A Canvas for Nature

Luke Corbyn

From the window, the swallows swoop gracefully through the streets using the old tenements to roost.

This beauty is happening around the built form in the voids it creates in the urban fabric that lets life's solidity happen. Standing on the pedestrian flyover looking down upon that loathed urban scar, and yet there, pausing, there is a beauty. The distant hum of the traffic creates a trance for the appreciation of the tactile nature of the rusted metal handrail. The urban expanse seems removed from this moment; the city has no control. This is real. This is solid. This is life. The ruins are the culmination of the solidity created by built form; the walls become canvases, the space is free and can become more than that which it has been arbitrarily designated. These spaces and moments are the city's lifeblood. One only needs to invert the perspective that the solid is beyond the built form, and the void is the city swallowing up the individual into insignificance.