This lecture focused on cities, a place where people and design meet. We talked about the fact that it was always important for humans to know the landscape of where they live. This is easiest to achieve from a high point, but capturing some of the biggest cities like London as a whole was a real challenge.
From the late 1800s, when people started to develop airplanes and aircrafts there was a profound transformation how the general public perceived and imagined cities. Fast forward to our current generation and a ‘bird’s-eye’ view is completely taken for granted, it has fully integrated into our visual culture and defines our worldview. By using something like Google Earth, which is readily available for anyone, we can even have access to a very valuable political data that was not possible in the past.
It is interesting to see that drones, that anybody can purchase without a license, have a peculiar place in our contemporary culture: we all feel a bit concerned and worried about something that can float above us. The reason for this most likely dates back to the Second World War when bomber flights above the cities deepend our worries about anything that is above a city and can also represent power and control.
However cities not only expanded ‘horizontally’ but vertically as well which offers a new perspective. Starting off from these thoughts we talked about the movie High Wire in which a French high wire artist, Philippe Petit walked for 45 minutes, back and forth on a metal cable between the towers of the World Trade Center. We can look at this as a crazy and pointless act, but this public art in New York City represented rebellion, Petit refused to obey the rules and gave us a new perspective. Afterwards in an interview he said that life should be lived on the edge, and interesting thought opposing our desire to live a comfortable life.
Photographs:
View of London in the time of king Henry VIII (19th century) Bridgeman Images
The twin towers of the world trade center, (1989) Marcello Mencarini / Bridgeman Images
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