Dec 20th 2007 THE PANORAMA OF URBAN MEMORY
Stephen Wiltshire has an apparent gift for drawing cities in detail from memory. Some call him the “human camera”. It is interesting to compare his working process in this day and age of young architects inventing the future away with Rhino, Maya and other modeling programs or citizen nerds recreating their cities in Google Earth SketchUp. His Tokyo Panorama is a particularly well documented project. Panoramas have multiple vanishing points, a multiplicity like open source software. Stephen Oettermann’s book, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, traces the form back to Roman wall paintings, but notes that Robert Barker received a patent for a his panoramic invention on June 17, 1787. With the invention of the camera, photographers took to the air to capture panoramic views of cities. Recently, as part of the Ken Smith master plan for the Orange County Great Park, hot air balloon rides are being offered to promote the park and provide people with a unique perspective on the construction process. To add a spin of public relations, the hot air balloon is designed to resemble a giant orange.
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