The Letter Rack

Abstract

“The Letter Rack” is a speculative exercise in exploring the emergence of new spatial relationships when we stop thinking of future cities in terms of figure/ground duality and instead start looking at them as a continuous assemblage of forms and signs.

This form of digital divertissement in drawings originates from the reinterpretation of the so-called “trompe l’oeil,” a pictorial genre used for centuries to depict illusionistic scenes that give spectators the impression that they are facing real, three-dimensional objects. More specifically, the Letter Rack refers to the 1668 trompe l’oeil by Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, which represents a board partition populated by envelopes, objects, and a music book. The Letter Rack borrows the spatial organization of Gijsbrechts’ painting and, in general, some of the ingredients common to the tradition of trompe l’oeil, such as the use of metaphor, allegory, or symbolism, to reverse their meaning. It turns realistic representations into a hypothetical scenario in which building types and urban spaces meet, collide, and fuse in novel configurations. In other words, The Letter Rack is an inverted digital trompe l’oeil.