THE CROSSING
PROJECT INFO
INSTALLATION- KINETIC SCULPTURE CONCEPT
INTENT
Can architecture turn something as abstract as "equality" into a spatial experience that raises awareness for its meaning and impact?
The Crossing translates the equality principle -equal rights and justice for all people- into a kinetic installation on a public square at the intersection of two paths. Four monumental pivoting doors control people’s ability to cross this space, granting or denying their right of passage at different times. While the slowly rotating doors mostly permit free movement on both paths, some configurations entirely block one as they open the other. In this case, one person’s absolute freedom to pass becomes another’s absolute obligation to concede. The longer this unequal situation persists, the more oppressive it becomes for the person who cannot advance. In staging this dilemma, The Crossing investigates absolute privilege as the origin of tyranny and exposes the interdependence of rights and obligations: nothing will change by merely declaring equal rights without also adjudicating the corresponding obligations.
CONCEPT
The way we go about our lives, the paths we choose to follow, intersect inevitably with the trajectories of others. Each of these intersections is an encounter, a moment of human conflict or connection. What we do in these moments -with and to each other- defines us individually and as a society.
The Crossing is a place at the intersection of two such paths. The terrain gently rises to an area where they cross orthogonally in a square. Four tall pivoting doors mark the corners of this theatrical stage and form a portal for anyone traveling in either direction on one of the two crossing paths. These four doors are conceived to never entirely open the full width of one path without walling off the other. Like four giant hands of a clock, they cycle through a full rotation at an imperceptibly slow pace. Their changing position in relation to each other creates a variety of spatial configurations that frame the space of the visitors’ encounters with each other, allowing or blocking their motion along each path.
The Crossing can be interpreted as a spatial translation of the laws we invent to govern human encounters. As a door opens one way while closing another it confronts one person’s freedom to advance with another’s obligation to concede. By nature, any absolute monopoly of rights and freedoms on one side leads to tyranny on the other. Granting an absolute right of passage on one path revokes it on the other.
The physical experience of this dilemma allows visitors of The Crossing to “feel” that equal freedom requires justice: the elaboration, acceptance and respect of a well-calibrated framework of laws that unites its adherents and mediates their trust in each other. The constant movement of The Crossing’s four doors signals that none of their positions is definitive. It suggests that the choice between unity and division, inclusion and exclusion, freedom and oppression, is ours to make every time. Our true freedom is a freedom of choice in relation to each other.