The Largest Art

“The Largest Art provides a new theoretical and practical understanding of urban design. It does so by reexamining the discipline’s relationship to urban space and urban populations and by reframing urban design as a “building art” that accepts those elements of cities that are beyond designers’ direct control—other buildings, other owners, other actors—and that then incorporates these elements into urban design. By incorporating the city’s plural elements— those many elements imagined for more than a single design or by a single designer—urban design becomes a plural art that is more powerful and wide-ranging, more influential and beneficial, even as it becomes more democratic, participatory, open-ended, and infinite. Understanding urban design as a plural art may sound utopian, but it is actually the opposite—it is eminently practical. [. . .]

Many theorists and practitioners have recognized elements of urban design’s plural nature in the past. Famed urbanist Jane Jacobs identified urban design’s plural qualities when she called for redevelopment to reconcile “life with art,” as did MIT professor Kevin Lynch when he spoke of “city design” instead of urban design. [. . .] Ultimately this book may be understood as a manifesto, a call for urban design’s true plural nature to be understood and acknowledged, and for urban design’s independence from other building arts, particularly architecture, to be recognized once and for all. In doing so, this book moves urban design past its “ends” and reopens the door for an urban future in which design can encompass all cities.” – Excerpt of The Largest Art by Brent Ryan, 2017.

I had the pleasure of working with the author in designing and illustrating three fictional cities – the Island, the Grid, and the Periphery, each demonstrating a unique scenario of design as a “plural art.”