AMERICAN PORTFOLIO
SERIES : NO PLACE ARCHITECTURE
The project delves into the interrogation of place representation, cultural identity, and nationhood, particularly focusing on exploring master narratives and depictions of the American landscape and its architecture.
It aims to contribute examples of American suburban architecture that display ambivalence regarding place identity and photographic representation. These structures possess a unique quality, straddling categories of urban and rural, local and global, evoking the concept of non-places as explored by scholars like Auge and De Certeau.
Within this framework, the work engages in a topological scavenger hunt, seeking out shapes, textures, and symmetries within mundane architecture. There’s a particular attraction to structures displaying vibrant colors and geometric shapes. Through careful framing, the work deliberately withholds information that could reveal the structures’ origins. The intention is to demonstrate that these ubiquitous and simplistic structures inhabit a space devoid of geographic designation. They exist as anonymous places, “no places,” defined only by the medium used to capture them, lacking distinct cues of Americanness.