Pigeons Rusty overhangs and pigeon droppings are so common in cities worldwide that ‘The Pigeons of St. Hubert’ (26:DIRT) can be read as a universal melancholy of urbanity. Speaking of pigeon droppings, the Inca trail guide at Machu Picchu, pointed his walking pole at Mount Huayna Picchu and proclaimed, ‘llama dung – it is llama dung that Machu Picchu was built upon!’ Paleoecologist Alex Chepstow-Lusty’s research near Cuzco revealed that llama dung as fertiliser was the decisive factor that led farmers in the Andes to boost maize production and extend their cornfield terraces up into the poor soil of the mountain slopes. Small pebbles of llama dung, easily collected, transported and strewn on farming terraces, supported human communities for over a thousand years. UNESCO describes Machu Picchu as ‘one of the world’s greatest examples of a productive man-land relationship in history.’ Mediaeval pigeons too were welcomed for both flesh and droppings. Not as famous as Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist dovecote at Praca dos Tres Poderes in Brasilia, 300 surviving pigeon towers near Isfahan reveal our intimate past with pigeons and doves – once 3000 pigeon towers were scattered across the fields. 10-22m across and roughly 18m high, each circular tower held 5000 to 7000 pigeons and produced enough fertiliser to support 18,000 fruit trees. Sophisticated in design with interior arches, barrel- vaulted ceilings, supporting buttresses, checkerboard arrangement of pigeonholes and inclined interior walls, they were efficient and minimal guano factories. The emergence of chemical fertilisers distanced us from pigeon manure and eventually aroused our antipathy to the birds that once contributed extensively to our own existence. Pigeon towers remind me of the columbarium, a building with multiple rows of niches to house cinerary urns. In Latin, columbarium was used originally to describe compartmental pigeon houses [columb: dove]. ‘Ashes: The Urban Dispersal of Earthly Remains’ (26:DIRT) refers to human ashes as dust made sacred, and illustrates, poetically, ash dispersal in the mystic subterranean rivers of Toronto. To many cultures, ash dispersal is not common although in densest cities, ash dispersal in water or gardens has gained some popularity under strong advocacy from local authorities, as a measure to relieve the pressure of land shortage. In Hong Kong where I spent my childhood years, known for skyrocketing real-estate values, crowded living conditions and a shortage of land, traditional burials have become a luxury reserved only for the wealthy. From 1975 to 2009, cremation rate in Hong Kong shot up from 35% to 89%. But today, from what I’ve seen in the local news, the city is also running out of columbarium niches for cremated ashes. Many cinerary urns are temporarily stored in funeral homes, waiting up to a few years for new niches in public columbaria to become available. In some cases, families may choose to send bodies or cinerary urns abroad, particularly to North American cities, to bury. At the same time, construction plans for new columbaria are often met by fierce resistance from local communities, fearing a house of dead nearby may devastate the fengshui and land value of the neighbourhood. The government of Hong Kong predicts that by 2016, up to half of the dead in that year will be ‘homeless’. The government is looking elsewhere for inspirations to resolve the issue. In Tokyo there is the adaptive reuse of old commercial buildings into high-rise columbariums which look like normal buildings. A futuristic columbarium in Yokohama managed by Nichiryoku Co. is a 24-hour facility: an underground vault, multi-purpose rooms and ten viewing areas decorated with various floral backdrops of cherry blossoms, roses, etc. Each cinerary urn stored in the common vault is marked with a unique barcode. To view the urn, each family is given a RFID (radio-frequency identification) card similar to a touchless payment card used for public transit – Hong Kong’s Octopus card and London’s Oyster). When a visitor comes and pads the card in the viewing area, the urn is identified digitally, extracted from the vault and delivered onto a viewing table through a mechanical conveying system. The visitor pays respect at the viewing table with incense, flowers and other offerings. It seems clean, convenient and space efficient – an interesting design prototype for a novel urban ritual of visiting the dead. At first this all seemed absurd. Yet, in a fast-changing world, the odd may become the norm, the norm may fall into disuse, and even objects of disgust can transform into something precious. A return of pigeon manure, once we come up with a systematic method to collect, process and distribute this organic fertiliser, could support urban farms and rooftop gardens in the future. A day will come for the re-evaluation of filthy pigeons. Calvin Chiu Toronto
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