Territory (2019)

I am drawn to newly built districts on the outskirts of megacities — areas of recent development where the city is only beginning to enter the space, not yet having fully transformed it. In close proximity to new housing blocks and quarters, vacant lots, bodies of water, and wooded areas still persist — fragments of an environment that has not yet lost its prior logic.

Here, urban infrastructure and everyday practices encounter what preceded them. Their proximity produces a condition in which two different orders overlap, not yet resolved into a single system.

This is a temporary phase. Until development is complete, neither of these orders becomes dominant: the city is already reshaping the space, yet the space continues to influence how it is used. This is not a conflict, but a form of mutual adjustment that exists only until the environment stabilizes.

“Territory” here is not a geographical designation, but a state. It is a brief interval in which differences remain visible and can be read — before the space becomes part of a more uniform urban fabric. In newly built, typically low-cost residential areas, this process is especially apparent: the environment quickly levels out and repeats from one district to another, gradually losing its connection to what came before.