The Aerial Image: Vertigo, Transparency and Miniaturization

Dorrian, Mark

doi:10.1080/13534640903208958

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…The notion of ‘groundlessness’ has gained currency in art, architectural, and urban discourses over the past decade ( Dorrian, 2009 , Steyerl, 2011 , Graham, 2016 ). Dorrian (2009) in particular draws comparisons between the ‘dissolution’ of ground evoked by Hitchcock, as well as by authors like Nabokov and Sebald, and the disorienting experience induced by contemporary architectures such as London's City Hall. At the bottom level of this Foster-designed building, visitors can stand on a giant aerial photomap of London, taking symbolic possession of the city from a vantage point that traditionally signifies a position of power and control.…”

Section: Vertigo In the City: Architecture And Ilinxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the bottom level of this Foster-designed building, visitors can stand on a giant aerial photomap of London, taking symbolic possession of the city from a vantage point that traditionally signifies a position of power and control. Dorrian (2009 : 86) sees this as ‘an attempt to architecturally stage […] democratic transparency’, in a similar mould as the glass dome of the new Reichstag in Berlin – designed by the same architect. At City Hall, the abstract miniaturization of London produced by the aerial view somehow jars with the act of walking on the photomap while looking down in search of familiar clues.…”

Section: Vertigo In the City: Architecture And Ilinxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At City Hall, the abstract miniaturization of London produced by the aerial view somehow jars with the act of walking on the photomap while looking down in search of familiar clues. If, on the one hand, this embodied experience provides the visitor with a sense of grounding, on the other hand the photomap triggers a ‘vertiginous multiplicity’ that causes an opposite ‘ungrounding’ effect: a disorientation amplified by the non-hierarchical code of representation that distinguishes satellite imagery from cartographic maps ( Dorrian, 2009 : 91).…”

Section: Vertigo In the City: Architecture And Ilinxmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Skywalking in the city: Glass platforms and the architecture of vertigo

Deriu

2018

Emotion, Space and Society

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HighlightsThe paper explores the ambivalent concept of vertigo and its significance for contemporary architecture.It examines in particular the rise of elevated glass platforms through concepts of transparency, experience, and kinaesthesia.Proposes that these emerging design features constitute a kind of ‘sixth façade’.Discusses this phenomenon as a spatial manifestation of the experience economy.Concludes by highlighting the rise of ‘architectures of vertigo’ in relation to wider social imperatives.

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Section: Vertigo In the City: Architecture And Ilinxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Vertigo In the City: Architecture And Ilinxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Vertigo In the City: Architecture And Ilinxmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Skywalking in the city: Glass platforms and the architecture of vertigo

Deriu

2018

Emotion, Space and Society

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“…Yet, reading as well as perceiving particular urban views from above is dependent on embodied knowledges and memories of the horizontal city below and can be disorientated by conditions such as vertigo and acrophobia. As Mark Dorrian (2009: 88) comments, ‘we may be above things, but at the same time we are among them in a new, disconcerting way’ (see also Barthes, 1997: 244). Navigating and experiencing the streets below can also be framed through a cartographic ‘God’s eye’ perspective commonly associated with above (Bennett, 2013; see also Williams, 2013).…”

Section: D Ethnographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vertical urbanisms

Harris

2014

Progress in Human Geography

190

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This paper develops a more diverse and multi-dimensional agenda for understanding and researching urban verticality. In particular, it argues for vertical geographies that encompass more than issues of security and segregation and are not necessarily framed by the three-dimensional politics of Israel/Palestine identified by some commentators. In opening up a wider world of vertical urbanisms, the paper outlines three key approaches: close attention to where urban verticality is theorised and the relationship between power and height, the importance of ethnographic detail to emphasise more everyday verticalities and disrupt top-down analytical perspectives, and geographical imaginations that carefully attend to the myriad spatial entanglements of the three-dimensional city.

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“…While no location escapes accountability in areal imagery, the “view from above” is an optical artifact that is aloof in its projection. It is defined by an ontology that is predicated on omission (Dorrian, 2009). Especially in a hypersegregated city like Chicago, where prosperity and hardship mirror the city’s racial geography, maps of inequality may infuriate those with liberal sensibilities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Verticality of White Space: Depths of Ticketing Exposure and Concealment in Chicago’s 42nd Ward

Henricks

2020

American Behavioral Scientist

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The peaks and valleys written into Chicago’s 42nd Ward outline themselves against what space is legible to ticketers in the city’s hungriest vehicle ticketing district. It is a space that defies the racial geography of ticketing in Chicago, where predatory practices prey on communities of color as though they are the city’s slush fund. In the 42nd Ward, ticketing is like a language that is spoken in a specific geometric dialect. Those who issue them speak with a street-level fluency that omits a vocabulary of verticality, where space is readable only through narrow focus that sees what is at ground-level but not below or above it. In a district that features high volumes of automobility but little street parking, the ward’s ticketing hotspots are territorial soft targets that stand out like italicized font to flag the ticketer’s attention. Camouflaged in the unarticulated White space that separates one word from another are vertical sanctuaries from surveillance and sanction. The district is a White space in both a figurative and literal sense, given the racial position of who wrote these words, which vested interests they advance, and to what ends.

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The Aerial Image: Vertigo, Transparency and Miniaturization

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Skywalking in the city: Glass platforms and the architecture of vertigo

Skywalking in the city: Glass platforms and the architecture of vertigo

Vertical urbanisms

The Verticality of White Space: Depths of Ticketing Exposure and Concealment in Chicago’s 42nd Ward

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