A project by French artist Armelle Caron looks at what happens when you take the patterns of blocks that make up a city's form and organize and stack them sideways. Robert Krulwich investigates what such an exercise reveals about a city.
By dismembering, dissecting, categorizing, sorting and stacking the shapes that make up a city's blocks, Caron has constructed her own visual language of cities. So when you look at some of the urban areas that have come under her knife, what might they be saying? Krulwich takes a stab at translating some of the forms.
On Berlin: "Berlin, of course, contains mainly rectangles. It also has trapezoids,
triangles and, down in that last row, weirdly shaped squiggles that
represent actual city spaces. So, if you are walking through Berlin, the
cityscape isn't going to repeat endlessly. There will be surprises.
There are some totally irregular nooks and crannies there."
On New York: "Take away the bums, the fashionistas, the food carts, the cabs, the
colors, the smells, the sounds, cut it up and stack it on a table, New
York's grid system seems more than a little monotonous."
And on Istanbul, seemingly the most diverse set of blocks illustrated in the article: "Check out the top few rows - these are blocks, remember - and then
imagine wandering around these curves, angles, sudden narrowings.
Walking that city has to be amazing."
FULL STORY: Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities And Stack Them Sideways
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