Coexistence
Editorial
2023
The city I grew up, Shenzhen, has a feature that very few modern cities still have. In the progress that it developed from a village to a city, the primitive villages are kept between the urban settlements, which are called “urban villages”. In my childhood memory, I often walked across the huge city malls while I could see the side of the urban villages from the gap of the walls. This phenomenon of coexistence is so rare and unique for me, that I want to make a book to document it. I would like more people to know there’re villages hidden behind the modern city, and think about how their future fate would be as a part of urban modernization.
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*This work won the Merit Award in ADC Young Ones Competition.
Great Difference Separated by a Wall
When I walked through city and urban villages to look for inspiration, I find a distinct difference——the shapes of the sky that are “drawn” by the surrounding buildings. The shapes of the city sky are usually very wide, whereas sky of urban villages is narrow and cracked. Therefore, I have an idea of placing the two shapes side by side to let the audience see the difference directly, and make them into a book.
Process
I choose to use a traditional technique in China to make the patterns. It is called “Lanshai” in Chinese. Lanshai needs power of sunshine. Firstly, I needed to blend two kinds of chemicals together to produce a uv light-sensitive pigment. then, I covered the canvas with the sky shape, so that only part of the canvas would be lit, and put it under the sun for 5-15 minutes. Finally, the canvas was washed to get rid of the yellow tone of the chemicals. This technique fits well with my theme, because it needs sunlight to see the blue sky of Shenzhen as well.
Three Sets of Typefaces
Based on features of skies of urban villages and city settlements in Shenzhen, I created a set of typeface, in which the wide edge is inspired by city‘s shape, and narrow edge is inspired by village’s. Then, I created another two sets of typefaces which are purely of city or village’s shapes.
Typeface of City
Typeface of Village
Design of the Labels
I use the three sets of typefaces to create a semi-transparent label. It is the description of the book. In my book, the left page is about city and the right one is about village. Therefore, the descriptions on the label follow this sequence. In the middle of the label, the distance between two places in one spread is written, to display how close they are, despite the great diffence in their outlookings.
Name of the Village
Distance of the Two Places
Name of the City Building
Book Design
