City as a book

Abstract

The article is an attempt to find such a city-descriptive language which would depict the diversity of views on contemporary Szczecin. While building methodology, the author used the categories proposed by Deyan Sudjic in his book called “Language of Cities”. Szczecin has become the field of formal experiments, model parallel to cities described by Sudjic, which has initiated the cycle of the works. As a source of historical knowledge, the author quotes a seventeenth-century paper by Paul Friedeborn entitled Description of The City of Szczecin. Its original Latin text has been very helpful while working on these objects.

Nine works from the Satzspiegel series have the same proportions and a blue-grey colour of the cover. They were made in various graphic and typographic techniques, but their design is always related to the golden division or the spiral of growth. In three of those books specially designed Friedeborn typeface is used. External spectacle, like the one we deal with in the concept of a city the author tried to weave into individual and intimate spaces like those on pages of the book.