The aim of the project, named Habit Makes Us Blind, is to draw attention to the problem of unused spaces in urban environments. The conceptual Lego structures designed by Espai MGR are imaginative spatial exercises reminiscent of the childlike ease and playfulness of the act of creation. The surrealistic installations fill vacant plots in Valencia and act as an incentive for keeping the issue of underdeveloped neighborhoods in the public eye.

“Day by day we pass by vacant lots downtown. Just like an invisible metastasis generated in the heart of the city and extending to all its arteries. Neighborhoods that, although having a huge potential, have more and more unused spaces, a fact that does not at all promote a correct sustainable development. Years have made us immune to this problem. It’s a landscape we already recognize as typical of the central neighborhoods in Valencia.

Sometimes, the tourists are the ones who open our eyes by mentioning or questioning whether this situation is normal. On other occasions, we pay attention to it for a moment only because the secondary problems that those spaces imply affect us directly. But in most of the cases, they are only a part of our way. