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A cityscape (urban landscape) is an artistic depiction of the physical characteristics of a city or urban region in the visual arts, such as a painting, drawing, print, or picture. It’s the equivalent of a landscape in the city. Though it indicates the same variation in urban size and density (and even modernity) implied in the distinction between the phrases city and town, townscape is identical with the cityscape. The words apply to the arrangement of constructed forms and interstitial space in urban architecture.

History Of Cityscapes in Art

A painting portraying a bird’s eye view of an ancient city at the Baths of Trajan in Rome originates from the first century AD Cityscapes were used as backgrounds for portraits and biblical subjects throughout the Middle Ages. From the 16th through the 18th centuries, several copperplate prints and etchings depicting cities from above were produced. These prints were intended to offer a map–like overview.

Scroll paintings such as Qingming Shanghe Tu in Ancient China provide a panoramic perspective of the towns represented.

In the Netherlands, by the mid-seventeenth century, the cityscape had established itself as a distinct genre. Jan Vermeer created a very realistic depiction of the city of Delft in his renowned View of Delft from 1660–1661. Cities such as Amsterdam, Haarlem, and The Hague were attractive painting themes. Other European countries (e.g., the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) followed the Dutch lead. In Venice, the 18th century was a golden age for cityscape painting (Canaletto, Guardi).

The impressionists concentrated on the atmosphere and dynamics of ordinary life in the city at the end of the nineteenth century. Suburban and industrial regions, construction sites, and train yards also became cityscape themes. The production of cityscapes dropped over the twentieth century as attention shifted to abstract and conceptual art. Edward Hopper, an American painter who kept true to figurative painting, created fascinating pictures of the American landscape.

The reassessment of the cityscape coincides with the rebirth of figurative painting towards the end of the twentieth century. Rackstraw Downes, Antonio López Garca, and Richard Estes are three well-known living cityscape artists. Yvonne Jacquette is an American artist who specializes in aerial cityscapes.

Skyline

The outline or form seen near the horizon is known as a skyline. It can be generated by the general construction of a city, human involvement in a rural environment, or nature where the sky meets buildings or land.

Because no two city skylines are similar, they function as a sort of pseudo-fingerprint. As a result, news and sports programs, television shows, and movies frequently use a city’s skyline to establish a setting. The name “Sky Line of New York City” was initially used in 1896 as the title of a color lithograph by Charles Graham for the New York Journal’s color supplement.

According to Paul D. Spreiregen, FAIA, a skyline is “a tangible depiction of realities of existence… a possible work of art… its collective vision.”

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a multi-story building that is constantly inhabited. Skyscrapers are currently defined as structures at least 100 or 150 meters tall. However, there is no widely recognized definition. Skyscrapers are extremely tall high-rise structures. When these structures began to be erected in the 1880s, the word was initially used to buildings with between 10 and 20 stories. Offices, hotels, residential areas, and retail spaces may all be found in skyscrapers.

A steel structure that supports curtain walls is a typical component of skyscrapers. Rather than resting on load-bearing walls like in traditional construction, these curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are hung from the framework above. Some early skyscrapers include a steel frame, which allows load-bearing walls to be built higher than those made of reinforced concrete.

The walls of modern skyscrapers are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers have vast surface areas of windows enabled by steel frames and curtain walls. On the other hand, Skyscrapers can feature curtain walls that look like traditional walls but only have a minimal number of windows. Modern skyscrapers frequently include a tubular construction that is meant to resist wind, seismic, and other lateral loads by acting like a hollow cylinder. Many skyscrapers have setbacks to seem thinner, allow less wind exposure, and transfer more sunshine to the ground. In other situations, setbacks are also physically needed.

Only nine cities in the globe have more than 100 buildings of 150 meters (492 feet) or higher as of January 2020: Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), New York (284), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Mumbai (151), Chicago (127), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (127).

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