COASTLINE TO SKYLINE

by Lorena Moreno Vera

“Life emerged from the water to take over the land. The sedentary and definitive settlement of terrestrial beings coincided with the radical transformation of air space.”¹ Through this colonization of the dry land, the population of these beings is some areas grew and extended into pillars stretching towards the sky, with the capacity to host thousands in constructions that multiply in height and depth. “One solution consumes the sky, the other the ground. It is strange that those with the least money inhabit the most expensive commodity—earth; those who pay, what is free—air.”²

Verticality also creates some sort of anonymity. One gets to know the neighbors through their sounds but rarely through their faces. We create optic illusions on glass and mirror-covered surfaces, to separate the inside from the outside through the simulacrum of reflection.

(1) Emanuele Coccia, “En Pleno Aire: Ontolgía de la atmósfera,” La Vida de las Plantas: Una Metafísica de la Mixtura, trans. Fabián Ludueña Romandini (Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila, 2017), 46.

(2) Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City,” S, M, L, XL (New York: Monacelli Press, 1986), 1253.