Design
Creating Silhouettes of the City From Memory
The makers of Metroscapes discuss their unique and ghostly art of urban exploration.
There are any number of ways to capture your memories of a new city. You can take pictures, or keep a Dickensian travel diary, or go back home and start yelling at strangers on the street. Few put in the effort to understand what they've seen quite like Chauntelle Trinh and Eckard Buscher.
Since 2007, the Berlin-based wife-and-husband team have been making what they call "Metroscapes" — incredibly intricate city centers reproduced on sturdy paper with lasers. Each Metroscape presents a sort of stencil of a city: holes are cut away where the buildings would be, leaving only the skeletal streets. The effect is unique and, when presented against a dark background, even a little ghostly.