COMPETITION
Creative Cities Challenge
LOCATION
Minneapolis Convention Center Plaza, MN
RECOGNITION
Finalist
WE ALL SHARE THE SAME SKIES
We are a society that has been trained to look down to engage. Walk around downtown Minneapolis, and the downward gaze into our phones - our social media platform - is pervasive. As an architectural typology, the convention center is a place that strives to bring people together. All too often, however, this attempt to create community is trumped by the insatiable and magnetic desire to focus our attention towards our mobile devices.
The sky was perhaps the first social engagement platform. We organized our daily lives around the path of the sun and stars. Their movements dictated social gatherings, harvest cycles, aided individual navigation and group migrations. Cloud types provided clues to approaching weather, rustling leaves announced the approach of a thunderstorm or the changing direction of inclement weather.
The understanding of the sky, historically, was hyper-local, bounded on all sides by the horizon. Our interest in the Creative City Challenge is as a vehicle to rekindle our community’s relationship with the sky, to extend the notion of community, collapsing the familiar concept of place and time, and conflating wilderness and urban conditions to create a new understanding – and appreciation – of our larger community’s connection with the sky and dwelling within the landscape.
“Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky. They leave to the sun and the moon their journey, to the stars their courses, to the seasons their blessing and their inclemency; they do not turn night into day nor day into a harassed unrest.”
We All Share the Same Skies will provide visitors to Convention Center Plaza, whether Minnesotans, outside visitors or new community members, an opportunity to introduce or reacquaint themselves to or with our sky. We are inherently social creatures, and yet, we often neglect the aspect of our world that has united us through the ages.
Our access to the sky in Minneapolis has been progressively obfuscated throughout history. The night sky fell victim to light pollution. Access to the daytime sky has narrowed as structures are built up. Social media and the internet have replaced the need to look up for navigation, time telling, weather forecasting, story-telling.
Urban parks provide a welcome respite for the urban dweller, to remind us to recast our gaze upward, but often fall short of carving out mental space for reflection and consideration of one’s relationship with our natural world. Minnesota can proudly boast world-class cities, an unadulterated wild natural environment and breathtaking skies. We All Share the Same Skies will temporarily bring those skies to the Convention Center Plaza,
Introducing our skies to Convention Center Plaza visitors and providing residents the space for solace and contemplation that the Minnesotan wilderness provides while challenging traditional notions of place, space and time.
