There is a light

A lighthouse is watching over the city, a living and breathing organism, structured and re-structured again and again by its inhabitants in an open cycle. It is an orientation point, a visible sign, arising above the milling mass filling out the narrow streets. The head high up, peering up here and there as a direction sign at daytime, it is gleaming at night, sending out luminous rays, showing the way. Within all physical constrictions, residents can refer to it as an identification landmark. It is a built balance point, loosening itself like a ball of wool with arms like octupus tentacles, which blaze their trail through the dense urban fabric, collecting people from the streets.

Once above, people follow the dynamics of urban changes, having a look at their own rooftops. The alleys below are alive with the humming of the marketers voices within the urban swirl, the throb of machinery, the clacking of tiles, while up on the roofs, the laundry is drying and children are playing after school.

It is a lookout platform and a meeting point. Tea is served. Business deals are made. Festivities are celebrated. Tourists come and go. Lokal people return to see their city quarter and compare it to its former nature. The delicate and complex system of interfering lifstyles and urban transformation processes let the city appear in an almost liquid state. The panoramic view is telling about diversity and cultural richness. From above, the city’s anatomy becomes more and more tangible and can nearly be imagined in its entireness -

whereas the changing city keeps on sizzling.


Illustrated example

Jaipur in the province of Rajastan, India, is an example to illustrate the project. It could be any extensively overbuilt area, any megacity, or even a fictive urban footprint. The city gives a more realistic frame to the provocation. Indeed, the tower is a most disturbing intervention. The superstructure imposes itself on the never-ending pattern of houses underneath it, as well as the wide-stretching areas of high urban density often reflect individual life only insufficiently. Megastructure meets mega-extension.

This project, after all, is not supposed to be correct. It is supposed to be an exaggeration. It is supposed to be unsettling and striking.


© Copyright by Nora Lau. All rights reserved.