The ideas for this project stem from ideas of passage ways and navigation.  This passage way will be used to leave home and come home to.  During the day, the tenants will be navigating through their lives, making choices, and returning to the path to home.  The semi-circles provide a constant connection with the sky from their homes, keeping their view unconfined and their private lives connected to the outside world within which they navigate. 

Passageways were an important theme in speaking of imaginary cities in Calvino’s book Invisible Cities.  This book has greatly influenced my sketches, as it is a book about unfolding many cities through the experience of only one, Venice. The metaphor that I am trying to touch upon here is simple but beautiful.  I believe the materials would lend themselves to the surroundings and the design would bring comfort but intrigue to those who walk this passageway. 

I am contemplating the ideas of subtly bringing parts of the text from the book into this project through colorful cast cement bricks.  The bricks will be engraved with selected phrases from "Invisible Cities" as well as imprints from selected architectural structure throughout the city of Oakland. 

The bricks will be mounted onto the grid of burgendy steel framework.  This grid serves to echo the network of canals and iamgination that take one from one place to another.