• Desired Landscapes, Issue 03

Desired Landscapes, Issue 03

Regular price $26.00

A Magazine Reading Into Cities

An experimental travel journal disguised as an unassuming city guide, each pocket-sized issue of Desired Landscapes dives into the subjective representation of place and locale.

When traveling to new places, we usually hunt for the genuine, the truest. Is there a single story to provide a convenient coherency for a city’s identity? While avoiding a call for nostalgia, Desired Landscapes is ever curious about the discontent that stems from the narrative leap affecting contemporary cities: is it possible to connect yesterday to tomorrow and affirm a sense of belonging?

Issue 03 covers TOKYO – PARIS – ATHENS – BRASÍLIA – VENICE – SINGAPORE – LOS ANGELES – LAMPEDUSA – CAIRO – NEW YORK CITY – LONDON – MEXICO CITY.

Mixing photography, poetry, interviews, and first-person prose, each issue is a dense and fascinating collection of pieces inspired by the visual landscape of contemporary urban experience, with contributions from architects, visual artists, graphic designers, and photographers. Public design, mapping, and vernacular and ephemeral typography all become subjects to consider, document and memorialize.

In this issue, an array of distinct voices reading into a mix of cities: book designer Joost Grootens explains "The Doubleness of a Map," covering map keys, colors and grids, while a post-breakup letter to Venice recollects charm and betrayal, uprisings and identity loss. Articles cover symbols and myths in the man-made green terrains of Singapore; the liminal space of Lempedusa, a city between two worlds and a possible answer to the refugee crisis from the future; the way spaces influence feeling, shaping cities and bodies alike; the disappearance of Kingsland Road in London; and an homage to Le Corbusier in Mexico City. 

Conceived by editor-in-chief and Greek graphic designer Natassa Pappa, Desired Landscapes serves as a collection of work depicting distant vistas — unvisited or perhaps unforgettable, projections of possible homes, streets to be discovered, and urban clichés to be demystified. 

Published by [Street], [Design], [Words], 2020

Softcover, 170 pages, b&w and full color, 4.2 × 6.3 inches

ISSN: 2623-3452

Looking makes making better.