What If? Metropolis - Travelogue

When entering Stenberg you are greeted with colour, dark reds and strong yellows alongside dull blue, almost greys. The structures range from tall buildings, that tower over the inhabitants to smaller blockier houses, more geometric in shape and sharp at the corners. The paths all lead to the same place, some straight while others twist and turn as you walk, curling around houses to the centre of the city. The houses change the closer to the centre you get, the smaller, blockier buildings in the outer portions of the city leading into the taller buildings in the centre of the city.

The city’s inner buildings are tall and imposing, towering high above the buildings in the outer city and requiring the people to crane their heads back to see the top, they are supported by beams and poles that carry the weight of the topmost parts. The buildings are made of metals like steel and aluminium as well as cement, painted in bold colours and striped patterns that accentuate the angles the architecture provides. Windows stretch high and wide, sometimes covering entire walls yet other times remaining sparse across the building.

The city of Stenberg is one that is in motion, reaching out and stretching across spaces. The inhabitants too are caught in a momentum, moving constantly yet completely content. There is a sense of business and of organised chaos, of structure and reason underlined with playfulness and adventure.

The further out from the centre of the city you get, the more plants can be seen. Bushes and flowers planted in front of people’s houses, gardens filled with greenery and trees are all around. In the inner city there is less to be seen, a potted plant here and there, some trees in a park long abandoned. The people hardly seem to notice, except for when the go to the outskirts and see the greenery that’s missing from the streets they walk.

At the city centre is a space used for markets and lines with shops, words on signs decorating buildings to guide people where they want to go. The area gets decorated during holidays. On one side of the space lies the theatre and on the other lies the college with its glass windows, low to ground yet wider than the buildings around it.