, German and Israeli students.

2 June 2016 will mark 50 years since 1967 war with the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

1

“I have always liked people who can’t adapt themselves to life pragmatically.”

- Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

7

tiredness fascination upset identification

12.11.16

26 47 53 18

11.11.16

13.11.16

cypriot greek israeli danish french german syrian iranian lebanese iraqi russian argentinian swiss

14.11.16

studio liminal

A Third Map Behind the urban scenes seen along the Liminal Workshop 2016 at the city of Nicosia, one can find a hidden storyline. The absence is present in an untold urban story, which the visitor, architect, student, is invited to complete by him or herself. This story is easily uncovered. Looking closely at the many layers and fabrics of the fragmented city of Nicosia; we discover a sort of spatial “crack”, a crack through which we can take a peek at the real space and penetrate meanings other than the literal ones. These cracks also appear in our learning of constitutive dichotomies between civilization and barbarism, affluence and poverty, rational geometries and random morphological backgrounds, “occupiers” and “occupied”, the monochromatic and the colorful, etc. The cracks appear in each and every piece of space, but also in the trajectory that is being drawn between the numerous urban moments that constitute the city, Nicosia, that is defined by its viral urban cracked DNA.

uriel kon // preface

Let’s look for a moment at the new map produced by imaginarily joining together these cracks and salient dichotomies seen at the buffer zone of Nicosia. Unexpectedly, we see another map, a “third map” – our wandering in the images reveals to us a new space we weren’t aware of at first sight. This space is a liminal one, namely: an intermediate space created in the interstices between the various borders and forms appearing in the Nicosia’s grey space. And this liminality, introduces us to the very essence of the space; or, in other words, to the heart of a “City Show.” Here, the great paradoxes and “un-formed” fabrics are revealed, in a way that let us understand something about the gist of the given urban segment.

10

V Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel

uriel kon // preface

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma (1962), a film about a provincial prostitute who moves to the big city in order to rescue her son, effectively demonstrates the power of liminal space. From among the ancient Roman ruins strewn like dying wild plants across the green grass of an overgrown park, one can see the white housing blocks of new Rome, built in the wake of World War II. Yes, we are talking about the same housing projects the like of which can be found abundantly all over Cyprus and Israel, or in any generic war-wrecked city that was hastily rebuilt and whose empty spaces were urgently filled with new buildings. The field of ruins seen in the film against the white unified background of the new city makes all the more conspicuous the intermediate space that lies between the ancient urban remains and nature. Here, as in the buffer zone of the city of Nicosia, borderline spaces are created, a kind of map, which is read as that of a fictional place, or a space that addresses directly – we know not why – our subconsciousness.

This new map found during our workshop, includes spontaneous pathways that bring to mind a kind of “free plan”.This space is filled with improvised lanes, hiding places and curious shapes. Between the grooves and subsidiary ways, behind the trees and the stones, there is a place where children could run, a playground as well as a hideout; a place where teenagers could have their first kiss or first sexual encounters away from their parents watching eye. This interspace between the city ruins and borders - both in the film and in Nicosia - seems to belong to a repressed world of fantasies and unexpected visual plots. Both the filmed park and the city, offer us alternative maps and sites that entice us to lose our way in them: an invitation to get lost, in order to re-think both the self and the architecture.

- Uriel Kon, november, 2016

11

auditorium // 11.11.16

auditorium // 14.11.16

Our guest excused the faulty photocopy of the map of Nicosia City as a student’s hastened attempt to complete their pin up on time… “Hurrying to get the print out of the plotter, the northern part of the map has been distorted”.

Indeed, it looked like a deformed bar code on the mini bounty bar that was left at the bottom of my bag from summer. Against the Ideal City outline of the southern part of the Venetian city walls, the likeness to the forgotten chocolate bar was disappointing, but valid.

The division line that separates the Northern occupied area of Nicosia from its Southern counterpart is regarded as an abandoned backyard by the everyday inhabitants of the city; the space in between, dominated by wild vegetation, dust and forgotten fragments of everyday life. Old sofas, cars and staircases migrate across the unused urban landscape.

16

University of Nicosia, Department of Architecture, Cyprus

We sought help and invited more guests. Together we attempted to survey a part of the Northern and Southern edge of the buffer zone (within Nicosia City), in order to reconstruct an actual profile of the green line, trying to understand which was the true border; the physical edge, the inhabited edge or the military edge.

Definitive edges were not always clear as habitation and appropriation of the buffer edge was typical. Practices of corrosion along the buffer edge, mirrored on both sides, drew our visitors closer to the ambiguous core. There was a persistent curiosity and determination to get as close as possible to the buffer zone.

Perhaps it was because the UN had rejected our application to visit the buffer zone, or perhaps it was because our visitors were no longer tourists but narrators of the city’s identity. They were interested, not in the shifting edge, but by the liminal space between, bringing new meanings to the forgotten urban core.

Angela Kyriacou-Petrou

17

mood // project title

studio liminal

“Boredom is the root of all evil; the despairing refusal to be oneself.”

