Part road-movie, part fictional distillation of a life in architecture: Rear View is a six-part experimental column by Jing Liu, architect and co-founder of the Brooklyn-based design firm SO-IL. The subjects and spaces described in these little journeys move between the poetic and banal; along the way, we are asked to consider what we find en route as well as everything we bring with us. In the final episode, our fictional traveller comes to rest — or is it return — in a place that is at once strange and familiar. Revisiting a place in time and space causes ruptures between past and presence. How well would we recognise our own histories, if we saw them in the future?
I always knew that I would be back. Back among the ghosts of the dying heart, treading lightly on this poisoned land. Casting no shadows, travelling unnoticed.
Feeling the lightness, pulled along by a plastic bag, the bustle dancing on my skin. My heart quickening, chasing the confetti of the automobiles — and quieting, bathing in the fragrance of oil heating in skillets. I remember living inside this place once. In some way, I remain connected to it; I feel the urge to pluck its chords, but I don’t. Innocent dreams burned here. Lonely souls washed up from one sleepless shore to another. Before the music finally stopped.
“I always knew that I would be back. Back among the ghosts of the dying heart, treading lightly on this poisoned land. Casting no shadows, travelling unnoticed.”
I’m back here to excavate the divergence between life and death. It means I have to be embodied, flesh and all, on Earth. So when my boat passed the submerged inlet and I saw the structure perched on the disintegrating shore that had long been overgrown, I was not unscathed. In the years since it was abandoned, water had risen up to its base. Climbing vines and wild bushes had taken root in the cracks of the vertical concrete surfaces of the walls. Spiderwebs had shrouded them over; the house, barely distinguishable from its surroundings, was veiled in a translucent gauze-like membrane.
Few details I knew of it were discernible. In fact, most of the shoreline was laden with so many layers upon layers of dead, dying and barely born weeds and all kinds of parasitic lives that the translucency seemed final. Green gauze guarded the house inside the thicket; inside, emptiness seemed to be imbued with meaning and breathed life into matters. I was sure that dreams too, lived there.
“Green gauze guarded the house inside the thicket; inside, emptiness seemed to be imbued with meaning and breathed life into matters. I was sure that dreams too, lived there.”
During the first year of the Covid pandemic, SO-IL opened Las Americas in Leon, Mexico—a high-density social housing prototype aimed at curbing the unchecked urban sprawls that have led to devastating social and environmental degradation. Constructed at 30,000 USD/unit, and 100% occupied by residents making less than 7,000 USD/year, the model proven viable by Las Americas is being replicated in Leon and other Mexican cities to combat these material realities of the neoliberal world. Image: Iwan Baan.
My companion was in a hurry to get to the other side of the island, where long beaches stretched out. He was eager to get there before the sun became too unbearable. But I couldn't take my eyes off the house for a very long time. It frustrated him, so when I finally let go, he cranked the motor boat up to its top speed. The beach was already teeming with locals seeking repose from the heat when we arrived. The sand had been broiled too hot to walk on it barefoot. Every time a foot stomped on the sand and shook loose the huddled grains, the air trapped inside escaped, shooting thousands of heat rockets into the sole. People wore sandals woven from plastic straws and stripes torn from plastic bags, the thin plastics softened with the heat and moulded around the soles. Colourful soles protected hopping feet from the burning beach as people made their way from the shore towards the water.
We took a long swim in the slimy, brackish water. The warm water, combined with the abundance of decomposing bodies floating from the shores, allowed plankton and algae to flourish. They drifted all around us voraciously, looking for every opportunity to propel upward, to the surface of the water, to devour the precious sunlight piercing through. Sunlight, merciless on land, is gold to the lives down here in the ocean. A tiny flicker would inspire hope. A golden drop would nurture a dream. A pool would cause desire to burst into bloom. Most of them — these primitive lives — would sink, in a slow and despondent descent into the darkness of the ocean bed.
"I travelled back to the time when I still lived in the house. The smell of freshly grounded coffee, the chatter of hard-working people, the rustle of papers being moved around."
When our muscles became strained from the repetitive propelling, and our skin wrinkled and tender from the sun and the water, it was time for a nap. We found a shady spot behind a large rock, a lone and ancient juniper tree growing from it. As we dosed in the protection of its shade, I travelled back to the time when I still lived in the house. The smell of freshly grounded coffee, the chatter of hard-working people, the rustle of papers being moved around. The willow tree in the backyard just reaching the second floor windows. A child swung in a swing, in and out of branches that danced elegantly in the breeze. I sat by the window. My long silky hair lay still on my shoulders. Through a pair of maroon rimmed glasses, I examined the last page of a book in front of me.
When we awoke, the tide had receded, exposing the soggied surface of the beach. The island broke away from the continent a long time ago, and was left rotting in the rugged and foamy water, where the sound meets the sea. In the distance, the ocean swallowed and spat out the small boats of bright yellow, chained to makeshift anchors of odd structures that once stood on land but now barely poke above the water. It did so at whim. Powerful currents harmonised with the howling wind in a never-ending crescendo that drowned out the horror and glory of all surrounding life and its incessant metamorphoses. Then, from the fathomless hollow inside of me, wonder swells and an incorruptible aliveness rises like a hissing sun, born from a thousand shooting stars.
Earth is where we left our story. Our fingers still linger on the last page. Only now, our journey begins.
Bio
Jing Liu is an architect in practice; as co-founder of the New York-based architecture firm SO-IL, she has working on a wide range of projects both in the US and abroad for more than 15 years. Liu has led SO–IL in the engagement with the socio-political issues of contemporary cities. She brings an intellectually open, globally aware, and locally sensitive perspective to architecture; projects range from artistic collaborations with contemporary choreographers to masterplan and major public realm design. Liu believes strongly that design should and can be accessible to all, and that architecture offers us an open platform to nurture new forms of interaction. To that end, Liu sees community engagement and collaboration across disciplines as central to her role as the design lead.
