This is the first note from the studio.
Cityform started with one stubborn question: what would your particular kilometre look like, lifted off the map and pressed into something you could pick up?
I grew up looking at street atlases — the kind with grid squares and key features picked out in red. As a kid I would flip to the page my house sat on and stare at the geometry. Where the roads bent. Where the railway cut through. Which side of the river I lived on. There is something specific about your own kilometre. It is not London or Sheffield or Liverpool; it is the bit of London or Sheffield or Liverpool that is yours.
This studio exists to make that bit into a small object.
Every plate is a real square kilometre, drawn from Environment Agency LIDAR and OpenStreetMap. The roofs are at their actual heights. The river is cut into the surface. The whole thing is nine centimetres square — small enough for a shelf, dense enough that you can find the bit of pavement you have walked a thousand times.
I am one person, working out of a small studio in Sheffield. The twelve cities in the catalogue are a starting set. Anywhere else is by commission — drop a postcode in the picker and I will see what the LIDAR has.
This journal is where I will write up notes from the studio: a new city going into production, a strange data discovery from a specific kilometre square, an answer to a question I keep getting asked. Nothing scheduled. Posts when there is something worth saying.
Thanks for being here.