They say a picture is worth a thousand words... but still words are more liquid and allow us to
imagine instead of observe. They allow us to
create instead of copy.
So for that I resort to words, language and books....again.
The project of a library in Fez starts with concept of a complex space where is impossible to get lost. The ultimate LABYRINTH in which everything is found and everyone is save and in tune with theirs ninth sense: proprioception- the perception of body awareness.
For me, its the feeling some medieval cities generate in the walker as if you where in a labyrith but never lost. The force guides you as is you were a padawan and the city was your master.
Rely on words.
(...) "After an hour driving we passed Tel aviv and forty minutes later we were arriving and parking the car outside the old city of Jerusalem. You'll be a fool if you think I could express in words how going into that city feels. It is the materialization of chaos, but you never get lost once you are in it: narrow crowded streets full of, it Jesus were alive, bazars and you suddenly find the Holy Temple. If you follow the - always in a hurry, kippá wearing- people you'll get to the Western Wall and if you keep going where tourists begin to disappear into the arabic quarter, then maybe someday will get into the Doom of the Rock. It's like someone is allowing you to step in those streets perturbing its equilibrium and you don't understand why he does.
I've recently learnt an Hebrew expression that is used to name the religious people that become secular. It reads: JAZÁ LE SHEELÁ which means " the one who returned to the question" Jerusalem makes you want to know the answer, even it you've never abandoned the descartian doubt neither intended to. It makes you believe even if it just for just a glance."(...)
The intention is to design a library space that inspires that constant feeling of questioning and fulfills curiosity and wisdom. So you never lose your-self in the labyrinth neither the feeling of returning once and once again to the question:
JAZÁ LE SHEELÁ
