Letters From Here

The question of rendering examined here will encompass the process by which structures and environments are visualized using digital imaging technology, and, from a broader theoretical perspective, the ways in which virtual projections are rendered concrete, born out in the corpus of the city. I will map these relations via an illustrated, episodic case study based in one Brooklyn neighborhood: my own, Williamsburg-Greenpoint and the North Brooklyn waterfront development project.

(via Semiotic Review - Architectural Fictions: Renderings, Rats, and the Virtualization of Urban Space)

New York-based artist Adam Ryder wheedles at these contradictions in his most recent projects Areth: An Architectural Atlas and Selections from the Joint Photographic Survey. Each are presented as real documentary works (or in Ryder’s words, “formal-rational investigations”) of fictional worlds.

Teleport, Telepath, Telephoto

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  • Cat People, Strippers and Telekinesis: Tales From Alien Abductees
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  • In Billions of Years, Aliens Will Find These Photos in a Dead Satellite
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  • Photog Probes Secret Sites With Megazoom and Science
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  • Alien Topographies Emerge in New Red Sea Coral Photos
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  • SETI’s First Artist-in-Residence Transports Viewers to Alien Worlds

“Photography’s co-option by empirical systems is definitely of interest to me,” says Ryder. “I’m trying to use photography to recontextualize the built environment. The ability to reframe and give new meaning to things is photography’s best attribute as a medium.”

For his Areth project, Ryder, who’s always had a keen interest in sci-fi movies and novels, relocates existing earthly structures in a fictional world. He first made photographs for it by traveling across the United States and then publishing an “expedition” report. By contrast, for Survey, Ryder scanned antique photographs from the Library Of Congress and manipulated them to create an archive of a time and place that never existed, but isn’t entirely implausible either.

 (via Sci-Fi Structures Found on Earth Get Transported to Alien World | Raw File | Wired.com)

(via 2013- eVolo | Architecture Magazine)

He envisioned underground cities, floating buildings and an eternal space tomb for Albert Einstein worthy of the great physicist’s expansive intellect. With such grand designs, perhaps it’s not too surprising that the late Lebbeus Woods, one of the most influential conceptual architects ever to walk the earth, had only one of his wildly imaginative designs become a permanent structure.

Instead of working with construction and engineering firms, Woods dreamed up provocative creations that weren’t bound by the rules of society or even nature, according to Joseph Becker and Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, co-curators of a new exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art titled Lebbeus Woods, Architect. 

More: Lebbeus Woods: The Architect Who Dared to Ask ‘What If?’ | Wired Design | Wired.com

via Documenting the Never-Built Dreams of the City of Angels | Wired Design | Wired.com)

Without the use of a camera Portland-based artist Jim Kazanjian sifts through a library of some 25,000 images from which he carefully selects the perfect elements to digitally assemble mysterious buildings born from the mind of an architect gone mad. While the architectural and organic pieces seem wildly random and out of place, Kazanjian brings just enough cohesion to each structure to suggest a fictional purpose or story that begs to be told. You can see much more of his work over on Facebook, and prints are available at 23 Sandy Gallery.

(via An Architect Gone Mad: Mysterious Buildings Assembled from Found Photographs by Jim Kazanjian | Colossal)

Humans have always built defenses to match the prevailing threat of the day, from medieval castles to Cold War fallout shelters. In his Shura City concept, Asher J. Kohn speculates on what it would take to drone-proof a city.

(via How To Design A Drone-Proof City | Popular Science)

grossnational:

City of the Future from The Wonderful World, The Adventure of the Earth We Live On, 1954. Illus by Kempster & Evans.

(Source: newhousebooks)

photographer Thomas Barbéy, on the other hand, turns familiar cityscapes on their head (or side, for that matter). Barbéy, whose work was just spotlighted on My Modern Met, twists familiar scenes until they’re nearly unrecognizable. Photo via Thomas Barbéy Official Site In his “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” men from the Carnival of Venice float across the Paris skyline.

(via See Venice in Paris and Other Divine Rehashed Architecture - Artistry - Curbed National)

(via “Mirage” Is A Visual And Sonic Portrait Of An Unknown City | The Creators Project)