Urbanautica

IMAGES AS CONCEPTUAL BUILDING BLOCKS

by Steve Bisson

We seek more from the world, or rather, we resist allowing things to remain static. In inhabiting the world, human beings inevitably alter it, and therefore manifest the need to have control of the things of the world. The rest is technique. The clear risk humanity faces is in choosing technique as the ultimate goal, as an end in itself. Technique is thus invoked as a myth of survival, a means of overcoming the agony of death or the uncertainty of the future.

© Tommaso Sacconi from "Holding on"

"The relationship between constructing and inhabiting is undoubtedly a central question of our existence, from the first caves to refugee tent camps, from seafront condos to massive urban developments. This investigation touches upon various themes.

The series of unusual facades of New York buildings depicted by Tommaso Sacconi emphasizes the technical aspect of this relationship. Anchor plates are used as structural supports to ensure the stability and, therefore, the solidity of buildings. As beings who inhabit, humans have developed numerous technological devices to enhance the safety and comfort of this experience. Many of these systems and pieces of equipment are invisible, silent, and concealed within walls, cavities, ceilings, and floors, almost as if to hide our dependence on technology. It's as though we deny that technology is anything other than itself, when in fact, it is a direct product of language—an evolutionary consequence. However, Homo sapiens still defend their supremacy and control, revealing just enough of the construction techniques, disguising them when necessary, or summarizing them in an interface.

© Tommaso Sacconi from "Holding on"

Through these photos, Sacconi instead reveals technology as innate to our species, giving aesthetic dignity to devices of reinforcement and stability that support the complex and majestic scaffolding of needs on which human affairs rest. Coming to terms with our nature and freeing ourselves from this subjection means recognizing not so much an inferiority, but a biological diversity. Technology is the fruit of intellectual potential. If we separate it from ourselves, we can justify any use, even the most infamous. If we are technology and do not merely create it, then any insult to technology is also an insult to our existence. How many words can encapsulate the image of a facade? How can we liberate the conceptual or metaphorical implications of an image? To express them, we still require the language of words. It is intriguing to consider the possibility of images as anchor plates of a conceptual building, ensuring its stability."

© Tommaso Sacconi from "Holding on"

The image of an artifact or a construction process, such as the one documented by Anka Gregorczyk and Łukasz Szamalek in connection with the 'S5 Expressway' between Poznań and Bydgoszcz in Poland, can be significant for various reasons. Firstly, it is a manifestation of technological ingenuity, which we understand to be intrinsic to human nature. On the other hand, it is an unequivocal representation of the supremacy of Homo sapiens over other forms of life.

The photographs selected from this long-term investigation offer broad views—moments of transformation that, due to their expansiveness, place the observer in a contemplative state. Like a panorama that adjusts our sense of scale to appreciate vastness, these images evoke the feeling we get when looking up at the stars, where we might feel small yet infinitely significant.
At the center of these photographs is an element, a sculptural figure, that symbolizes the capacity for abstraction in human thought—the ability to think 'about' rather than just 'of.' A crane, a guardrail, a fence, a leveled ground, a concrete structure—these are not merely physical objects or key ingredients of an infrastructural narrative; they are symbolic elements of a 'plan' that a society uses to relate to and transform its territory according to its needs.

© Anka Gregorczyk and Łukasz Szamalek from "Temporary Landscapes"

The title 'Temporary Landscapes' adds and emphasizes the 'temporal,' or rather 'provisional,' nature of the landscape. The photograph itself captures a moment in a process, not the entire process. This collection of moments then defines a space that is contemplative before it is geographical, drawing the viewer into its own horizon, its 'templum,' or within a circumscribed space of vision.
When we look at these photographs, we are certainly informed of the existence of a new highway in Poland, but more importantly, we are drawn into that space and share in the original meditation. In this sense, the image differs from a verbal description of the highway, which leaves imaginative room for prefiguration. The image, being present and concrete, 'summons' us into a symbolic space of configuration that shapes our perception.

© Anka Gregorczyk and Łukasz Szamalek from "Temporary Landscapes"

The city is a conceptual construct before it is a planned one. We can choose to view it this way if we wish. A concept may be more or less familiar to us, and consequently, we relate to cities based on our memory, which functions as a reference text. Our expectations about cities are projections of our reasoning; they are a 'virtual' construction, an attempt to live and, therefore, to relate to a context, much like in a simulation game. We expand by occupying territories, thus moving. This certainly evokes a nomadic nature, not yet extinct, that is functional to the common survival of the animal being with a destiny to wander. But above all, it highlights our capacity for calculation, prediction, management, and control (planning), which better traces and distinguishes our evolutionary path. Memory is also linked to our emotions connected to specific spaces; in this sense, memory is also a map whose reading awakens positive or negative emotions. The series 'Almost Like Home' by Andrey Permitin effectively interprets this theme.

