Antipode Cities

Primal Urbanism

Abstract

This field report describes the Antipode Cities Project, which aimed to connect Earth’s most geographically distant cities with collective cartographies made by local children. For the project, the author and art gallery staff conducted a series of map-making workshops on opposite sides of the world with children ranging from five to eight years old. The children’s cartographies showcased a sort of natural urbanism, a trait that could be called “primal urbanism”—an innate perception of the city as a place that could be transformed by projects to alter its shape and form. The Antipode Cities Project, with the aid of different Chinese and Argentinean institutions, organized a research field trip and a series of workshops to compare Qingdao, China and Buenos Aires, Argentina—two cities that are at the exact geographical antipode from each other. This field report describes the conducted activities, perspectives and outcomes along with considerations about the pedagogy behind the concept of antipode cities from children’s perspectives.