Juri Nishi
Royal College of Art

Collective Memories

Objective: I produced these drawings after my first visit to Palermo, Sicily. Built and grown over a course of centuries, Palermo conveys a range of diverse cultures and traditions. Thus the "façades" as a canvas of the city inherit a set of collective memories and traces of events in the city, acting as a backdrop for daily activities that constantly evolves over time. Likewise the balconies are like a chest of drawers left open to reveal the private. They are filled with ordinary objects, leaving traces of the presence and identity of the inhabitants. How can the layer of tradition and culture be defined and reinstated in a modern environment? I wanted to convey these invisible memories of the city that still, in the present, belongs to the layer of the past. I am a puppeteer. That is to say I lend life to inanimate objects. How can a designer animate a drawing? Architectural drawings tend to rely increasingly upon computer renderings, which lacks in energy and spirit. Instead, how can this be overcome by producing a hand-drawing technique?

Tools used: I made the collage in Adobe® Photoshop®, and then I drew using the pencil tool in order to achieve a hand-sketching touch. Photoshop enabled me to create the notion of the layering concept. For further investigation, I took these drawings to silkscreen printing to explore the possibility with the layers and also created an animation using the assets made in Photoshop layers (to import into Adobe After Effects®).

Back to 2004 Adobe Design Achievement Awards Honorable Mention: Illustration.