- Søren Kierkegaard

18

University of Nicosia, Department of Architecture, Cyprus

tiredness // arrival in Cyprus

tiredness 11.11.16

19

studio liminal

Buffer Zone For the last 41 years, Varosha has been on her lips every day. She has told her children and her children’s children that they will soon be going home; back to a place they left more than two decades ago. She tells them it is their home even though they have never seen it.

There is a gash in Cyprus. Attempts of collaboration have been made, but one cannot stitch a wound with barbed wire. Vast parts of the urban fabric in Nicosia is abandoned, creating an edge between two sides that used to be neighbours - used to be one.

mood // project title

What used to be common ground is now an insurmountable threshold.

20

Cathedral of Saint Nicholas / Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, Famagusta, Cyprus

upset // on the floor

21

tiredness // conference studio liminal

22

Main Auditorium, Department of Architecture, University of Nicosia

tiredness // conference

23

studio liminal

12.11.16

fascination “As long as war is regarded as something wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as something vulgar, it will cease to be popular.�

- Oscar Wilde

26

27

fascination // bars

studio liminal

28

beers gin & tonics wines rum retsina

fix, efes, keo tanqueray, hendricks, gin mare malagousia, assyrtiko, maratheftiko havana club kourtakis

Παλαιά Πινέζα Silver Star Wine Bar Lost+Found Drinkery Taste Habitat Havana Club Barrique Wine & Deli

Manis 14 Sufouli 14-16 38 Lord Byron St. 19 Onasagorou St. Lykourgos 11-19 4 Menandrou

Wherever the coloured lights are, Nicosia, Cyprus

mood // project title

29

fascination // exploration studio liminal

30

Buffer’s Edge, Nicosia / Lefkosia, Cyprus

fascination // move to see

31

studio liminal

fascination // findings

broken ice cream truck trolley factory hidden 70s toyotas printing press art gallery abandoned elementary school scarecrow mannequins barbed wire pin up woman in a truck

32

Buffer Zone, Nicosia / Lefkosia, Cyprus

fascination // findings

christmas tree with pictures of dead people sandbags war village toy factory minarets on cathedrals asian poses ghost towns

33

studio liminal

34

“place”, “city”, cyprys

fascination // project title

35

studio liminal

When I reached the age of 30, I was finally allowed to see the white cities I had dreamed of when I was a boy. I had a gray childhood in gray towns. My youth was a gray-and-red affair of military service, barracks, trenches, and hospitals. I traveled to other countries but they were enemy countries.

- Joseph Roth, The White Cities

36

Ledra Street Checkpoint, Nicosia, Cyprus

fascination // another brick in the wall

37

studio liminal

My memory carries me back to a certain evening 60 years ago, at my father’s library in Buenos Aires. I see him; I see the gaslight; I could place my hands on the shelves.

38

New Town, Famagusta, Cyprus

fascination // liminal house

I know exactly where to find Burton’s Arabian Nights and Prescott’s Conquest of Peru, though the library exists no longer.

- Jorge Luis Borges

39

fascination // walls and skylines studio liminal

40

Buffer Zone, Nicosia / Lefkosia, Cyprus

fascination // walls and skylines

41

fascination // edges studio liminal

42

Buffer Zone, Nicosia / Lefkosia, Cyprus

fascination // edges

military edge inhabited edge physical edge

43

studio liminal

Varosha, Famagusta, Cyprus

13.11.16

upset “Just take my fucking 80 euros, okay!”

- Uriel Kon

upset // killing

studio liminal

48

W Ledra Palace Checkpoint, Nicosia, Cyprus

Killing

Crossing the checkpoint at Ledra Palace from the Southern part of Nicosia, this image of Turkish vigilantes beating a young Greek man to death is the last thing you see - intentionally erasing the chance of forming your own opinion on the people who live on the other side.

49

studio liminal

Embrasure

upset // embrasure

The magical view of greenery cannot cover up the disturbing truths along the buffer zone of Nicosia. Fragmented notions of the war and its misery comes intruding as you look through the narrow weapons embrasure, swiftly built from whatever materials were at hand.

50

Buffer Zone, Nicosia, Cyprus

upset // embrasure

51

mood upset // project no photo, title please studio liminal

52

“place”, “city”, cyprys

mood // project title

53

studio liminal

MON 20:44 Adrien: hey you all where shall we meet tonight and where?

Mais: Lost&found , 22:00 Rafaella: Guys just told me that lost and found is closed on mondays Mais: Ideas to a new place?

Afra: we think silverstar could be the next best

54

Silver Star, Nicosia, Cyprus

identification 14.11.16

1:04 Route of Uriel talking on the phone

55

boredom

tiredness

identification // time well spent

56 hard work

walking

observing

fun

sharing

studio liminal

Fort, Famagusta, Cyprus

identification // tourists

57

identification // liminal circus studio liminal

58

Buffer Zone, Nicosia, Cyprus

identification // liminal circus

59

identification // edges studio liminal

60

Buffer Zone, Nicosia, Cyprus

identification // edges

61

identification // nightseeing studio liminal

62

Silver Star, Nicosia, Cyprus

identification // nightseeing

63

studio liminal cyprus november 2016

design rasmus svane høj editing uriel kon rasmus svane høj

mood // project title studio liminal

68