As speculative practices accelerate urban transformation, the city adorns itself in images of what it is to become in the future. This future never fully attained leaves these images lingering and fading, dissolving into a ruptured matrix of urban decay and unfinished potential. Rather than reflecting on what architecture could be I reflect on what the future is becoming: faded imprints of spectacular promises.
Dissolving futures explores the future of architecture as it dissolves into the present. It documents the transformation of abandoned buildings and vacant lots, empty premises, into future promises. It presents the replacement of the architecture of the shared public space of the street with a spectacle of speculation as a veil of digitally rendered representation between the lived street-space and the abstract machinations of investment and real estate.
This is an ongoing project started more than ten years ago while photographing the advertising on hoardings and posters around building sites in Berlin. Over a thousand photos from over twenty cities and from four continents have been taken since. One hundred of these have been (so far) selected to be used. The project will take the form an installation with the images projected in a continuous dissolve sequence in the exhibition space.
The first presentation of this project will take place at the Architecture after the Future symposium at the Haus der Architektur, Graz, Austria, opening on June 23, 2017
All photos copyright Paul Landon
