...And flashing-eyed Athene sent them a favorable wind, a strong-blowing West Wind that sang over the wine-dark sea...
(Odyssey Book II)

This contribution to the competition “Europan 9 – The Sustainable City” addresses the historical, mythological and phenomenological landscape of Siracusa, Sicily. Traces of events in time are transformed into contemporary programs for a Mediterranean landscape garden. Philosophical sustainability is a prerequisite for an ecological sustainability. Rather than proposing a master plan that covers the entire site as it was given in the competition brief, the project identifies several nucleuses for future developments.

Each proposed program has a distinct relationship with the seashore and the limestone rock. The topographical conditions of the site are transformed into architectures that offer education, repose, amusement, and other experiences related to the city of Archimedes, and the Homeric times. These architectures are progressive interpretations of the city’s collective and individual memory that allow for a radical construction of the city’s future. The individual sites are connected by paths that follow modern and ancient traces: The tracks of the abandoned railway that once connected Siracusa and Catania. The footprint of the wall built by the tyrant Dionysius. And the mythical seashore.

Not even the summit of Mount Etna, from where you can see the most gorgeous islands, three seas, and the coasts of Italy swimming in light beneath your feet, has inspired my feelings more intensely than the golden evening silence over the endless death field of Syracuse. The sensations of nature are not as closely related to the human spirit as those of history; they don’t have a memory. Siracusa is a city embedded in history and washed by myth.
(Ferdinand Gregorovius: “Passegiate per l’Italia”, 1852)

Type: Unbuilt
Place: Siracusa
Year: 2007
Collaboration: Daniel Schütz, Georg Windeck, Yael Erel
Team: Dana Felder