Nirupa Puliyel and Angel Hsiao

The [Loving] Metropolitan Landscape

MArch University of Edinburgh

Our hands are almost always in motion, but almost never in a disorganized one. There is the relation of each fingers to the thumb, there is the relation of the fingers to the palm of the hand and of the other hand, there is the relation of the hand to both arms and to other body organs, there is, above all, that curiously symmetrical relation of the hands to each other. Vilem Flusser
Gestures of Making

Olbia was an important trading hub for the ancient Romans, from where Sardinian grain and salt was dispatched to the mainland. Today the region is a major exporter of fish cork and granite. This project looks at exchange at multiple scales across the city.

G1-3 are concerned with bringing the local produce of the area to the residents of the city, through a series of markets. E1-3 tackles a much larger scale of international export and exchange with a stock exchange, granite terminus and harbour authority. Together this collection of architectural interventions interlace a spectrum of scales of exchange, highlighting the complexity of exchange processes operating simultaneously and continuously within the city. By using the body and hand gesture as a scaling device, the project seeks to reconcile massive infrastructures and economies of exchange with the landscape, architecture and the people within.

The project can be navigated through five “gestures of making” outlined in Vilem Flusser's writing Gestures of Making; ; the gesture of understanding, the gesture of production, the gesture of tool making, the gesture of realisation and the gesture of exhibition.