A Castle of cards

The regular playing card (6,4x8,9 cm) is scaled one-hundred times (6,4x8,9 m), acquiring a surprisingly surrealistic scale. The idea or the experience of building a castle of cards is transversal to the collective memory of many people. The monument should reflect an idea but also interact and identify deeply with the people, their personal stories, habits, desires as well as collective history, culture and ideals. The concept is symbolic of the innate human desire to progress; to build something new with what is at hand. The proposal allows for great plurality of interpretations, despite our childhood memories being brought to life in a somehow naïf, but strong and highly symbolic gesture: they are now a meaningful object, the icon of a City - physically trespassable and usable by everyone. This steel structure, with a height of around 40 meters, is imagined to be an important urban reference in many of its key-aspects: a vertical visual reference within the city and its surroundings; a privileged setting for social gathering, shelter or important urban events (a concert or book fair, for example). While the remaining cards are scattered along the horizontal plane (some serving as elevated platforms for sitting or small playground areas, for example) - inviting people to naturally appropriate and make use of public space –, the castle of cards marks the horizon, inevitably pointing sharp at the sky.