Scoring the City
Client—Metropolis Magazine
Date—2006
Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect. Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin again, but another more tolerant way; that is, to question how we look at things. Learning From Las Vegas, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and Steve Izenour
The project of representing the city is ongoing at Thumb. In fact, it initiated the partnership. So when Metropolis Magazine called to say they were interested in having us score a part of the city for their 25th anniversary issue, we saw it as a great opportunity to revisit some of the work we had done almost 10 years ago.
So when the commission came, we knew immediately we wanted to look at the Bowery, just one block from our (then) office because of the changes that were happening at a pace that was only going to accelerate. In a questionnaire that asked "Why make films?" the director Wim Wenders quotes Cezanne, "Things are disappearing. You have to hurry up if you want to see anything." So we set out to record something because (and rightly assumed) things were really on their way out.
Developing the drawing was a process of extracting layers of information from observational notes and redrawing them with a special eye towards their frequency and the densities that build up around certain points on the street. The score registers an interval of activity that corresponds to the amount of time spent on observation. It is like a snapshot that has been pulled apart and abstracted.
