Innervated by flows of energy and matter, the urban landscape is alive.
Hydraulic forces ebb and surge through a tangled skein of canals and sewers, flowing water the main metabolism of the city.
But also buildings are liquid strata of minerals — just very slow.
It was eight thousand years ago: the city was born as the exoskeleton of the human, as the external concretion of our inner bones to protect the commerce of bodies in and out its walls.
As our bones absorb calcium from rocks, the inorganic shell of the city is but part of a deeper geological metabolism.
Fossils crushed and concealed within building’s bricks, organic memories of prediluvian beings petrified in the modern maze of concrete.
Wietske Maas & Matteo Pasquinelli, 'Manifesto of Urban Cannibalism' at http://urbanibalism.org/Manifesto_Urban_Cannibalism_Berlin_notes.pdf (2013) p. 3
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