2022 - Harvard GSD - Instructor: Lütjens Padmanabhan
I look to the distant east. The horizon of the sea.
I look to the distant west. The verticality of the city.
Where am I? Between two walls, between two garden walls. In a valley of a garden. Between rows of vegetables that we all grow.
The joy of eating spring peas, summer tomatoes and cucumbers, fall grapes and squash.
From the bread factory across kennedy avenue, I carried a pain de campagne.
From the fish market across sword fish road, I’m bringing home a cut of amberjack, caught this morning.
Walking back through the patchy land of outer seaport, I return to the block suggesting the coming denser urban form of the neighborhood. A stacked linear community of villas.
You can enter where the garden tangentially meets the ground. Or enter from the low relief porticos.
The distance between the two open ends contains the space within.
A slight slope as I walk between rows of brimming cucumbers.
Stairs between walls, clothes hanging in the void, dangling with the wind.
I live between walls. Five walls. But the spaces flow through.
I turn on the record player in the living room. The sea breeze crosses through, carrying the music to the kitchen, to the entrance hall, to the bathroom, to the balcony, all passing though the living room.
After slicing the bread and laying out the amberjack carpaccio I weave my way out to the stairway, place the plates on the 15ft table and knock on my neighbor’s door.
An early dinner.
