Moving Sands

Macau, a city – a peninsula with an imprecise surface area (4.8 Km2 ninety years ago; 4 km at its longest, 1690 meters at its widest. When I arrived in the territory in 1988, it was 16 Km2, today it is 26 Km2), on a ground in expansive movement, said until recently, land policy, where the landfills are drying up the bays, the bridges crossing the waters and the isthmuses destroying the islands, in a confusion between land and sea that also leads to those murky waters of the interpenetration of bureaucratic power with the living forces of business, at the mercy of real estate speculation and the consequent purchase of power, not to mention the sands for the landfills brought from neighboring China, where the main buyers of the buildings that are being built also come from.

This is one of the Macao realities, and with the Moving Sands video I wanted to portray precisely this movement of sand and earth where the city is being built on the sea.
On the one hand, it symbolizes movement, development and the need to expand the territory, given that the Areia Preta neighborhood is the most densely populated in the world. On the other hand, there is a sense of uncontrolled construction and a saturation of constant building work for those who live there. The sound of the video, in addition to the sound of the sea, which is recognizable, has a presence of the pounding of the stakes, a sound of constant disturbance that we have become accustomed to and which accompanies the rhythm of the city, the agitation that characterizes it, as if marking the pace, the beat of our lives. This movement demonstrates an exaggerated acceleration, a rush to grow, to move, to build and tear down, to make again. So much so that some of the landfills in Macau do not comply with the essential and basic standards that guarantee the safety of all the infrastructures that are part of them.
For example, the waiting time required for the landfill to settle is not met, which leads to serious public problems after a while.

Galaxy/Star World is the most talked-about case, as it will have to be moved somewhere else in seven years’ time, it seems.
Located on an embankment next to Nape, the building is tilting and will eventually be demolished.
Looking at a map of the Macau peninsula, an attentive observer will be able to recognize the multiple juxtapositions and overlaps of structural meshes, with very defined and autonomous geometries, due to the different patterns of development and the different organizations that the peninsula and its parts have taken on over time.

We recognize the original coastlines and those of the successive landfills that have rectified them over the centuries, the city’s neighborhoods, the last landfills and the main axes of penetration and communication between the different areas of the city.