The City as the Architect Imagined It — The Story Behind "Retro Metropolis"
In 2015, somewhere above New York City, I looked down and saw something that didn't quite belong to the present.
The grid. The geometry. The way the blocks and rooftops and shadows arranged themselves into something that felt less like a photograph and more like a plan — precise, deliberate, drawn by hand on a drafting table in a room that smelled of pencil shavings and strong coffee.
I grew up around that aesthetic. The 1970s had a particular visual confidence — muted browns, warm tans, avocado greens, geometric forms that took themselves seriously. Architects of that era didn't just design buildings. They imagined entire futures, rendered in beautifully analog detail on paper that curled at the edges.
This piece is my version of that vision. New York from above, filtered through the sensibility of a 1970s draftsman — overlapping geometric forms, mid-century colours, the feeling of a city plan that was also a work of art.
It belongs in the kind of room that still has a drafting table in the corner. Or a home office with warm timber and clean lines. Or anywhere that appreciates the idea that a city, seen from the right angle, is just geometry with ambition.
Some cities are built. Others are imagined first. This is New York, imagined.
Bring Retro Metropolis Into Your Space
Available as canvas, framed canvas and art print options.