Migrating Axis _ Pillars of Hercules
The Idea of environment course with Prof, Dilip Da Cunha
Harvard GSD _ Fall 2015
The Pillars of Hercules:
Migrating Axis or Axis of Migrations.
The Strait of Gibraltar is an environment that holds the intrinsic value of movement. It has an embedded characteristic as passage and gate that was established through geography and drawn in maps during the last millennia. From the western edge and periphery of the Roman Empire which was represented by a linear road between both edges to the T/O maps that placed it in the bottom as the end on the world and the opposite to the Eden above. Subsequently, expansion of the geographic space westwards reestablished the pillars as passage to a destination and not the final exit to the wilderness. Although each map was oriented with a different north the geographic space of the strait was defined by the direction of East-West. Resulting from the new added value of a passage the geopolitical space bounding the Strait started to aggregate.
This plot and the inquiry into the migrational character of the Strait of Gibraltar intend to identify the dominant axis of movement through the strait in the new planetary geographical notion of Earth. Furthermore this examination acknowledge the Strait as an operational stratified environment that is no longer an aperture to the edge but a node in a wider nexus of motions. The representation is divided to two columns (Pillars) of migration East to West and North to South. As a stepping point for a design projection this illumination of the N|S relations sets the ground for a critical exploration of the relationship between Europe and Africa in today’s post-colonial age of consensual colonialism.
The layers are arranged according to elevation from the lowest to the highest:
_Terrain _Water _Under Sea Spices _Data – Underwater cables _Ships _People _Birds _Air Traffic _Wind