May 14, 2010
Fictional Suburbs Seen From The Air
Over the past years the Canadian artist Ross Racine has designed a series of digital fake suburbs. All drawings can hardly be seperated from real suburbs and so are their names, which include Cherry Meadows, Walnot Village and Happy Hollow. The collection called Subdivision is undoubtedly inspired by maps of real suburbs, which have become real pieces of art when seen from the air. The critic on modern planning and urbanism behind these drawings is really sharp. Racine’s creations reveal the everlasting blueprint tradition of common planning practice. The paradox of neo-traditional planning is explicitly uncovered. New neighborhoods have to look organic and from above they do, but in fact they are carefully designed, according to modernistic principles.