A Shared World of Man and Nature

I look around, and wonder how did my landscape become one filled with skyscrapers, cement and yet perfectly laid-out trees.  "Where was the raw and wildness of nature growing on its own terms?" I found myself asking.  It was this reality that I faced after living in a city for most of my adult life that led me to question where was nature. I had stopped looking for it, and when I started looking again - to my surprise - I found nature embedded in the manmade elements that made up the urban landscape that I called home.

Nature is beautiful, delicate, and strong and that is what I discovered in the manmade streets that made up my everyday surroundings. Even though the streets of the city occupy a palette less desirable, there is something familiar in the manmade world and nature at the same time. As I started really looking, everywhere I turned I discovered the hands of nature had touched the urban landscape in some way. 

Looking at nature and the manmade world in a symbiotic way,  “A Shared World of Man and Nature,” focuses on two different elements, one of nature – a leaf, and the other manmade - skyscrapers.  Focusing on the common structural designs of the two I discovered relationships between the two, one of their exterior structures, which are strong and define their shapes. To the interior structural elements that make up the connecting veins and stem of the leaf that are also similar to the various windows and columns that make up the unique shape of a building.

It is due to nature that man has been able to develop his own world, and at the same time nature and the manmade world occupy the same space for different reasons that purposely fulfill needs, if unmet, would be noticed.  Looking at the shared space of the two led to my realization of how much nature and the manmade world are not that much different from one another in design. Each uniquely has their own shape, lines and pattern that begin from the same foundation.