5 minute read
Forbidden Entry
The antiporta tells the story of our interactions; how open our houses were to them; and how weary we may have grown, writes Andrew Borg Wirth as he ponders how much this in-between door says about social behaviour, how that has changed and whether we can welcome the antiporta back into our contemporary vernacular… and our lives…
PHOTOS: DAVID ZAMMIT
Advertisement
I LOVED walking right up to my grandparents’ house as a child and briefly seeing myself in the reflection of the glass before I’d swing the door right open and run through the entrance hall. It’s a time I’m nostalgic for because all the doors on that street were left open, on their antiporta, welcoming guests right in.
I loved watching people approach, or simply walk past. Similarly, it would close soon after the Angelus at 12.15pm, for their siesta, and open again in time for golden hour to make a complete kinetic artwork of the patterned floor below.
Today, a doorbell or knock is answered with a ‘min hemm?’ [‘who’s that?] from behind a closed front door. Owners open cautiously to make out in a sliver of light that the face matches the voice that had answered the call.
It’s a changing dynamic, and the way it was is something we hoped to take to Venice earlier this year. The brief was to export the special space that the antiporta is and illustrate how instrumental it is within social dynamics.
Times have changed, and with them our social behaviour. I find it interesting to observe ways architecture manages to tell how our narratives are constantly transforming. The antiporta tells the story of our interactions; how open our houses were to them; and how weary we might have grown. I find that it illustrates our anxiety to extend public space into our homes and allow for space to be negotiated. Ultimately, I find the rate at which they are being gutted very expressive of the lack of attachment to our inherited stories.
The ease with which contemporary builds are excluding this hung space is very telling of a society interested in its inner circles; its most intimate relations and, ultimately, our own selves. While our homes used to be a showcase of a family’s fondness and familiarity, today their doors are lost opportunities for encounter. The little gaze into our homes that an antiporta guaranteed is not permitted today. It is now seen as an intrusion, a hindrance almost.
Today, even when the doors of the antiporta are open, people are in a rush to make their way to their destination; no one peers through the glass panes of this in-between door. Everyone is interested in their phone, and almost like the front doors that line the rest of our streets, everyone seems to have earphones in to ensure their own personal space is not violated.
Architecture has a curious way of explaining the way people are evolving. It’s generations like ours that are at the brink of major societal change. Positing ourselves at the observer’s point of view can expose how ready or not to enable public space we really are.
Public space surfaces where there is agency to negotiate between individuals, and this is where the political nature of architecture lies. The interface with public space is an essential barrier that [de]activates the activity around it and, therefore, needs to be planned carefully to motivate a more organic chain of events.
Wondering how we can inherit the antiporta and include it within our contemporary vernacular is an exciting design exercise. How do we set out to do what our ancestors did, but today? How can our homes lend to this same level of activity? How do we toy with intrigue and probe at conversation?
It’s design decisions like the antiporta that make for a society open to discussion and encounters with stories we’re not familiar with. It’s houses like those that activate streets worth having conversations in, and it’s the craft behind the wood, the glass and the brass that hold character in each distinct antiporta.
It’s in the glare of the glass of that demi-door that our curiosity is sparked; in the low door knob that our child’s intuition is probed; and in the hung space between the front door and the second one that our discomfort makes way for the pleasure of a new encounter. With doorways not worth looking into, what are the streets but just another corridor for us to get through?
I still recall old colleagues of my grandad’s from the bank knocking gently on the glass to check up on him. I still admire the calm with which he would stare for hours at parents with their children and neighbours with their dogs making their way up the street.
I have fond memories of my grandmother waiting patiently for the baker, whose distinct horn sound made its way through the antiporta’s doors; and I still miss that light that would play so elegantly on the floors.
When we called for protection of this artefact, it was not just the physical attributes that made it so peculiar and unique, which as architects we were looking to preserve. It is all that it activated and enabled; all it implied and justified that we are interested in.
Just like the gallarija is celebrated as an essential part of our streetscape, the antiporta similarly needs to come back home.
Stories like those of his grandparents were at the heart of what a group of artists sought to share in a project called Antiporta: A Fading Negotiation, which Andrew Borg Wirth was a part of over the course of 2018. Commissioned by Chris Briffa Architects, it was a two-part installation, first exported to Venice for the Architecture Biennale, and then brought to Malta where it was exhibited at Spazju Kreattiv earlier this year. Chris Briffa was the creative director, and the team included David Zammit, Lisa Gwen, Katrina Gauci and Louise Spokes. This project was part of the Valletta 2018 European Capital of Culture Cultural Programme [Valletta Design Cluster] and the Spazju Kreattiv programme, supported by the Project Support Grant, Malta Arts Fund – Arts Council Malta, and produced in collaboration with camilleriparismode and Halmann Vella.
