Future Cities - Evgeny Kazantsev's illustrations

While there have long been fantastic illustrations of possible/impossible cities, it was the arrival of the Science Fiction paperback that accelerated these visualizations exponentially, establishing a vast pool of ideas that, with the advent of CGI, can be realized in 3D. Countless films and games are now furnished with environments that reference this rich image history. There is almost certainly a book to be written tracing the architectural/technological development of imaginary cities: elements being tracked through genres and decades as they mutate and develop. Evgeny Kazantsev's illustrations fit perfectly into this tradition, meticulously reworking familiar elements, distorting utility, extrapolating wildly on developing technologies. There is little in his pictures which now seems impossible or even unlikely. The excesses, the preposterous grandeur, the follies of scale and purpose are all evident in contemporary cities. What was once breathless fantasy now feels like a playful critique of aspiration dangerously unfettered.