A series of insights into the nature of the project provide food for thought and keys to interpretation. Compiled by the author on the basis of the questions he was most frequently asked.
What is
Sweet Home is apparently similar to a houseboat, like those docked along the river bank built by reusing the concrete barges of old pontoon bridges, but with a more simplified and reduced outline.Its location is in the river strip between the bank and the main embankment; the land is flat, spacious and dry, but during flooding events, when the river needs to regain its space and freedom, it can be completely covered with water.
Sweet Home has no support structures, supports or pedestals: it is simply placed on the ground and anchored to the ground with naval chains; during floods it will float, going along with the flow of the water, remaining in its own space.The Po will therefore, from time to time, take an active part in the arrangement of the work which, flood after flood, will change position, angle, orientation. In this way, the work will become an integral part of the landscape, establishing a dialogue with it.
Itworks
It is not a simple artefact with aesthetic properties alone, Sweet Home is developed with a dual practical and communicative function belonging to a set of values close to the architectural sphere.
Sweet Home will become a true extension of the Suzzara Prize Museum: an amphibious space that people can enter, a small stage, an exhibition hall, an experimental laboratory.
Sweet Home is a presence that speaks to those who do not stop at a conformist approach to art. The operation of Sweet Home is also a cultural function that seeks to invalidate all traditional expectations and the mercantile dynamics of art. In fact, it is not a monumental, immobile, immutable installation that is unique and unrepeatable: the author allows anyone the freedom to reconstruct SH under the CC (Creative Common) licence without asking for permission or paying any fee. It is possible to share SH by attributing authorship to the author, provided that the work is neither modified nor used for commercial purposes. Apparently static SH is instead a project in the making because it is subject to both practical and communicative functional conditions and replicability in space and time.
Is it a boat or a house?
Sweet Home is a project first and foremost. It is neither a reproduction of a boat nor a house.Its morphology is characterised by a main part with a squared plan structure and a gabled roof with a double opening along the longitudinal axis contiguous to a watertight structural body: an almost flat-bottomed hull below with a hull defined by a 160° angle. The parts, fore and aft, symmetrical to each other have no superstructure.The hull forces the entire construction to a slightly oblique position in relation to the ground plane, so the deck will slope slightly along the transverse axis.The sloping roof pitches are not connected to each other along the traditional ridge line, but leave an aero-illuminated space suitable for the ingress of rainwater for runoff from the draining surfaces.
Buoyancy
From a functional point of view, it fulfils Archimedes' principle.
It floats and can carry men. Appropriate restraint means secure the work to two reinforced concrete plinths buried on the site.
An ark
The shape restores and evokes the terrible and extraordinary narrative that characterised the formation of western culture: the biblical account of the universal flood. Although small in size, the artefact takes the archetypal form of the ark. It is in our time, saturated with uncertainties and threats to human survival and the ecosystem, that the tale takes on a remarkable consistency. If in the Flood narrative it is God who sends the punishment to man, today the biblical apocalypse could be at the hands of the powerful and pervasive presence of man himself who is the cause of the alteration of the earth's climatic and biological balance. One of the most feared consequences of climate change is the rise in sea level: the changes would affect, to give just a few examples, in addition to Iceland, Polynesia, the northern countries, Venice, and even the entire Po Valley, including Suzzara.
Ecocide
The story of Noah with its prophetic biblical narration is as if warning man of the impending doom caused by man's overpowering nature: I will wipe from the face of the earth the man I have created, and with man also the cattle and the reptiles and the birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them (Gen 6:5-7).
Today, only the same man who caused the agony of the planet will be able to avert the looming disaster with a net change in living patterns.
Ecocide is a crime against our habitat and consequently against those who inhabit it. This term associates the legal scenario with the ecological one, defining as a crime against the Earth the destruction of an ecosystem by man who adheres to models of society that are violent towards nature and himself.
The double prow
This symmetry offers undoubted advantages: it is possible to land and set sail in shallow waters without rotating the hull and it favours departure, mooring and boarding manoeuvres, like the 9th century Gokstad ship or the Viking drakkars in general, such as the very spartan Cervia transport burchiella, suitable for shallow lagoons.
An outpost
The Sweet Home device is deployed.The perceptive relationship that is established is a presence that escapes standardisation and creates a new identity value. The territory is an anthropic space modelled after the river. Disused quarries, reed thickets, small ponds covered with marsh vegetation define the optimal conditions for the containment of biodiversity in the context of a changing landscape.
In these territories, an almost violent tendency asserts itself in transforming everything that is public, common, shared, into an appropriated and privatised good.A series of small but scattered phenomena of building in the absence of authorisations compromise the level of naturalness and ecological quality and yet characterise the scenario with a wild borderland charm.The river belt is a landscape that awaits the necessary enhancement processes.The lack of regulatory coordination between the regions, the riparian municipalities and all other relevant bodies has created ravines of illegality to the detriment of the community. The criminal presence, both in the water and along the banks, testifies to the state of affairs despite the fact that the communities of the territories to which they belong demonstrate, in their own way, a strong affective attachment to the territory.
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