Clara Queiroz LopesBack

Clara Queiroz Lopes

Clara is an architect, specialized in rehabilitation projects, and was invited to lead the 2022 Summer BOWING over three days. This is the testimony of her experience.

"The first morning was at school, in a large room, around the central table. With beach pebbles, soft and round, tied together by a thousand turns of sisal twine, some made necklaces, others bracelets, totemic adornments of the city to be built at the beach. Then we moved on to drawing, and each person represented in plan the house of their dreams, whether it was a house left behind in the country of childhood, the house they lived in at that moment, or the purely dreamed house, a dwelling of the future, full of exotic comforts and imposing staircases. At the end of this morning, a mosaic was composed with all the projects, forming the map of a dreamlike village. On the following mornings, the people set off to Amália’s Beach cheerfully, in a single line, along the trail that follows the stream that flows into the sands. In the tunnel of vegetation, we found a cluster of tall bamboos, which were cut with saws and transported by the group to the last corner of the beach. There we set up the shelter, under which we would gather and protect ourselves from the blows of the sun. The bamboos were buried in the sand in a spiraled dance and tied by an aerial web of ropes where cloths and saris were suspended. The base was set up, the big tent. However, a powerful element had been forgotten: the wind. It was just a sea breeze, but the cloths and saris turned into boat sails in the midst of a storm. On the sandy shore, all the structural equipment and adornment that we had brought to compose the sand city was arranged: sticks, stones, flowers, and branches picked along the way. A plethora of plastic and aluminum containers and various construction support tools—shovels, forks, and spoons—were laid out near the seashore, where the sand had the ideal consistency. In a flurry, the city emerged next to a rocky outcrop that gained the scale of a great mountain range. During the pauses in the intense endeavor, the joy of sea baths, the irresistible play with the waves. In the late afternoon, broad avenues welcomed schools, hospitals, imposing shopping centers... There were squares connected by alleys, neighborhoods surrounded by walls, towers, and tunnels crossing mountains. The complex city was ready, which in a few hours would be forever guarded by the waves in the secret of the sea and our happy memories”.