Urbanism and Creativity: Jane Jacobs

I believe that lively cities where society can operate in an intense way make meetings out of which very fertile and ingenious decisions can come. But if people are isolated, fragmented, if one income class is set off from other income classes, the meeting simply does not occur. If different kinds of talents don’t come together, if different sorts of ideas don’t rub up against one another, if the necessary money never comes in juxtaposition with the necessary vision, the meeting doesn’t occur.

Happy 100th birthday, Jane Jacobs. via Brain Pickings / Maria Popova

Note to myself: get the book: Jane Jacobs: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

The essence of a place

A very interesting find for me – the works of a German photographer Frank Machalowski.

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Multiexpo 100 | Frank Machalowski

Since my talk on chronotope, the notion of time-space and its application in the city scape, I’ve been paying more attention to how time and space are intertwined in the urban setting. Working with the geometrical figures inspired by Chillida’s work has also made an impact on how I perceive the geometry in everyday setting. I particularly like the image below, where you can see the geometrical forms ‘floating’ in the air.

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Multiexpo | Frank Machalowski

These interesting series by Frank Machalowski tapped into something I wonder about these days – the interconnections of places in time and the geometry of it. Am not sure how to phrase it even.. I guess it will come later on..

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Multiexpo | Frank Machalowski

I really enjoyed Frank’s approach to a place – to take multiple exposures of it, to capture the surrounding context, but make it subtle, to keep only the essence and mute down a bit the everyday buzz that surrounds it. It’s like taking a perspective of that building or place on what’s happening around it. To see what emanates from the building. It especially caught my attention, since I just came back from Berlin and just being in those spaces myself made me more attuned to these series.

Should load some film into my old Zenit and try this out..

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Multiexpo | Frank Machalowski