Thank you for the abstract, thank you for the concrete

Research+sketches
2016
The sketches are part of a study on the “image” of the city of Rotterdam (NL), an experiment on a possible re-reading and re-shaping of the imagery, and a reflection on the vulnerability of the economy.
I wanted to go deep into the surface of this ‘image’, to grasp both the ‘abstract’, unreal aspect of the city and the physical side. I first speculated on the concept of the “city” inside the city: on how contemporary cities, especially if global, can constitute a border itself.
From there, after choosing the De Rotterdam skyscraper, as an example of the internationalization of the image of Rotterdam as a World City Port, I used the camera as a scanner to capture the interior surfaces of the building. Then, I hacked a paper building template (a toy), by replacing the exterior facades with the images of materials that I had previously taken, and I used the new blocks to play.