I came to Topolò for the first time eight days ago. Being here takes me back in time. It reminds me of childhood summers spent in my grandparents' village in the bamboo hills in China. There, because I could not understand the local dialect, I roamed around discovering the language to things. Material culture and objects are expressions of ways of living. By looking and thinking about things as traces, we can start to decode the philosophies and values these objects carry, through the ways they were made, used, weathered and transformed.
I came to Topolò from the north east side- flying to Vienna, travelling through Hungary and Slovenia. In Budapest I somehow ended up in a touristy tour. Our guide jam packed our evening, taking us to as many famous bars and heritage buildings as possible. For example, she would say: "This is the biggest synagogue in the city. And here is a good spot to take a photo." Then move on. I was somehow disturbed by the way everyone was snapping away. The camera seem to have replaced actual looking or experiencing a place. And efficiency is the guiding principle.
While I was in Kobarid, just over the hills there, a friend told me about a slow film he had seen, of a monk walking to the next village, in the slowest way possible. It sounded a little stupid at first, but also intriguing - what would one discover, by moving slowly?
I would like to invite you to join me, on a slow and subjective tour of the village, and show you some things I had found, while walking bare feet here. If you like, you can also remove your shoes, like the children here. It is risky - there are scorpions in the shadows, old nails here and there, and newly laid, sharp stones. You will need to be careful, and watch where you step, and walk gingerly. But that is where the fun begins!
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Here is a good seat to contemplate this stack of roof tiles. They are stacked loosely, rhythmic but with variation, not contrived perfection. On the left is a stack of new tiles, all uniform. The rest are older tiles, made with rough clay, probably wood-fired, giving them a spectrum of warm reds and oranges. There is some sort of hand painted white wash over the top. The shapes are irregular. Let me pass one around so you can feel it with your own hands. There is something very organic about the way it curves, this way and that way. It rustic and graceful at the same time, reminding me of some sort of seashell. I wonder: what kind of working condition had produced these? In a factory or an outdoor workshop? Was it quite different to the conditions that made the newer tiles?
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Here in this alcove is a piece of rectangular tile, perfectly displayed. It has a white diamond painted in the middle, which made me think, at first, that it was one of the tiles on the underside of the roof here. But then I noticed the roof tiles had a different patterns, so I am not sure what its intended place is. Anyway, it is nice to have an irregularly shaped diamond in a rectangle, with dabs of cement to accentuate.
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We end the tour with the first thing I noticed in Toplolò- this very animal-like saw horse. How was it made? It came from a time where the making of things do not start with a trip to the hardware store, where uniformly processed timber are arranged on neat shelves. Instead, the craftsman went for a walk in the forest, to look for a tree with the right kind of curve. Instead of mass production, each component was hand-picked, and a lot of consideration is required to assemble these irregular components. Of course it also involves a lot of pleasure, of walking in the woods, of looking and hearing the birds, of problem-solving, as each time one is faced with a brand new puzzle. If one were to start a factory of saw horse, this kind of production is neither efficient nor economical. But there is something invaluable about this inefficient way of making and experiencing the world.
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One of my favourite quotes is this:
"Buildings emerge and decay."
We like to think of architecture as permanent monuments. But like us, they are just a part of the cycle of nature.
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Here we come to a very unique building in the village, that exemplifies the idea of "makeshift". It appears to have been built and modified over time, with salvaged materials. The juxtaposition of materials is intriguing: waves of metal handrails, in different shapes; and concrete fences mirroring the shapes of wooden ones, yet the material difference gives them very different voices.
The mailbox is of a very intriguing design, too. Built into the house, it saves the trouble of going outside to check your mail, and keeps the letters well protected from thieves and wet weather - it turns the whole room into a letterbox! It shares the same kind of logic as cat doors, in allowing the entrance of a certain kind of object. But in fact, all openings in any house share this logic.
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Here is an old nail that I had found two days ago - it was lying in the middle of the path, and I would not have seen it if I weren't walking bare feet. Let me pass it around. It feels like a unique being, as the architect Christopher Alexander once wrote about.... Please put it back on the rock afterwards.
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Let's walk down this way. The path is relatively new here, with uniform components. I wonder where these rocks came from?
