The Urban Anthro-scape by Alexander Jeong & Brandon Hing

Winner of Narrative Award 2022

University of Southern California

‘The National Association of City Transportation has famously stated that “streets make up more than 80 percent of all public space in cities.” But how much of public space is truly public? The way that streets were designed in an urban grid, productivity was prioritized in developing the urban narrative. Human interaction on the street scale became an afterthought.  

Our proposal aims to flip this script. Why couldn’t we eliminate the need to travel by having our destination come to us, not only removing individual transport but also filling the public space with a vibrantly interactive streetscape? The street would become a destination, a place to experience, prioritizing the intimate relationship between the public realm and the people.’

Judges’ comments

The judges were captivated by the playful nature and storytelling qualities of Jeong and Hing’s illustrative drawing. “There is a fantastical energy to the imagery. It’s a drawing that truly embraces its narrative through-and-through, reclaiming the streets through its creative vibrancy, narrative of public spaces and its unapologetic character of playful storytelling.”

Jeong and Hing’s image demonstrates fantastic creativity and an enjoyment for playful representation. “It’s great to see drawings untethered from the pragmatics of realities; Jeong and Hing’s drawing is a brilliant example of creative storytelling and their work excels through its confident portrayal of narrative.”

Vortex by Endrit Marku

Commended for Narrative Award 2022

‘Our reality is fragile, most of the time it is too locked into the present. The inherited cities, signs and the superficial order of our civilization gives us the illusion of stability and perennial continuity while our existence is actually only a bubble in between infinite and nomadic spirals of space and time, an urban continuum slowly dissolving, whose orderly structure is incapable to sustain humanity’s descending spiral.’

Don't Mind The Mess by Felipe Alencar

Special Mention for Narrative Award 2022

‘This is a drawing that I created using the observation of the space where I live - my room, workplace, office - and the Spherical Equirectangular Perspective, to illustrate how the world is and can be observed in another way.

I used an algorithm (from the Kuula website) to wrap the map I created around a digital sphere and allow virtual immersion in my environment.

For Virtual Immersion, click: https://kuula.co/post/N3QJZ

Human eyes are just one of the possible ways of seeing existence, and we must not close our mental eyes to new possibilities of interacting with the world.’

Citytour by Asad Hossen

Special Mention for Narrative Award 2022

'Cities are vast collages; here strange and often shocking juxtapositions await on every corner. The future folded into the past, and vice versa. Cities are like compost heaps; just layers and layers of stuff. The vertigo of accelerating change, the dizzying spectacle of globalized media, the feeling of being drowned in consumer goods with barely a shelf life before obsolescence. Disjointed imagery always has power because life is disjointed and because we are. Cyberpunk turns those messy feelings into a place, where it's no longer necessary to resist the splintering pressures of society because the fight's over and we lost. All that's left is to submit to the carnival of sensations.’

C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate by Andrei Anisimov

Special Mention for Narrative Award 2022

‘Digital art based on quote from Bladerunner’

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