Wall Stories

The Wall as Metaphor / The Wall as Transitional Knowledge / The Wall as Profanation / The Wall as Remembrance. Around these concepts the essay traces the history of wall and the stories of Walls, embracing urban, psychoanalytic, philosophical, and political theories. Walls are metaphors of a conceptual confrontation, they segment physical and mental space in two parts, they produce infinite couples of opposites: inclusion / exclusion, safety / fear, beginning / end, memory / oblivion, public / private. Building a wall is the founding act of a geometric space. The “space of rules” vs. the boundless land. Its trace marks differences and gives identity When an architect wishes to tell a story – particularly a story which cannot be told with words –, he/she makes a basic, violent gesture: a cut, a fissure creating space. A space between two walls.