America's Back Alleys

Back alleys of American cities for me are one of the most attractive assets of urban structures.

They are the underdog streets. No permission to wear street names. Not intended to show the back sides of buildings so urban design does not exist. A biotope for plants and animals. Rest space for workers during breaks. Spaces without attention developing specific skins. Graffiti can survive here, and things of the past, long forgotten. But at night they are fully illuminated.
Keeps the fear away.

(pictures show some Downtown Denver's back alleys).
I am currently on travel in CO, NM, AZ and Chicago.

Street/Surface/Beauty

click pic

Hating Germans and their language, too, on hidden walls in Berlin

translation: "F***ing Germans".
credible message only with spelling errors.

Urban Settlers

click pic

Signs on walls #3

Signs on walls #2

Signs on walls #1

KOYAANISQATSI

Just saw that movie again.
KOYAANISQATSI.

A 1983 documentary using only pictures and music.
Showing and questioning modern civilization.
Saw it first time in my late teens. No exaggeration
to say it lastingly influenced my views.

Here are some links:
http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi (german)

This film reminds me that our life styles could be so different.
For hours every day it's screens that get my attention whether
it's for professional reasons or for entertainment.
Mass produced items made of plastics, metal and glas are not
only worth longing for, they are crucial to own, I learned.
To indicate my place in society. To fuel the economy. To keep
cities' retail strips vibrant.
Bricks and concrete is what cities are built from. Biosphere
can't be controlled completely, yet, but it's not really a matter
in cities apart from design decisions.
Planting a million trees in Los Angeles, as projected, to me
is not a way to change our life styles. It's a design decision,
though probably a good one.
It's urban plants that are not planned or controlled
that remind me on the other side of life.

Bauhaus style architecture in Weimar

Bauhaus like family homes, recently built
in Weimar, Germany by different architects.

Here Bauhaus School of design and architecture
startet in 1919. Then moved to Dessau and Berlin,
where it was terminated in 1933 by the Nazi regime.

Leipzig living with ruins

Leipzig: History, Radicals and Wealth

Leipzig, city of 500,000 in Saxony, Germany.
City in transition. One of the great, historic cities
of Eastern Germany, socialist urban planning
could not erase. So many buildings of the early
1900s, containers of social history. Wars, poverty,
or just personal fortunes and tragedies.
People of these days long gone. Rewind the time to
experience life in the early days of the last century.
As long as there are buildings to see, to touch, to smell,
there is a base for imagination.
Many houses dilapidated, waiting. Some to be
manicured to fit into new urban economies,
some without any chance. The city,
like so many other urban areas of the East, lost
big shares of population to new burbs and the West.
But this is a great city, and it's balancing German
historic identity. (More pics to follow)

Plants ahead

Dark caves' green view to the outside. Apartment above, beauty parlor below.