MANIFESTO
'.....the passion for improvisation, which demands that space and opportunity be at any price preserved. Buildings are used as a popular stage. They are all divided into innumerable, simultaneously animated theatres. Balcony, courtyard, window, gateway, staircase, roof are at the same time stages and boxes.'
-Walter Benjamin, 'One Way Street', 1924
In his 1924 book 'One Way Street' the Marxist cultural critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin describes the culture and form of the city of Naples. In it he captures fleetingly but beautifully the idea of a city and of architecture animated and activated by the business and activity of its occupants and of space as inert without people and culture. He sketches for us the colour and frantic activity made possible by spatiality that is 'permeable' - which invites occupation. He gives an intimation of the fragile and complex reciprocal relationship that exists between people and space, between culture and architecture.