ONE WALL A DAY

city_surfaces

🏙️ Urban research and photography. 📷 Posters, graffiti, street signs and surface textures. 🧱 One wall a day. 🙋🏻‍♀️ By @sabinaandron. citysurfaces.com

Surface magic #houdini #brunswick #publiccity

Surface magic #houdini #brunswick #publiccity

Before-and-after London wall with a poster by sbag

Before-and-after London wall with a poster by sbagliato_, who add incongruous architectural features on public surfaces: walls turn into windows, doors, and entry ways ✨

#sbagliato #beforeandafter #paperarchitecture #londonwalls #citysurfaces

Some surface areas are more special than others.

Some surface areas are more special than others.

A wall nursing another wall.

Screens, interfaces, material evidence, architectural oddities.

#urbanwalls #urbansurfaces

Three of the photos I considered for my book cover

Three of the photos I considered for my book cover,

Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city.

#surfacestudies

🤑 #munny #amazon #dialogue

🤑 #munny #amazon #dialogue

Hand painted advertising has more perceived inhere

A poem written with public signage from Melbourne,

A poem written with public signage from Melbourne, Tallinn, and Yorkshire, signed in Nairobi.

Rule St.
It is easy to find nothing at all
Everything is forbidden
Nothing special happened
- Club Sabina

#mebourne #tallinn #yorkshire #nairobi #publicsignage #surfacesemiotics

Posters unfurling on city walls, taking over inten

Posters unfurling on city walls, taking over intended narratives

#flex #split #melbourneposters #thisismelbourne #peelingposters #citysurfaces #surfacesemiotics

Surface objects which encase and display; protect

Surface objects which encase and display; protect the spaces behind them, and enable the publics before them. Each shutter is a screen, each surface is an interface.

LSD Love Sex Dreams Berlin 2022 #berlinsurfaces #

LSD
Love Sex Dreams
Berlin 2022

#berlinsurfaces #berlinwalls #shopsigns #lsd #allthegoodthings

White wall series no. 2 I will set myself the cha

White wall series no. 2

I will set myself the challenge of 100 photos of white walls. 96 to go.

#notwhite #watchthisspace #whitewalls #whitesurfaces

#surfacescape #citysurface #surfacetexture #melbou

#surfacescape #citysurface #surfacetexture #melbourne #anywhere #everywhere

Calligraphic skills much better than deciphering s

Calligraphic skills much better than deciphering skills but here goes…

Okaes

Sowey

Verz

Nong

Ozee

Drool

What a great wall and such different styles!

Melbourne 2023

#readingtags #melbournetags #graffiti #surfacewriting #urbantext #thecityiswritingitself

Fine balance @kennypittock Melbourne 2023 #melbo

Fine balance
@kennypittock
Melbourne 2023

#melbournesurfaces #icecream

#brassai #walls #publicness ✊

#brassai #walls #publicness ✊

Weathered-almost-beyond-legibility @transportforlo

Weathered-almost-beyond-legibility @transportforlondon bus stop poster.

Weathering is part of the TfL comms heritage, and of all building surface heritage.

#surfaceweathering #tfl #transportposter #londonsurfaces

The semiotics of lost pets posters is a study in i

The semiotics of lost pets posters is a study in itself.

Temporary, unauthorised, paper-based, call-to-action poster taped to a mail box.

There is no photo of Vince.

Vince’s diabetes is worrying.

Private phone numbers on public surfaces are also worrying.

The internet has templates for missing pet posters.

I hope Vince was found.

#vince #missingpetposters #surfacesemiotics #surfacesignage

Photo of Ghanaian journalist Mike Eghan taken in 1

Photo of Ghanaian journalist Mike Eghan taken in 1967 by James Barnor, a Ghanaian photographer who has been documenting African diaspora life in Britain for decades. This picture is titled “Mike Eghan at Piccadilly Circus“ and it exudes immersion in urban life, occupation of the centre, and surface displays as the essence of the public city.

As seen in the exhibition Accra/London at @serpentineuk in London 2021.

#jamesbarnor #piccadillycircus #surfacelights #publiccity

Surface semiotic fragments from the buffer zone in

Surface semiotic fragments from the buffer zone in Nicosia, a stretch of land of varying breadths that separates the North side of Cyprus (ie the Turkish, occupied side) from the South, Greek side. The buffer zone (or green line) has been under UN control since the Turkish invasion in 1974, and is a collection of walls, barriers, and indeed signs that remind one of the military conflict, while also becoming normalised and receding into the background of urban experience.

Panos Leventis @citypoetics has done extensive work on Nicosia, and Christina Economides, one of my architectural theory students at @thebartlettucl, wrote an excellent dissertation about the semiotics of the buffer zone in 2020. There is of course plenty more research on this…

Weaponised surfaces, resistance surfaces, trauma surfaces.

#bufferzone #nicosia #divisionwall #surfaceconflicts

A moment of claimed stability, where the white pai

A moment of claimed stability, where the white paint on the wall mirrors its legal ownership, giving visible form to the privilege of private property.

Who should decide what cities look like?

// image from my upcoming book, Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city //

#lawscape #surfacejurisdictions #legalgeography #lawandspace #whitewall

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