Invisible Cities
A City of Solid and Void
The city imposes its will upon us, the monotony destroying the individual producing those glued to screens and travelling from A to B assimilated into the crowd. In the mists of this, there is a respite from this imposition. The city can no longer dictate itself onto us the dereliction of urban form. Its materiality allows the genuine appreciation for imperfection and the palimpsest of time. A city truly breaks free in the undefined spaces creating a city of moments. Through the built form, there are spaces filled with life; these moments are the city. They are a solid and tangible reality for us all. The built form carves out the voids where the solidity of life happens and creates these moments.

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.