The Playful City - Bodys Isek Kingelez

A friend showed me some photos of work by an artist called Bodys Isek Kingelez. He makes models of his visions of cities, including his hometown Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These models are visions of the future: a mixture of existing architecture and new subjective ideas about what is possible. Although the shapes, colours and scale of the architecture all seems fantastic, the materials used (bottle caps, corrugated cardboard and tinfoil) are from our own world.

The primary colours, curvy shapes and slides, stripes and spots, are a world away from the restrained, grey models that have formed the bulk of my research in Liverpool so far. Are these models for kids? I think children would appreciate them though that's not to say they wouldn't prefer the model of Liverpool city Centre in the Central Library. In anycase, the model represents a very different kind of vision, and perhaps for a different audience. Is Kingelez actually proposing that the buildings would be these strange colours, or even the same shape? They might seem ridiculous but in some ways it is no more ridiculous than the Liverpool One model; buildings that in reality will be made from metal and glass, here rendered in wood, a strangely nostalgic vision of the future. Kingelez models are ridiculous and fantastic in a way that encourages you to enjoy his personal vision and then think about your own vision, "what if...".

Bodys Isek Kingelez profile on Culturebase