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THE TIME BETWEEN THE STONES - A RITUAL

Type:   Open-Ideas competition Location:   New-Mexico desert (USA)

Program:   Creation of a marker to deter inadvertent human intrusion

into an underground nuclear waste storage site, for 10 000 years.

Award: Director’s choice prize

The compe t i t i on cal l e d for an architectural marker, in the New-Mexico deser t , to deter human intrusion into an underground nuclear waste storage site, for 10 000 years.
Taking the form of a short story, my proposal is based on the idea that, to be understood and trusted, memory must be actively transmitted.

This can be achieved by the ancient way of the ritual: 10 000 vertical stones covering the site, placed regularly along an Archimedean spiral, form an architecture to be ritually dismantled. One stone per year.
The last one, in the center, revealing the main entrance shaft of the underground facility. To allow societies to adapt over time their discourse about the site, this architecture does not directly warn about the danger underground, but rather about the interruption of the ritual itself: the message is to pass on the message.

這項競賽要求在新墨西哥州的沙漠中建立一個建築標誌,以阻止人類10,000 年間對地下核廢料儲存場的侵入。

以一個短篇故事的形式,我的提議 基於這樣一個想法:為了被理解和 信任,記憶必須被積極地傳遞。


這可以透過古老的儀式方式實現: 10,000 個垂直的石頭覆蓋整個場地,它們按照阿基米德螺旋線的規律放置,形成一種要被儀式性地拆卸的建築。


每年移除一塊石頭,最後一塊石頭位於中心,顯示地下設施的主要入口井。
為了讓社會隨著時間適應他們對這個場地的論述,這種建築並不直接警告地下的危險,而是反對打斷儀式本身的危險:訊息就是要傳遞訊息。

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Ever since I was a child I wondered about the stones…

What could be hidden in the space between them?

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What could be so old,

yet so fragile,

that it could not go on without us?

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Every year,

we must gather here for a day of celebration.

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We dedicate our entire strength

to the taking down of a single stone…

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10 000 stones,

one stone per year…

No more, no less.

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Later we rest,

and hear

stories from the oldest among us.

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Stories of past landscapes filled with light,

filled with sounds none of us could imagine,

which dangerous power still echoes here.

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Yet the stones are silent,

each engraved with the simplest of instructions:

the astronomical date of their removal,

the count of the stones already laid down,

and the count of those left.

Will someone, someday, give up?

There is enough time for that.

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But as I stand on the ever growing pavement,

I feel weighing under my feet

the long effort of those who came here before us.

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And I know

we will go on as they did,

next year and the year after that,

A few stones closer to the end…

 

So is now the measure of our world.

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THE TIME BETWEEN THE STONES: A RITUAL

There was the possibility to forget, but we were asked instead to mark this place. Leave a marker to be found, a punctual memory.

Passive warnings: I thought of the tsunami stones in Japan, but those were forgotten or ignored by the people living around them.

Yet in Australia, ancient aboriginal stories have kept the memory of geological events dating back to 12000 years…

Memory is not a passive action, to be understood and trusted it must be passed on rather than discovered. In New-Mexico we should build a ritual, as a human way of carrying information.

To ritualize is: to repeat, to repeat, to progress in circles through the linear immensity of time.

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This marker is made of 10 000 stones, covering the dangerous ground for 10 000 years, placed regularly along an Archimedean spiral, 500 meters wide; a clock architecture bearing the information of its own dismembering, one stone per year, to the last one in the center revealing the main shaft, where it would be then safe to get in.

The stones are tall enough not to be covered by the desert, and heavy, so that their manipulation could only be the collective enterprise of a society. Each is engraved with the precise date when it should be taken down, using an universal calendar: the angular position of the five planets visible to the naked eye, relative to the stone.

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This marker does not directly warn about the danger underground, but rather about the interruption of the ritual:

the message is to pass on the message.

In heaviness and length, it is an actual representation of the dangerous time we hid underneath. We let the stones speak of that time, has we now share it with those who will live long after us, but we cannot know the rest of the discourse. Whether regretful or hopeful, space is left here for the message to evolve with them.

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