Designboom_ Federico Babina’s new illustration series, Cityscape, captures 13 portraits of metropolises, where each city is reimagined as a personal patchwork of urban elements. The Italian illustrator draws from details, forms, and symbols of cityscapes, reassembling them into spatially complex paintings that balance structure and spontaneity. These images are snapshots of the layered urban experience—a mosaic of streets, buildings, symbols, and open spaces woven into an intricate graphic plot.
Each portrait depicts a city’s unique rhythm, blending architecture, light, color, and sound into an ‘urban geography’ that expresses both reality and imagination. Like a postcard from a journey, these illustrations record impressions of cities as elaborate patchworks, where diverse pieces of urban fabric unite into a bold, cohesive image. The artist seeks to transform the chaos of everyday life into a structured yet lively order, portraying the vibrant interplay of shapes, colors, and relationships that define urban spaces.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s quote ‘The Beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, molded, and reconstructed in a personal form and original manner’ informs the artworks by illustrator Federico Babina, who reshapes the cities around him, molding them into original, imaginative representations. These 13 cityscapes invite viewers to experience the wonder and charm of cities as spaces that envelop, embrace, and reflect our daily lives.
