The Geometry of Being

We often speak of cities as if they were living, breathing organisms, yet they are fundamentally exercises in geometry. From the first stone laid in a foundation to the final spire piercing the clouds, we are merely stacking blocks against the sky, trying to impose a sense of order upon the wild, shifting nature of our own lives. There is a strange comfort in this grid. When we stand above the fray, looking down at the canyons of steel and glass, the chaos of human movement seems to settle into a pattern. We become architects of our own perspective, tracing lines that suggest a logic to the noise. Yet, the grid is only a skeleton. It holds the weight of millions of stories, each one pushing against the rigid walls of the structures we build to contain them. If we look long enough, do we see the city, or do we see the limits of our own desire to organize the infinite?

Yohann Libot has captured this tension in his work titled Big Apple. He invites us to look down at the grid and find the rhythm hidden within the stone. Does the order of the city help you find your own place within it?