Last night I attended a lecture at the Metropolitan Exchange, hosted by CUP. Novelist and editor Matthew Stadler spoke on "Where We Live Now." It is a book, the translation of a text by German urbanist Thomas Sieverts and additional readings by Rem Koolhaas, Aaron Betsky, Saskia Sassen, but it is also a comment on the contemporary condition, the Zwischenstadt, or "in-between landscape." Those places that are not country or city, but specific moments in the generic sprawl. Here, Matthew argues, is a space rich in its own kind of logic and tradition. To just dismiss it is sprawl is to ignore what Sieverts says is the condition of 80 percent of the populated globe.
To illustrate his talk, Matthew brought up the work of Shawn Records, a Portland-based photographer, who's images of Beaverton, OR capture the mixed messages in our cities, suburbs, and countryside.
Both Matthew and Shawn are part of the bigger project, suddenly.org, which creates events, books, artworks, and ideas about the shape of cities.
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