Connections are the foundation of String City. A call—the prelude to a personal meeting. Intimate, direct, intangible, choreographing the movement of bodies within the infrastructure of the city. An extension of the self, mobile phones allow us to feel the pervasive presence of others. Those, whose names remain in our portable memories, forming personal, curated, virtual communities.

Enveloping existing buildings, String City creates a contextual relationship between buildings by connecting them across liminal areas. Inclusive and parasitic, this network is the architecture of a new city, built over the past, organically articulated. And while the urban environment is a container for collective memory, a growing aggregate of historic artifacts, String City refreshes itself constantly—through our interactions, and through the continuous process of urban sedimentation.

This is a city of intersections. Our movements form invisible patterns. A call makes them visible. Showing points of origin, and the traces that connect them. Their intersections linking people whose paths may never cross. In String City, we create patterns by our collective activity, modulating the urban fabric around us.

Copyright 2005 Maki Tsuchiya, Christian Marc Schmidt. All rights reserved.