It’s a familiar sight in the Architectural press - an eminent Architect wants to share with the world their unique utopian vision for the city - an ideal, enlightened place where mess, sprawl and randomness will be ruthlessly expunged.

This project emerged from an urge to cheerfully undermine the vanity of such attempts to ‘solve’ the city.

Infinite City uses play as a way to get people to think about how cities grow, and how they are shaped not just by long-term or visionary planning but also by expedient decisions, and the sheer accumulated weight of time.

Each element is built from between 1 and 7 hexagons, and can be rotated in three ways and assembled with the other elements to create an infinite number of imaginary city plans. Compromise inevitably shapes the end result, but unexpected moments of delight also emerge.

The idea for Infinite City came out of an earlier personal project - an attempt to update Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City model of 1935 to reflect how aspects of Wright's vision have in the subsequent century been realised in the sprawl of the 21st Century city, but in a messy, conflicted, and sometimes vital manner. Thus have the utopian visions of Architects working during that period of intense technological optimism (and their expectation of godlike control.....) been brought down to earth through exposure to reality.

The city map feels like a timely means to explore these ideas, as the god's-eye view has in recent years come to play an ever greater role in all our lives, as we increasingly navigate through our environment via map apps on our phones rather than by using landmarks and developing an ability to 'read' the city.

A single still image seemed inadequate as a way to convey the conflicting forces at work in the contemporary city, however, so instead I hit upon the idea of a jigsaw that has no single correct solution, and that is always in flux.

I may in future produce expansion packs for the broader sprawl around the city core - exurbs, airports, strip malls etc., all using the same system to create even more possibilities.