CIUDAD IMAGINADA

“Ciudad Imaginada / Imagined City” is a collection of unique handblown glass lamps produced by designers Diego Vides Borrell and Luisa Restrepo Moreno. The collection explores the urban morphology of Mexico City and plays with the mental construction we each have of it. These series of lamps, floating like clouds in the space, portray individualized understandings of the city.

The urban meshes sandblasted on the surface of the glass are sections from Mexico City, including las Lomas, Condesa, Barranca del Muerto, Reforma, etc. but reorganized, a personal cartography, a collage of the routines, the traffic we deal with, the time we spend at specific spaces, the memories and desires we each have of the city we live in.

México city has approximately 22 million people and covers an area of 1,495 km2 (930 square miles). We all live here but like in every city our recurrent circuits are not necessarily the same, and many times is as if we lived in completely different places. For ‘Imagined city’, a collection of collectible design lamps, we wanted to graphically explore this idea. After talking to different people, for each lamp, using vinyl cut maps of sections of the city, we made a collage composed of those places each normally transited resulting in their personal cities. Exhibited and placed in groups, in the same space coexist different versions of the same geographical spot. Needless to say, how we understand, approach and experience the city varies as much as the lamps.

The collection explores and contrasts the urban morphology of Mexico City and the city that each one imagines. Through Ciudad Imaginada we seek to address the deconstruction of a 'real' space from its individual experience, transforming it into a fictitious and personal space corresponding to an imaginary. The recognizable maps change with each proposal, idea and dream of the city we desire, thus proposing new urban structures based on the sections of the city that we circulate the most, that we remember the most and that have become part of memory.

Blown and sandblasted glass, wood, cork, brushed brass, LED lighting. Variable measurements.

STUDIO SHOTS