Dark City, Signscape

【Dark City-11th International Architecture Exhibition】
Statement: Personal view on dark architecture

Streets of most Asian cities are filled with different kinds of signboards and artificial objects. As the façade of buildings are covered up by signs, we are almost unable to identify space in the street from the façade of buildings, especially at night. Compared with the regularly held carnivals in the Western countries, there are carnivals everywhere at night in Asian cities. Such a characteristic also shows that our living space is highly interactive and safe when compared with Western countries. Instead of staying at home, we can go out anytime because indoor and outdoor space in Asian cities is connected together without interruption.

There are different ways for urbanites to perceive their cities. Sometimes, they give us the opportunity to observe space slowly, although sometimes we have no time to concern about experience on the journey. We take lifts instead of walking, the underground instead of the bus, and overpasses instead of streets where we need signs to instruct us where to go. When walking on streets covered with signs formed by signboards at night, we enter another urban system where the street map is replaced by the signboard map. Without knowing it, we begin to learn about the appearance of urban architecture in the light of signboards.

A score as structure existing in a city is changing gradually by the repletion of the performance. A local condition is framed by the notation and the interval between each notation within a score. The gap whose boundary is defined by the next notation a shifting horizon, will allow thing to be unfolded.

When we are walking in the street covered with signboards, we have entered another kind of urban system. The signboard map replaces the city map, and we learn about the city in the light of signboards...


【Signscape】

When we are walking in the street covered with signboards, we have entered another kind of urban system. The signboard map replaces the city map, and we learn about the city in the light of signboards...

There are all kinds of signboards overlapping one another in the city street, and they become another kind of element for experiencing space. At night, the topological relations and traces of street signboards cross over the physical connections to become a new type of landscape.

In the manner of signscape, I translated selected spots with high signboard density, such as night markets, into several pebbles to suggest its high fluidity and accumulation of time. Patterns on the pebbles are combined to the street map and texts on the signboards to redress to the unique patterns of night cities in Asia of our time.