A House as Big as a Mountain
Rotterdam is having its year of architecture in 2007. In the train station is a huge poster of the shanty towns of Caracas in Venezuela.
The picture looks exactly like the favellas I have toured in Rio, where the side of the mountain is covered with cube upon cube. Each little house is wedged between two more and stacked upon the others. The surface is haphazardly dotted with doors and windows.
The caption to this photo says,
"DIT IS GEEN BERG
VOL HUIZEN, HET IS
EEN HUIS ZO GROOT
ALS EEN BERG"
My translation follows:
"This is not a mountain
full of houses, it is
a house as big
as a mountain."
The picture looks exactly like the favellas I have toured in Rio, where the side of the mountain is covered with cube upon cube. Each little house is wedged between two more and stacked upon the others. The surface is haphazardly dotted with doors and windows.
The caption to this photo says,
"DIT IS GEEN BERG
VOL HUIZEN, HET IS
EEN HUIS ZO GROOT
ALS EEN BERG"
My translation follows:
"This is not a mountain
full of houses, it is
a house as big
as a mountain."
posted by Jennifer Metz at Sunday, September 02, 2007
3 Comments:
dear jennifer, i'm a reporter at the new york times, and i'd like to write about your urban camping, your new homesteading, and your fellow couch surfers. how might we speak on the phone? you can reach me at greenpe@nytimes.com. huge thanks, penelope green
Found your site through the NY Times article and thought of the book "Off the Map" by Hib and Kika. It's a story of two women hitchhiking and squatting in Europe. Sounds like a similar sort of ethos. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970910134/1n9867a-20)
Plus it's a great little read.
Found your site from a reprint of the NYT article in the South China Morning Post.
Your description of these homes reminds me of the fishermans village near the ferry pier on Lamma Island, where I live. They're brightish colors (for Hong kong) and all have air-conditioners, though are built on stilts, and look like they could fall apart before the next typhoon.
Looking forward to more posts from you.
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