lewism

How do we consume the city? The city street is a place of action and interaction and hidden meanings and signs. Part of the beauty of the street is the history and art there is to read like a book but which is mostly ignored by the passer by. Anyone who has read Baudelaire or Benjamin may be familiar with the concept of the flâneur or city observer, and love of and pleasure to be taken in the city for and of itself. In an article in the London Review of Books Peter Campbell makes a fascinating contrast between the museum and the street, and between Paris and London. Also in the website Ruavista we see a love of the flâneur’s city, one just below the surface of common perception. The stopping off point for this article is the street signs of Paris which ruavista posted. But Helsinki street signs have a hidden artistry and meaning too. Take a look at the photos above (click on them for a larger view)that I took one weekend in Helsinki. The same street but opposite sides. One shows the ’standard’ signage of the city both in Finnish and Swedish. The other painted on an an old building is presumably a surviving sign from before the war. It also hints at Helsinki’s Russian history, the sign being in all three of Helsinkis founding languages. How many other surviving signs like this there are around the centre of town I don’t know. Just as I was writing this up Hesingin Sanomat published an article about an art project adding signs to six streets in the centre of Helsinki in Arabic. I hope their glue is strong I am looking forward to go looking for them. This kind of active street intervention brings to mind one of my favourite flickr groups the space invaders group and the website spaceinvaders, itself a kind of urban intervention project, hopefully coming to a city near me soon! Note: as of time of publishing this post Ruavista is offline I have a link to the archived page on Paris street signs here. The article also tells how French architects can and do incorporate their own street signs into their buildings like the tiled sign shown below. This freedom I haven’t seen in Helsinki. Also if anyone knows anything more about the Rauhankatu group that installed these signs please post me.