Outside the window
maria terzano
© PHOTO BY MARIA TERZANO
“Placing work and commerce near residences, but buffering it off, in the tradition set by Garden City theory, is fully as matriarchal an arrangement as if the residences were miles away from work and from men.”
(Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of great American cities, New York, Random House, 1961, p. 84)
Jane Jacobs, who had originally considered the anthropology her profession, looks out of her window for the first time in 1961. Never before, in fact, she had actually observed the city that was hosting her. That day was fateful for her, and it marked the beginning of a long fame, more than as an anthropologist, as an urban planner. Her fight against the zoning of the cities, which was a typical phenomenon of the twentieth century, did not stop at a simple urban critique, but rather at a social reading. According to J. Jacobs, in fact, the typical zoning structure of the city, characterised by residential areas far away from working areas, was not only the mirror of a matriarchal society, but had become the tool with which to establish its roots in the city. In this way, men were seen coming down Hudson Street in the morning, heading into the district of business, economy and personal fulfilment. The women, on the other hand, walked down the same street but uphill, heading towards that residential area where they used to brighten up the fireplace. In this dramatic vision of a city divided into functions (and gender), the reading of public and private spaces takes on a complex architectural meaning. It must be said, however, that almost 60 years later her words sound even more modern.
Knowing how to read the city and the society that lives in it, knowing how to read what the needs are and how the city should be transformed into a human resource, is an inevitable process for an architect today.
In this sense this year 2020 has certainly left its mark. If until a few months ago our hectic life prevented us from stopping to observe, the current Covid-19 pandemic has forced us all to slow down. The quarantine, in which almost all of the world's population was soon living, has certainly influenced the way we observe the world around us, look out the window (always the same, marked by an immobile framing), perceive the space around us and the space within us. In this regard it was interesting to have a look at the pictures collected within the Out of space contest, proposed by the architects Erica Zanella, Maria Romana Vicari and Giulia Santini, presenting the illustrations of one' s ideal space in this quarantine period. Among the many illustrations available on their website, one in particular caught my attention not only for the illustrated image, but for the captivating title: "From Caterpillar to Butterfly", by Manuela Serrat Crehuet. [instagram: @art.manuelaserrat]
The Spanish illustrator offered herself to J. during a short interview, in which she tells us what meaning lies behind her "jungle room" and the naked woman who lives in it.
[J.]: Which kind of meanings the woman in the Picture has ?
[M.S.C]: The woman in the picture represents many things. It represents tranquility, power and life, adjectives that also represent plants. It represents fertility and love. It represents wisdom and inner and outer growth. Represents a caterpillar who’s converting on a butterfly. “
(from Manuela Serrat Crehuet for Jacquard of Living, 01 September 2020)
But again, perhaps what has marked us the most in the last few months is the sudden way in which we have been able to superimpose our working universe on the domestic sphere. In this, J. Jacobs' words resound in our ears: at first we began to wonder how we could have allowed our city to let us work so far from home, for so long. Then the days passed, the perspective of returning to "normality" vanished and we soon realised that the space around us had to be organised again. Perhaps working on the same table where, from the day before, the dishes of the breakfast, lunch, dinner (and the 2:00 a.m. snack when the children finally slept and I could work) had inevitably accumulated, was not a great idea. In this regard, I remember with pleasure smiling when I saw Stephanie Davidson's collages, an architect herself, who was ironic about her work/house-life surrounded by suspended sofas, computers, screaming children and improbable piles of clothes supporting her work station.
Maybe I definitely need to find my space again. I think with nostalgia of the city that allowed me, in a time now apparently far away, to split my working life and my private life. But these days have not been easy. I'm starting to think that the matriarchal city that J. Jacobs fought so much was not so bad. At least there I could not hear the children's screams for a few hours while I was at work and they were at school. But then I think and say: maybe we really did something wrong in building the economic model of our society. Maybe the discomfort I am experiencing now, the unstoppable impulse to have to separate my private life from my work life, maybe everything is really wrong. After all, this period of isolation has certainly made me tired, but it has also opened my eyes to what my life really is.
I am an architect. But I am also a mother, father, daughter, sister, nephew and friend. Mine, like everyone else's, is a full and complex life. I love my work, my family, my joyfulness and my loneliness. I love every part of my day and I demand, as an inhabitant of this world, to live a society, a city and a house that reflects me. This does not seem to have been the case in the last few months (or perhaps years) in my city.
[J.]: Do you think that nowadays the domestic space is an equal space for woman and men? And do you think that right now, during this covid emergency, something has changed, or will?
[M.S.C]: [The title of my illustration] is closely linked to the perception I have of ourselves and also of the society in which we live and inhabit.
The idea involves our way of thinking, our way of acting, our way of living. We, people, tend to be like society made us, and we forget so many things that we have within us, so many thoughts, so many desires, so many true things that we remove from our lives just because we don't have enough time, or because it doesn't fit into our social group, or because we're embarrassed, or because we're so busy that we just forget about it. And I think this is a real shame, what we have inside is more important that we actually believe, our inside is as important as the outside.
(from Manuela Serrat Crehuet for Jacquard of Living, 01 September 2020)
The quarantine has given us time to reflect. A greater attention to the space that surrounds us and to the intimate space of our inner reality, seem to be in complete antithesis with the way we used to live. The division between work and private space that our own society has imposed on us, not only seems not to fit anybody, but also invites a stereotype of man (and woman) who belongs to a very distant past (or who probably never existed). The role of man and woman in the machist society in which we have been accustomed to live, inevitably tends the needle to one side. On the one hand, the prototype of a man, strong adventurous and professional, to whom the city folds as he passes. On the other hand, the woman, a delicate and resilient beauty, too busy taking care of the fireplace to look after what happens outside her window. Needless to say, this vision not only excludes any man or woman who may not be mirrored in this description, but also all those people who are not matched by a predefined gender model. The society in which we live, therefore, seems not to give reason to such stereotypes.
But then, why have our housing models, our social rules and our economic model not yet adapted to our needs?
In this context, architecture seems to play a key role in the possible sustainable future of our society. A society that sustains itself, beyond gender issues and useless prejudices, will only be able to do so with the right tools. It is precisely from this period of great constriction of spaces, of overlapping functions, of changing social roles, that we must be able to take the opportunity for revolutionary change. Our society is begging to be listened to and its spaces imagined again. The house today, like yesterday and tomorrow, wants to be the mirror of our private life, but also the reflection of our social model and the perfect environment where our family (of any kind), our ideas, our emotions and ambitions can grow.
The house must be that space we imagine when we close our eyes and, as eternal dreamers, we have already turned off the light.
maria terzano
J. Director
I currently work at the Studio Schützdeller in Munich. In parallel with my professional career, I have been active in research since one year, with a focus on the new generation of architects. From my research, in addition to the Jacquard project, a book is born in collaboration with the Gizmo group from Milan, #Remix.