Modernist Architecture. A tree. Not caring about disrupting the regularity of a facade. Photo by lilypenelope

A forest. Many projects. Eggs. One goal: Save the Rainforests of Madagascar.
Photo & Model (EGGsperimental Architecture) by lilypenelope

Main Page: Giant Egg Event

A wall. A blank page. Juxtaposition-{s}. Overlapping stories. Our Urban Everyday Book. Photo by lilypenelope

A corner. A fragment. Angle and angles. Point{s} of view{s}: space, image and memory.
Photo by lilypenelope

How many times have you said the word "space" today? Photo by lilypenelope

A trash can. A Magazine from 1964. An article about car race for women only. Name: "Eve on the wheel". Official cars: "Innocenti". Photo by lilypenelope

Tiger. On the couch. In the reading corner. Waiting. For a book? To eat....
Photo by lilypenelope

A mirror. A store. Ancient objects. I stare into a passed/past reflection.
Photo by lilypenelope

Music from the soul. Music from the hardrive. Flowing. Photo by lilypenelope

Architecture. Old and new. The first reflected on the 2nd. Distortion. New perception. New reading. New architecture? The architecture of reflection. Ours?
Photo by lilypenelope

Family. Ancestors. Greatgrandfather. Watching. On the wall. From the wall. A daily memory. Photo by lilypenelope.

Somewhere in the city. Somewhere in my mind! Photo by lilypenelope

Round and round and round and round and round.... Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Photo by lilypenelope

Change can happen! Store window along the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles. Shot long time ago, this pic still makes me smile! Photo by lilypenelope

Fragmentation. Partiality. A name. A window. A color: Blue. Somewhere in Paris.
Photo by lilypenelope

Downtown Los Angeles. A sunny day on top of the Lofts. Photo by lilypenelope

Colors. Water. A garden. In the middle of the city. You can watch but you can't touch!
Photo by lilypenelope

The Wall: somewhere in Downtown Los Angeles. Watching, reading and thinking.
Photo by lilypenelope

Somewhere in Saint Germain des Prés. Dreaming of Paris! Photo by lilypenelope

Art creates life. Or is it the opposite? Life creates art? A wall. A message. A work of artistic expression. A wall. Our canvas. The reflection of our life. Yet, the wall, is the symbolic division between public (life) and private (life). A {vertical} line protecting our domestic space. Is this line the embodiment of an artistic verticality? Or simply an absorbent structure of a dual reality? The inner and the outer art? Our mind and our externalization of it? What's behind the wall/canvas? There is where you'll find the answers.

Every face tells us a story. Every face has a history. Interesting faces usually tell us interesting stories. Through ages many painters have represented interesting faces in their work. They externalize emotions. Thoughts. A past that you only can imagine through the feelings their expressions give you.
Something very nice happened to me while I was in LA this past month. I was introduced to the most interesting people I probably ever met in my entire life. Partners in crime: Starbucks, a table next to a fountain and a friend named Don.
Don was my neighbour when I used to live in LA. I haven't seen him for a decade. Then, one morning, thanks to a double espresso urge, I met him at a Starbucks in Marina del Rey. This was last year. We just had few days to catch up. And that was it. This year he was my first thought when I woke up the first morning. I drove to Starbucks and...there he was! LA is no doubt one of the biggest city yet, at that particular "table" life suddently became for me that of the nicest town on earth! Don started to introduce me to all his friends that, day after day would meet there. 1, 2, 3, 4 the group began to grow bigger every day. Every morning I would drive there, and every morning I would meet new people. Their kindness, their positive mood, their histories, their ideas and yes...their faces immediately fascinated me. I would stop every single day. For breakfast and later, after my relaxtion at the beach! Sitting there at "the table" was great. The conversations would be different everyday depending on who was there. Art, architecture, religion, music, literature, food, wine, cigars, world tragedies and world beauties. I have to tell you that listening to their conversations was incredibly inspiring. "The Table" became like a city within a city. And each one of the people sitting around it were the most special characters of the movie called "Everyday Life". Don, Jimmy, Ronnie, Keiko, Elaine, Tom, Emmanuel, Sylvia, Johnny, Mary-Ann...ohhh such wonderful people! With such interesting faces! With such interesting stories to tell! One more year...and I'll be back at the table...eager to be part of this amazing group of people. Listening and anticipating like in any great books: anxious to know what the next page will contain!

Walking around the streets of a city it often happens to discover hidden architectural treasures such as this one. The Tower Theatre opened in 1927 with a sneak preview of Warner's "The Jazz Singer". Designed by S. Charles Lee, the Tower was his first major cinema building. A Spanish-Romanesque-Moorish design the building was constructed in a very particular way: long and narrow (only 50 feet wide). 1000 seats and a retail store were contained within the long building. It was the first theatre downtown wired for sound.
Known during the 40's as the Newsreel and later as the Music Hall this theater has been closed for movies since 1988.

The exterior and interior have appeared in many movies such as "Fight Club", "Coyote Ugly", "She's so lovely", "Mambo Kings", "Ed Wood", "Mulholland Drive" (interior), "The Good German" and many other.

It is designated a Historic-Cultural Landmark.

Walking around the most different land/urban-{scapes} of Los Angeles everything becomes apparent. In the end what is the difference between a freeway and a beach? Fluidity is their common denominator.

Yet this is just a poetic statement! The first image was taken with my IPhone while me and my friend Efrem were walking around Downtown LA searching for the perfect spot to shoot some color photos. Chinatown was the first thought. We walked all day. But Chinatown wasn't really colorful. Beside some strange characters we met on our wandering reality was mostly black and white...like me and my friend!!!!!

We found many interesting spots while going back to our car. Same spots as last year...yep...we weren't really creative in the search of something totally new this year, but, obviously something was different. Eventhough we shot many images in the same exact locations as last year the results were brilliantly different. Yes, our point of view, our interpretation, our reading of Downtown (such a fascinating place) was new.

I will post the photographs (those taken with a camera not with a phone!) soon.

But these...these really show two essential details of this city.

Fluidity, movement, horizon-{tality} and yes: colors....!

The city is like a book! It's all about cover/facade. About content. About structure. About stories. About people. About interpretation.

No matter where you are you can read everything that surrounds you the way you want. The way you feel. Walking around the streets/alleys/avenues/boulevards of Los Angeles all of a sudden is like walking in a novel. A continuously changing plot. New characters. Different murderers. Different places. And most of all different interpretations and therefore understandings. Good writers can depitct the city with passion, with carefully structured details. The beauty of a good book is when your imagination and the author's explanation walk hand in hand. You read and yet you dream, adding imaginary pieces to the imaginative process. That's what I call a good book.

And that's what I call a good city: a city where the depicted world, the images that surrounds you, even if clearly presented to you, leave some space for imagination. Your everyday urban novel. A city where walls talk to you. They let you know they are there. A sign telling you "I AM". And you start thinking "Who are you? Who were you? What is your history? What characters gave birth to your story? My story!" But then, after this surreal chat with a sign on the wall you realized that maybe the sign was attempting to tell you something else. You go a little further and then you see something else: it was not I AM but 1 AM.... Now you start it all again. ..."Who are you? What's your story?...."

That's Los Angeles! A city where the images that surrounds you, even if clearly presented to you, leave space to imagination. It's all about reading and interpretation!!

I have been kind of lazy lately! At least with FreeForm! I've been back from my fantastic LA vacation and I have to tell you all about it! I've been working like a maniac on a architecture competition that I just sent couple of minutes ago! Now I can relax a little bit! And I can start sharing photos, anecdotes, about friends and new friends, about food, about movies about crazy stuff!
Ciao for now!