| From the Middle Age to the great geographic discoveries period, for western voyager Silk Road has always been a commercial path and an ideal bridge to another world: an unknown land, with natural wonders and fantastic creatures. One of these mirabilia is Eden, the paradise lost which some exegetes put in the far East and others in Mesopotamia. So the project imagines a “paradise regained”, a place where man and nature can find again their harmony. A paradise able to heal a land that now is hell: Baghdad, in the heart of Iraq. In the preindustrial world, the idea of harmony with nature involves the submission of the hostile environment: so Eden becomes a geometric space, separated by an enclosure from the surrounding wilderness. Today, due to the industrialization, the concept of harmony asks a philosophical revolution: nature must not more be tamed; on the contrary, man has to imagine a sustainable development, in order to avoid the impoverishment of the environmental resources. |
