ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO, 2005
Xavier Vendrell, Architect.
J. Guillumet and M. Roselló, Photographic concept.
Sense of Place. The city to live versus the city container
“ The city is a place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do with his whole life.” Louis I. Kahn
The
idea behind this installation is to express the lack of a global idea of
Chicago that results in two kinds of cities/spaces. One the city of
relationships between elements, where each new element is conscious of its
context and its relationships, sharing cultural and social spaces, a city with
simultaneities, cohabitations, mixtures, synchronicities, opportunities,
density, diversity, plurality, culture as interchange…a place that provides
opportunities for all kind of relationships.
The
other space of the installation talks about the hyper-non-places; some of them
as a result of newly constructed, undesigned places; others due to the
deconstruction of the existing urban fabric. The city without identity; the city
that doesn’t need its inhabitants; the city not to live, but to feel protected;
the city with no relationships, no culture, where its new elements don’t allow
for any kind of relationships. The visitor, in such a space, built with no
sense of scale, with artificial colors, will become a stranger in its own city.
On the contrary, new visitors will feel welcome in the other one. How long will
they spend in each space? How will they feel? Which relationships will they
establish?
The
other space will only have two pictures, one on each wall; both of them with a
different artificial color, with no sense of scale, no relationship between them
or the spectators. The floor could be recovered with artificial grass, with a
very unnatural color. If covering the floor with the described materials is not
possible, different pavements for the installation can be used, which will
equally illustrate these conceptual ideas that want to be conveyed. These
suggested textures could incorporate some text and quotations, too, as it is
shown in the model.
“ Where the two times meet,
desperation. Where the two times go their separate ways, contentment. For, miraculously,
a barrister, a nurse, a baker can make a world in either time, but not in both
times. Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.”
ALAN LIGHTMAN.
XAVIER VENDRELL