invisible cities: olinda
a book's description of an invisible city, carved into a book, and inspired by the temporal nature of tree rings
ENVDES1
Nicholas Demonchaux
Final Project
UC Berkeley || Fall '17
This introductory course explored architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning, along with spatial and environmental ideas in two and three dimensions. Our final project was to carve an assigned city from the novel, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, into a physical book, based off its description and our spatial concepts.
the city
The city I was assigned was called Olinda, a constantly growing city that expands from the city center. The city respected and kept alive each part of the city as it grew older, maintaining the uniqueness and distinctness of each city district.
tree rings
In my project, I hoped to convey the aspects of time, propagation and nature’s constant evolution. I chose to demonstrate the ancient/contemporary duality this city negotiates through the dichotomy of the first page with the rest of the project.
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As Olinda is initially presented as a unified city​, the first page veils the temporal and spatial intricacies of the city. As you open the book and look closer into the minutia of the city, one can realize and understand the history of the city, reminiscent of reading the rings on a tree trunk.
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Each ring of the city represents a different era of Olinda, distinct from the other through the different shapes, sizes and colors of the buildings.
