BLINKING CITY

Blinking City is a project investigating the inadequacy of traditional maps to describe city environments characterized by fast pace transformation and urban growth, such as contemporary cities in China or Asia. Changes are usually so fast that as soon as the map is done, the city it depicts has already gone. The project is an overlapping of two maps realized using a large stencil painting on wall and a white framed lenticular printing disc. The stencil painting is a recall of street art actions we carried on in the central districts of Beijing on walls of dilapidated courtyard houses under demolition. It reminds us the relationship between people and their urban environment. On the other hand, the lenticular printing disc is an interactive ever-changing map that varies according to the movements of the viewer.
Both maps are inspired from the typical tables of analysis made by urban planners and feature 14 colors or “layers”. We asked game designer Eric Zimmerman and architect Nathalie Pozzi to give a meaning to each layer and write a legenda in which every single house becomes important because of the activities of people who live it, rather then because its physical qualities.