Coral Reef City

Cities are a lot like coral reefs; it's inhabitants, humanoid, insect, mammal, botanical, layer upon layer weaving in and out, all that interconnected life affecting the city and it's structure organically, growing and evolving constantly. This idea occurred to me while watching the documentary "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill", which is about a band of wild parrots in San Francisco and the man who used to take care of them.

The movie documents how the bird community was forcefully disbanded and their caretaker displaced because the owner of the property wanted to make his already large mansion even larger. When I began these sketches, I envisioned floating metropolises made from heaps of garbage, but in thinking about how cities are shaped by our own human forces, be they good or bad, I decided to emulate a coral reef.

As I was sketching, I was reminded of this passage from William Gibson's book, Irodu:

Laney looked at the tweaked Hillman on his screen. "You haven't told me what I'm looking for."


-William Gibson, from the book Idoru