my passion for cities: the beginning

In 1994, at nine years old, I moved to Burtigny, Switzerland, a little farm town far from any important place one can think of. It is built along a second-class highway and has a population of about three hundred people. I must say at first it seemed awesome to live in the countryside but I quickly realized that my expectations did not exactly correspond to the reality of the place.

I guess as a child it's normal to have a wild imagination, especially when it comes to inventing or building things. I know this applies in my case, as I was always passionate about wanting to change things in the small town of Burtigny. It started with a farm road, which a friend and I wanted to give an urban touch to, by painting street signals onto it (we obviously ended up grounded for doing it). Another time we placed street signs, that we either found or made, in specific spots of the village to give it a more "cityish" atmosphere.

However, little did I know that this hunger for change was going to have a huge impact later on. Noticing the lack of power I had to change things on the one to one scale, I could on the other hand do a lot on paper. And this was the beginning of my city scenarios. Little by little I started putting my ideas on paper, where they could clearly be identified. Surely I ended up inventing my own towns and developing them as I would of liked to develop Burtigny at the time.

I think most of the things we do are linked to our personality or identity. For instance my desire to transform an insignificant town during my childhood had to do with who I was and where I was settled. An engine to my motivation was the fact that I was competing with the nearest villages, which all had something more than Burtigny. My town was the smallest, so as a resident I also wanted it to have all the conveniences the others had and of course show the world that the place I called home wasn’t only a few farms and barns.