Open Skies

The further away from the boulevards, the narrower the view we have from the sky. The boulevards, with their wide sidewalks, allow the light to reach the ground easily. Particularly near the roundabouts, where one can even remember that the skyline is a circle, existence is open to the elements. As we take the smaller and smaller streets, the ones that crosses the boulevard, the one that crosses that one and so on, the sky disappears above the roofs of the buildings and people live in a pleasant, protective shadow.

Sunlight is not a commodity that is easily found on those streets. So when a big, old, industrial building was torn down due to its age, everybody around here was a bit happier. No big parties on the streets, of course, but as the building used to take three quarters of a huge block, the exposure of the inhabitants to the unusual rays improved the general mood. One could even hear some whistling from time to time.

Space being something as rare as the sky in this part of town, there was for some time an expectation of what would happen to that lot. It would not remain abandoned for a long time, and the people were becoming used to the additional dose of fresh air. Before long we learned that the mayor has decided to build lodgment blocks for low income people.

The project included a park, a kindergarten and the building itself. Although the design applied is too new to match anything around, and the landscape architecture decided to include a swamp in the project – apparently for educational purposes – the two major gains for the neighborhood were the kindergarten and the open skies. On spring afternoons, listening to the children laughs cross the air during school breaks, I play with the idea that this is probably one of the best outcomes of land reform, the one leaves us with open skies.