In the below work, Lotura XXXII, recalling the steel industry that built Bilbao’s greatness, stands as an iconic symbol sounding as a First Nations totem pole. Framed by disbalanced infrastructures, in-between past, and future, it questions how cultural heritage contributes to urban resilience. At D0, Bilbao past and new infrastructures, concrete and titanium sheets, are linked […]
Author: Yky
From Vancouver to Bilbao, lost in urban resilience
The concept of urban resilience is a source of engagement, creativity, and inspiration for everyone committed to improve our daily urban lives. But when concepts are not contextualized, and especially when “resilient programs” are brought to the forefront by local decision makers without in-depth analysis, other questions arise, most often linked to trade-offs political acceptability. […]
Roma Aeterna 1, 2 & 3
The three below works have been inspired by photographs taken in the Jewish ghetto of Rome, IT. They challenge the myth of “The Eternal City”, questioning the continuity suggested by a metaphor ignoring socio-cultural disruptions. Echoing my own technique with argentic paper darkening in time, as an allegory of ephemerality, the pictures show how ruins […]
About ancient ruins in urban spaces
Should you search online the meaning of derelict places in urban environments, there is a fair chance to be directed towards brownfields, the way they may contribute to urban master plans (1) and how their potential translates in operational practicalities (2). No doubt that you will also be directed towards historical sites’ survival to disasters. Aesthetic and emotional […]
Itaperuna
Confronting the absolute objectivity of sophisticated measurements to the inherent subjectivity of human behavior translates here into a deconstruction-reconstruction process of the mapping. At D0, silhouettes dance all around Itaperuna pieces and the Muria river flooding. Graffiti photographed on the walls of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, symbolize the urban life through its political […]
Maps, mapping, and resilience
Since earliest times, maps have been a source of interest, not to say fascination. With the oldest one presumably dated 6000 BC until modern cartography, maps developed into a unique representation combining art, geography, and military power (1). But what is the true meaning of a map in a post-colonialist society imposing norms and habits which can […]
Subsidence
Venice, Grand canal, April 2019
La Défense
The below work questions the way rurality could become integrated into urbanity, enabling to rebalance the exclusions derived from a “selective green-washing” urbanism. At D0, the urban imposes its grid massively, almost oppressively. At D+, towers fade out. Low level buildings find a new balance. The continuum with rurality is emphasized. The appropriation of rurality […]
Improving urban resilience through rurality
The past decades gave birth to an urban way of life dominated by uncertainty and complexity. Those who do not have the means to adapt to an ever-evolving socio-economic environment are more vulnerable. And it can be fairly assumed that the number of people who will face difficulties will grow: according to the United Nations (1), more […]
Orders and disorders of urban resilience
What is the meaning of urban morphologies and how resilient are they? What do cities and modern art have in common? How relevant is the concept of entropy? The three questions converge towards a universal representation of one of our contemporary urban drivers: the grid. Sixty years ago, Kevin Lynch (1) introduced the concept of urban imageability and […]
