Fine Art Prints on Epson Hot Press, framed
DIN A4
2019

 

Architekturskizzen auf Bauzäunen in Seoul.
Diese oft gigantischen, hohen und weißen Kunststoffpaneelwände sind überall in Südkorea in großen Massen zu finden. Wie stoische Soldaten bewachen sie Baustellen und verlassene Baugruben von gescheiterten Investitionsprojekten. Sie fliessen in das Stadtgefüge ein und sind aus dem Stadtbild nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die Bewohner benutzen diese weissen Wände, um ihre Werbung und Flugblätter aufzukleben, und mit der Zeit bleiben nur noch diese Stücke Gaffer-Tape übrig, die mit der Zeit wie das Brachland hinter den Paneelen vergehen. Was übrig bleibt, sind diese Mikroarchitekturen.

Der Titel des Werks ist eine klare Anspielung auf Le Corbusiers Ville Radieuse, das nicht realisierte städtebauliche Projekt, das sich durch einen Mangel an humanem Maßstab und Verbindung zur Umgebung auszeichnet.

 

EN
Architectural sketches on building fences in Seoul.
These often huge, tall and white plastic panel walls can be found all over South Korea in vast quantities. Like stoic soldiers they guard abandoned construction pits of failed investment projects. They are part of the cityscape. Residents stick their advertisements and pamphlets on these walls and over time, all that’s left are these gaffer tape pieces.

The title of the work is a clear reference to Le Corbusier‘s Ville Radieuse, the unrealised urban design project, which consists of a  lack of human scale and connection to its surroundings.

 

Rock Contemplating Nature
Bianca Pedrina
2018/2019
In my study of the urban development and history of Seoul, I noticed how the future is constantly spoken about, but how the details of the past are rather difficult to investigate. It seems as if the city doesn't want to reveal its history so willingly. It's like trying to bury history under a sheer mass of steel, glass and concrete, and to move as far above the ground as possible. So that from the wide view seen at the top of skyscrapers, the ground below becomes an abstract surface. The city is given a face that makes it look as if it has forgotten its own history.
The identity of a city changes over time, especially in a rapidly developing metropolis like Seoul. But the spirits of the former cityscapes and the memories of their inhabitants are as much a part of a city as the physical buildings that exist today. Their stories interweave in and around each other. As when a family member dies or disappears, their stories remain a part of the family and continue to live on.
Likewise, cracks and scars created by expansion efforts are part of the accompanying physical symptoms of a growing city, and its complex nature becomes visible and perceptible in precisely these details. We build our civilizations on the soil of our forefathers, using the same basic atomic building blocks since the Big Bang. The calcareous concrete for our skyscrapers and highways consists of the finely pulverized, petrified skeletons of living creatures from times long past, and we burn the stored solar energy of our ancestors buried deep beneath the earth.
In the methods used in quick construction, the force of nature and the power of time are often ignored. Nature is being simulated, natural building materials such as wood and stone are being replaced by their own artificial depictions. Organic materials are substituted by printed photo foils or replicas made of plastic, so natural forms become reincarnated as applied ornaments.
But tamed nature always finds its way through simulation, through plan, through utopia - in the form of plants between floor slabs, as mold in the interior. Or as rust in smooth steel structures, when the concrete has been processed too abruptly and the resulting hairline cracks blast away entire pieces of cement as water enters. Or when whole high-rise housing complexes are finally shattered into a thousand pieces, flat on the ground, becoming part of a new geological layer upon which a new civilization will build its houses.