© Andrey Permitin from "Almost Like Home"

The photographs document buildings constructed in the mid-1950s in Marseille. Primarily, they depict views from and of residential blocks, housing solutions designed in the post-war period to address housing needs. This building typology responds to housing demand with a clear constructive intent. The relationship between living and building is strictly rational and straightforward. Permitin, of Russian origin, who grew up on the outskirts of Moscow on the twelfth floor of a typical Soviet block with a narrow balcony running along the entire facade, is fascinated by the formal similarity. At the same time, he is 'enlightened' by the emotions evoked in his memory as he walks along the long corridors of these monstrous rectangles of inlaid concrete that characterize the coastal city in the South of France. The use of the view camera amplifies this reflection, as he writes: 'The slow-paced approach helped me to contemplate and observe the architecture and my thoughts about the space.' Although anonymous to an outsider's view, that apartment in the suburbs of the Russian capital has been translated into a concept of living, reconstructed retrospectively in a city overlooking the Mediterranean and experienced in the form of reproducible images, i.e., photographs.

© Andrey Permitin from "Almost Like Home"

Let's take a step further: when photographs related to a specific experience of the city accumulate and settle in the collective memory, we can argue that they acquire social weight in the common imagination, and therefore political significance, influencing decisions on what to preserve or not in the city, and also impacting urban planning.

© Andrey Permitin from "Almost Like Home"

When we observe a photo of a city or directly experience it, we can react on a mental level, recognizing personal traits as individuals inscribed in the progression of history. We can also abstract broader concepts on a larger cultural scale. Moreover, housing concepts can be exported, assimilated, and modified to adapt to the morphology of countries in geopolitical terms. Building is, above all, a project—a metamorphosis—that pushes the concept forward, beyond obstacles, as the etymology of the term suggests.

A projection of the constructive concept of the French Grand Ensemble can be found in South Korea, as narrated in 'Vertical Utopia' by Pierre-Romain Guedj. The photographer takes us on a journey to discover the housing units that made 'the miracle of the Han River' famous, supporting the growth of the middle class starting in the 1970s. Better known as 'Tanjis,' these structures testify to the housing impact of the country's economic ascent, glimpsed by the world through events like the Olympics (1988), the World Cup (2002), or the global recognition of brands like Samsung and Hyundai. So called chaebol.© Pierre-Romain Guedj from "Vertical Utopia"

Here, as elsewhere, they resemble large beehives—square blocks of concrete soaring towards the sky, like enormous spaceships descended from who knows where. The European narrative of these urban planning efforts is generally unforgiving: out-of-scale, disconnected, and under-served agglomerations, expensive to maintain, and easily stigmatized, are gradually pushed to the margins of society, with few exceptions. This concept of living becomes rather uninhabitable in the long run.
One wonders whether things have fared better in South Korea. How do we assess the validity of this concept, and by what criteria? What is the role of the public sector? Does it merely tighten the reins on private developers who often sacrifice architectural quality for the sake of profit? Photography alone cannot explain whether there is a problem. However, comparing Seoul's current skyline with a vintage photo from the 1930s certainly reveals the scale of the phenomenon.
Still, photography has, here as elsewhere, demonstrated the voracious nature of transformation. It has sometimes given a face to discontent or even foreshadowed sensational real estate bubbles, such as the recent one involving the Chinese giant Evergrande.

Just because an image can only be seen does not mean it cannot be expressed. Perhaps in the future we will examine these 'scopic findings' as representations of failed urban planning, unpleasant coexistence, and negligent territorial governance, as well as unsustainable and euphoric speculations harmful to the environment. However, this remains a concept that is not easily resolved. The Korean case study may be an exception, as the photographer notes: 'The architectural soullessness and austerity in these random prefabricated landscapes is fascinating. Yet it is unsettling to observe that a kind of strange utopia has emerged from this phenomenon.' I am reminded of a student from Seoul who visited Paris for a semester and spent her time observing people in the park, intrigued by the multitude of distractions around her.

All these images, when grouped together and synthesized, convey a central idea: a will directed towards the transformation of the world. We seek more from the world, or rather, we resist allowing things to remain static. In inhabiting the world, human beings inevitably alter it, and therefore manifest the need to have control of the things of the world. The rest is technique. The clear risk humanity faces is in choosing technique as the ultimate goal, as an end in itself. Technique is thus invoked as a myth of survival, a means of overcoming the agony of death or the uncertainty of the future.

Tommaso Sacconi (website)
Anka Gregorczyk and Łukasz Szamalek (website)
Andrey Permitin (website)
Pierre-Romain Guedj (website)

share this page