Alphabet City
2012
Edition 1: 5 copies
Edition 2: 1000 copies
56 pages, 27 images
ISBN 978-0-9917970-0-4
I spend a lot of time looking at maps. Not just because I’m looking to find out how to get somewhere, but because I see maps as texts that document our communal life, both its past and present. It is a consuming addiction because the more I study this jumble of lines and words, the more I get caught up in uniqueness of places, neighbourhoods and intersections.
Even in a city like Toronto, where the major
streets adhere to the original concession grid, there are so many inconsistencies and diversions to this underlying system that unintentional patterns emerge. Aware that ideas of urban planning as well attitudes towards geography have changed over time, every bend in the road begins to describe this history.
From these patterns and mutations of the grid, I began to find shapes that could be understood as letters, almost as if several generations of planners were trying to spell out a message to us. If so, this is only the start of the decoding process.
– Flavio Trevisan
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Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Alpha-numeric (detail)
2012
17 x 22″
Poster printed to celebrate the launch of Alphabet City.