{"id":2700,"date":"2024-02-12T16:39:42","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T15:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/urban-stories\/trip-to-the-east\/skyscrapers\/"},"modified":"2024-02-17T17:06:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T16:06:20","slug":"skyscrapers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/urban-stories\/trip-to-the-east\/skyscrapers\/","title":{"rendered":"Skyscrapers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\">[vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1707821197158{margin-right: 50px !important;}&#8221;]\u00ab<em>Cities, like dreams, are built of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules illogical, their perspectives deceptive, and everything hides something else.<\/em> \u00bb (Italo Calvino \u2013 Invisible Cities)<\/p>\n<p>I believe they represent great Chinese pride: the 375m high Jin Mao Tower, the 637m high Shanghai Tower and the World Financial Center 492m. Or at least, they are willingly shown as such to the objective of a Western photographer.<\/p>\n<p>This was one of the biggest surprises of my trip: incredulous in Shanghai I met the &#8220;<em>Manhattan<\/em>&#8221; of the East. In the presence of majestic <em>skylines<\/em>, I understood that my photographic reportage could not ignore the astonishing geometric shapes of the towers, of the skyscrapers raised by decades of gentrification.<\/p>\n<p>An uninterrupted proscenium that surprised me around every corner, wherever my gaze was directed, at a road intersection: from the \u201c<em>FFC Former French Concession<\/em>\u201d in Pudong, through Jing&#8217;an and Huangpu.<\/p>\n<p>The architect Yona Friedman says it well \u00ab&#8230; <em>It&#8217;s like in theater, the scenography is important [&#8230;] but when we talk about space in the sense of architecture, we perceive it as if we were animals who also hear what they don&#8217;t see, for example what is above, on the roofs.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<p>Well, then I strongly wanted my gaze to move away from the conformed space, at eye sight, at the street level. And I let him soar in the hideouts between one skyscraper and another, as much as wanting to glimpse the sky from the depths of a fir forest. To recognize a place even from its notoriously invisible profiles.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;16px&#8221;][vc_btn title=&#8221;Back&#8221; color=&#8221;black&#8221; size=&#8221;sm&#8221; i_icon_fontawesome=&#8221;fas fa-arrow-alt-circle-left&#8221; add_icon=&#8221;true&#8221; link=&#8221;url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.andreacalestani.it%2Fen%2Furban-stories%2Ftrip-to-the-east%2F|title:Trip%20to%20the%20East|&#8221;][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;3\/4&#8243;][vc_masonry_media_grid grid_id=&#8221;vc_gid:1707832322543-ab64509da119b2c8d4c3e31d8f43215f-9&#8243; css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1707821154154{border-top-width: 3px !important;border-right-width: 3px !important;border-bottom-width: 3px !important;border-left-width: 3px !important;border-left-color: #ffffff !important;border-left-style: initial !important;border-right-color: #ffffff !important;border-right-style: initial !important;border-top-color: #ffffff !important;border-top-style: initial !important;border-bottom-color: #ffffff !important;border-bottom-style: initial !important;}&#8221; include=&#8221;2670,2672,2674,2676,2678,2680,2682,2684,2686,2688,2690,2692,2694,2696,2646,2648,2650,2652,2654,2656,2658,2660,2662,2664,2666,2668&#8243;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1707821197158{margin-right: 50px !important;}&#8221;]\u00abCities, like dreams, are built of desires and fears, even if&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2480,"parent":2530,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2700","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2700\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacalestani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}