https://divisare.com/projects/271040-ecru-architetti-nec-plvs-vltra
"According to the legend, The Pillars of Hercules represented the extreme limits of the known world. The legendary Hercules reached the slopes of two mountains, Calpe and Abila, beyond which no mere mortal could continue. He then decided to split the mountain into two parts, thus creating the two pillars, and he impressed the following inscription: “NEC PLUS ULTRA”.
Despite the human fear of the unknown, the instinct to know the truth had always prevailed, which led the ships to go beyond the borders of the impossible, driven by the constant desire to discover and learn.
Beyond the Pillars and the known world, Plato placed Atlantis, a mythical island rich in precious metals and inhabited by great navigators, which after the failed invasion of Athens, sank in a single day and night.
The aim of the installation is to describe this subtle yet powerful limit, while at the same time describing the will and possibility to overcome it.
The architecture is composed of a few essential iconic elements and tone colours: the gold surface represents the preciousness of desire, the dark surface represents the safe circumstances of the known sea. Both surfaces are covered in water, which is a vehicle and an obstacle at the same time. The diving line between the surfaces is signalled by the two white cylindrical monoliths that symbolize the monumental gate to the new world.
The goal of the project is to stimulate the viewer’s desire for the (im)possible. The public will be able to reach the entrance between the two pillars without actually being able to cross it, thus denouncing the inability of modern men, paralysed by the “spleep of reason”, to dare."
www.bolognawaterdesign.it/2014/en/projects
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.