Unit Title
...................................................................................................................... CITIES FROM THE STORY 1|3 ......................................................................................................................
Brief
...................................................................................................................... Society today has increased its interest and access to art and architecture and these two have acquired a new place in human activity and in social communication. We are confronted with a world where extroversion and introversion of each individual coexist. Where the barrier between public and private, global and local, exhibitionism and intimacy are blurred. We fail to deal with this issue properly. We are limited to our ties with the past. Like Friedrich Nietzsche said, language is our obstacle. In the 19th century PANORAMAS were 100m long and 20m high paintings which pictured cities and landscapes. They were displayed on a circular wall and filled the observer’s field of vision, making the experience as close to 'real' as possible. Panoramas announced the birth of cinema: a new technique to reproduce reality. It took time for them to become a form of art, until then it had been limited to paintings. Later on, when steel first started being used in construction it was used in the same architectural language as stone. It took time for steel to truly become an integral element of architecture. Today, as stated above, we live in a paradox world where we have access to all the information wanted but don’t have the time to assimilate it. We have a free and open social net and at the same time we are more isolated than ever.
As we see in this portrait by Steven Klein, a society absorbed in itself. Art and architecture are no longer homogeny and rigid. They can no longer be a question mainly focused on language. We chose Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as our point of entry into the subject. Taking London as a stage for life, we are going to analyse it and find elements that will turn into stories. We will start in the public realm and end in an individual perception, an invisible city. ‘(...) seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno [the crumbling city destined to fall apart], are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.’ Invisible Cities, Hidden Cities 5 Calvino once said ‘we are approaching a crisis of urban life, and the Invisible Cities are a dream that springs from the heart of invisible cities’. What he was predicting then, in 1983, the deterioration of urban quality of life, is today’s reality. Polo enlightens the emperor into seeing subtleties that had until then been overlooked, shadowing the alternative happy reality of Kahn’s cities. Likewise, through stories we are going to transport the public of London to new perspectives of the city, make them dream and form their own stories. The book is divided into 55 short descriptions of each city. What we propose is to select a few and give each student the opportunity to chose a city description which he will then read and gather images, texts, photos, quotes, songs, sketches, anything that will contribute to the formation of the idea of his allocated city. The next step will consist in examining how this city, which can be an alternative reality to any city, can be projected on London. It will be interesting to analyze how the barrier between public-private and social-individual will be dealt. After that, the production of the final work commences. Back in the end of the 19th century movies enabled the public to be taken to new fascinating worlds and new realities with the animated fiction. We will project invisible cities on London, this becoming the final outcome of the workshop.
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