What follows is a text I wrote to capture some sense of the conversations that Igor, Moreno and I were having about S’ABBA in April 2025. – Simon
We’ve been talking a lot about movement. The movement and flow of air, light, ideas, people, communication, friendship. The ways in which the space might transform with the people who work and live in it. The way it might shape and be shaped by the various species in, around, under and on it.
We’ve talked about community but wondered if that was the right word.
Community comes from the Latin communio, for which the Oxford Latin Dictionary gives two derivations. Communio as a verb comes from munio—wall—and means “to build a wall around.” So a community is defined by the wall—symbolic or otherwise—around it. Everything inside the wall is the community, and everything outside the wall isn’t.
– Victoria Sweet “God’s Hotel” 2013: location 2804
I’ve wondered about bread and the role of a large outdoor wood-fired oven to bring people together. To be a site for celebration, laughter, communion, and dancing:
I realized that bread is a social leveler. There is an attraction to bread that transcends age, gender, race, socioeconomic stratum, and any other category you can think of.
– Richard Miscovich, From the Wood-Fired Oven
We talked about ‘habitat’ and its etymology (Latin: habitere) meaning to live or dwell. But in modern English (since the 18thC) it has a biological context referring to the natural environment or dwelling place of a plant or animal. But what of species that pass through S’ABBA? How might it – the space – change and adapt and grow?
We’ve talked about what might be touched and what might be untouched. What might be used and what might be re-used. To see things that have been used in one way as potential for being transformed, re-used, re-thought, re-imagined.
We’ve talked about involving others while not wanting to let the drive and passion of a small group be diluted by ‘death by committee’. How might the clarity of a vision trade-off with the new ideas, new passions, new possibilities that others bring? To hold on tightly, let go lightly.
We’ve talked about the right to roam and freedom of passage. That the environment might once again become a place for people to walk through. We’ve talked about walking and running trails. We’ve talked about openness.