Summary

What will the city of the future look like? Certainly it will aspire to be ecological, sustainable, and efficient. Yet the widespread adoption of these ideals has produced an unexpected consequence: the gradual erasure of urban identity. Under the banner of “sustainable building,” glass towers proliferate from one end of the planet to the other. Far from genuinely sustainable, these structures participate in a process of homogenization that threatens the beauty, character, and singularity of cities around the world.

If future ecologies are to be truly viable, they must emerge as hybrids—spaces where tradition and innovation coexist, where standardization does not overpower uniqueness. In this photographic series, taken during the winter of 2020, standpipes become emblematic of New York City’s diversity and its resistance to aesthetic uniformity.

Within the framework of the Future Ecologies exhibition, standpipes introduce fissures into the homogenizing logic of capitalist urban development. Functionality and cost-efficiency do not always produce better cities. These objects possess their own idiosyncratic presence: they have endured over time, accumulating layers of use, weather, and memory, inscribing the city onto their surfaces.

This work advocates for a future in which the essence of our towns is not sacrificed in pursuit of global sameness. We call for more diverse societies, for genuinely sustainable cities, and for urban environments in which the relationships between object, human, and place are allowed to remain complex—unpredictable, even—rather than predetermined by systems of efficiency and control.

Ornament of Daily Life thus positions everyday urban artifacts as subtle forms of resistance. In their unassuming persistence, they remind us that a city’s true sustainability depends not only on ecological performance, but on the preservation of its distinctiveness—its textures, its multiplicity, and its capacity for organic, lived variation.

Location: New York

Year: 2021