Imprint of the future

This book is a catalog of the exhibition by the architect and draughtsman Sergei Tchoban, which is scheduled for October 2020-January 2021 at The Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome. However, the book goes far beyond the format of describing the artworks presented at the exhibition. It is a research aimed at studying trends in the urban development of a contemporary European city. A native of St Petersburg who has organically absorbed the harmony of this city's proportionality and similitude, Sergei Tchoban has always striven to understand the laws which govern the development of cities like St. Petersburg and the great prototypes in whose image it was created. Is it possible to preserve these cities' outstanding quality? And is it possible to pursue this quality today, at the current stage of development of architecture? These are the central questions posed in the exhibition and the book, which marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778. One of the greatest artists of his time, Piranesi succeeded in capturing the development of the European city as a phenomenon which, despite many layers and internal contradictions, is nevertheless harmonious. In analyzing the development of the language of architecture that is characteristic of our time, Sergei Tchoban integrates individual emphatically futuristic volumes into the panoramas of streets in the European city. Subsequently, he transcribes these elements into 18th-century Roman situations recreated on the basis of motifs taken from Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Vedute di Roma.