This project was a design exercise led by Lucille Tenazas, centered on the concept of designers as cultural nomads, individuals who synthesize what they encounter, remain permeable to experience, and are ultimately transformed by it. The exercise challenged us to consider how designers enter, navigate, and respond to unfamiliar territories.

Using Union Square as the point of departure, I was assigned the north direction and tasked with creating a visual project in any medium that documented my process of acclimating to and responding to the area. I chose to work with handheld scans as my medium, using them to record and reinterpret my journey from Union Square.

The resulting series of scans became an exercise in duality, balancing digital archives with unaltered textures amid the dynamic variables of New York City. Capturing these textures in digital form translates the tangible into an intangible context. The work functions both as a digital archive and as a memorial to a fixed representation of a city wallscape. Through this process of visual layering, the project evolved into an exploration of how cultural immersion, sound, and environment intersect, expanding my practice while experimenting with diverse visual styles.

I’ve continued collecting different scans and textures from my walks across the city.