Sam Cranstoun, To Speak of Cities, 2020, vinyl lettering, UQ Art Museum Window Commission, supported by Mrs Jane Tynan and Mr Michael Tynan, 2020.

Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Simon Woods.

In the second of UQ Art Museum’s window commissions, Brisbane artist Sam Cranstounhas rendered a phrase that conflates futurist typography, Ed Ruscha-style lettering, and 1990s Microsoft Word art. The phrase ‘to speak of cities and present them only as buildings’ is drawn from a 1967 essay written by the accomplished Greek town planner, architect and engineer Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1913 – 1975), which describes the flawed system of human settlements.
 
The essay outlines the trajectory for the cities of the future, and how we must take into account their ‘human’ pathology. Doxiadis acutely understood that humankind is expanding at an unprecedented rate and that our cities must address this on a human scale. He imagined the sci-fi concept of Ecumenopolis, an idea that in the future urban areas and megalopolises would eventually fuse into a single continuous worldwide city. This would accommodate our population growth and transport networks. Current projections by the United Nations state that the global population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050, so how many people can our planet support?
 
Even now, the 1967 phrase gestures to a chasm in theory and practice around civic organisation. Cities are aspirational, with the ‘individual’ considered through services such as waste, water, transport, and housing. The spread of cities through these civic services, however, deprives us of the right to be connected to one another, and for many of us a third of our lives is lost to the commute. Doxiadis calls for a closer study of the entire system of the city, which today is increasingly underscored by conversations of climate crisis and mass migration.
 
The work To Speak of Cities is neither a question nor a statement, but rather a riddle. Placed on UQ Art Museum’s exterior, the concerns inherent in the artwork are rendered literally over a brutalist structure with a mirror façade. This reflects the sandstone exterior of the Forgan Smith Building, opposite. Each word is treated individually, its direction altering so as to place emphasis on each syllable. In this way, the phrase is part-spoken word and part-manifesto. 

To Speak of Cities was on view at UQ Art Museum until January 16, 2021.

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