ελληνικά

"Components of the urban landscape aesthetic"

Makis Economides

With the cooperation of the National Bank Cultural Foundation (M.I.E.T.) - Cultural Centre of Thessaloniki 

1 -  October 24

I roam in the streets of the cities…

Fascinating architectural structures: public buildings, churches, museums, theatres, organizations’ head-offices, shopping malls, bridges, residential block buildings.

Tourists look for them, guided by tourist handbooks. They stop for a while. They photograph them and they get photographed in front of them.

I pass them by…

I look for the insignificant; the things that weren’t designed for all eternity. The humble things that never seem to be included in the tourist maps, or any kind of map for that matter, simply because their existence is not worth mentioning and in most cases they are temporary. Some of them bare wheels in order to help them move easily, when and where it is needed. Others are left useless rotting and decaying.

Everyone else ignores them. Their existence seems to be annoying for them. They ruin the aesthetic of their cities. They weren’t created to be in use of it. They only serve a particular, practical purpose. That is why everyone puts up with them. And they keep putting up with them, till the custom becomes a permanent temporariness.

Fortunately…

That’s the way I can find them. To highlight them, to show their own beauty, with which they humbly complete the “designed” beauty of the cities. They establish, among with all the other things, the “de facto” aesthetic of the contemporary, urban landscape.

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