Man-made landscapes

This is a scene from the project I'm working on at the moment for my final show. Throughout this year I've been working on ideas about man-made landscapes and and exploring the human imprint on the natural environment. I've been keen to bring these landscapes to life through animation and have recently started using After Effects to achieve this. I'm really enjoying the process though it is a steep learning curve. 

Sense of Place

Much of my work has to do with the man-made environment and how this landscape is our autobiography. What we build represents who we are, our architecture is our language. Oftentimes the message that this language gives is different from our personal experience of a place. This image is about how memories and experiences of a place colour our opinion of the place.

Cities of the future

I've been reading a lot lately about the future of urbanism and sustainable cities and this image is to do with that theme.

'Nature Bandaid'

A theme developing in my work is the relationship between nature and the man-made in the urban environment. I'm collecting 'evidence' of nature's resilience in neglected urban setting, and comparing and contrasting this with more 'landscaped' urban nature.

Here are some photographs I recently took of Trellick Tower. This 31-storey block of flats was designed in the Brutalist style by architect Erno Goldfinger in 1966 (completed in 1972). In these pictures I've tried to fuse the sparse vegetation with the raw concrete of the building.

The term 'nature bandaid' sprang to mind observing this austere scene. I've borrowed this term from the author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. In this clip: The tragedy of suburbia he talks about how suburbia was proposed initially as an antidote to the industrial life and thus how the concept of 'countryside' became commodified.