Transit | Interview

What kind of ‘body’ do you think Valletta has? How do you think it’s character – and its growth – compares to other cities?

When we started developing the ideas for Transit we were inspired by a quotation from Peter Ackroyd’s book London: The Biography – ‘the city has the ability to recreate itself silently and invisibly, as if it were truly a living thing’. We wanted to shift the focus of the city from brick and mortar to something more organic, fluid and therefore in a constant state of flux. By virtue of this idea, the people that inhabit a city (or pass through it) become the blood or lifeline of a city. In the case of the City Gate project, we are interested to see how the movement of people within the city will change as a result of the structural changes. Valletta is an ageing body (metaphorically) that needs a dose of steroids to cope with the increasing demands of modern life. Only time will tell whether the city will be rejuvenated, or whether this will prove to be a lethal injection.

What is in fact your approach to the City Gate project like? How would you describe it, in terms of Valletta’s evolution; past, present and future?

Most people view historical cities as ‘frozen in time’, and any change comes as a shock to this passive perception. Yet all cities, old and new, are constantly changing – it’s a process that never stops. Sometimes there are big changes (such as the Renzo Piano Project), but in the light of the entire history of Valletta it is only another step in the natural evolution of a city. Through the Transit project we wish to create an awareness for this perception of change, that is continuous and in many ways essential to the vitality of a city.

Do you think Valletta’s size – and, by extension, Malta’s too – compromises a project of such conceptual ambition in any real way? If not, what is the universal kernel behind such cities?

No. Size is not an issue, although in people’s minds, ‘scale’ is a determining factor. By scale I mean the relativity of the project with respect to people’s perception of how important it is. Mater Dei Hospital was a much larger project than City Gate but it did not create as much fuss because the sentiment tied to City Gate and the Opera House is far greater. It is also pertinent to say that Valletta, despite its relatively small size, is still the capital of a nation state, and that status gives it certain responsibilities to uphold, as well as certain expectation from the Maltese population and visitors.

The online dimension appears to be, at the outset, entirely inimical to the notion of cities. But do you think that, in fact, opening up the project online bespeaks to a fluidity you want to get at, and what do you hope it will achieve?

The online aspect of the project has been given a lot of importance, as we set out to launch the Transit blog publicly want to create a platform for ideas, not only related to Valletta but to the concept of cities in general. Once again, it is the people that ultimately make up the life of a city, not the structures. We also hope that the blog will serve to look at change within the city, with intelligent references to worldwide thought on the same subject. Hopefully we can put a cap on 15 years of petty bickering about how the project should be done, or by whom. We’re glad it’s happening!

Stay updated with the project through its blog: http://transitproject.tumblr.com/

Transit is funded by the Malta Arts Fund.