Machine Aesthetics - on the streets

While visiting galleries for inspiration, I find myself seeking inspiration not from the artwork but from London streets and the ceaseless flow of human life around it. The city's structures, decorations, and dynamics between its people and machinery gave me some ideas for this project. Observing these elements on the streets brought a fresh layer of inspiration to the Machine Aesthetics project.

Buildings

Urban architecture is fascinating because it interplays form and function. Practicality often dictates design, resulting in almost machine-made structures. Walking through the streets, I was struck by how buildings rose like machines, each brick, steel girder, and glass pane meticulously placed with purpose. There’s beauty in this organised structure, in how everything interlocks, seemingly embodying the calculated nature of a machine.

The Flow of Crowds

Then there’s the contrast of people. Buildings are fixed and unyielding, but the crowds are fluid, moving and shifting, creating an organised flow. Observing crowds as they navigate through the structures they inhabit, I see a resemblance to gears within a machine—each person with their purpose, forming a collective rhythm, like a living mechanism operating within the city—organic movements in an engineered world. This thought led me again to the people in modern capitalist society—being a cog to produce and serve.

Cranes and Scaffolding

Cranes, scaffolding, and construction sites are temporary yet examples of machinery in action—machines building machines, continuously reshaping the city’s landscape. I’m particularly drawn to cranes, with their massive, articulated forms and quiet grace as they perform tasks too large for human hands. Watching them hover over cityscapes, lifting materials with precision in the sky, I see parallels to brushstrokes on canvas, each movement carefully controlled to create a larger whole. These machines remind me of the collaboration between humans and machines that defines our modern life.

Decorative Elements

One might think of machines as purely functional, but I find another inspiration in the Christmas decorations at Carnaby Street. 

From intricate ironwork and Art Deco reliefs to the streamlined design of modern facades, these decorative elements bring personality to otherwise impersonal structures. They remind me that even machines can have characters.

Final Thoughts: Blending the Organic with the Mechanical

Through these observations, I began forming ideas to celebrate the Machine Aesthetic not as a cold, distant concept but as a living, breathing reflection of our world. Each building, each crowd, and each crane tells a story of the balance between human creativity and mechanical function, movement and structure. I want to express this balance and blend the rigid with the fluid. As I move forward, I’m excited to see how these elements transform into my pieces of work.