Genius Loci of Glasgow
When put in front of the task of capturing the feeling of Glasgow as someone newly moved into the city, I have realized that I view the city’s grid as interchangable pieces of a puzzle. This dictated the creation of Task 01: a series of 64 puzzle pieces designed to follow 7 patterns (see the diagrams on the adjacent page).
The drawing below represents a stylized version of the task for ease of understanding the arrangement. Based on this, the puzzle was also created as a laser cut transparent acrylic game (see next pages).
The point of the physical game was to encourage viewers to participate. The pieces are modular, generic, showing the arrangement of different blocks layouts, and they offer a multitude of ways of assembly. There are multiple correct ways to resolve and interpret this grid-puzzle.
In my opinion, it focuses on the journey of a pedestrian through the city. The edges of the pieces represent roads, paths, them being the main focus of the physical artefact. The boundaries of the buildings represented on the pieces are taken from the real life Glasgow blocks, and they represent a secondary focus of the artefact. They give a sense of space, of direction, while maintaining a sort of anonimity, of abstractiveness. they can be rearranged on will, as a tribute to the history of Glasgow and its tenements.
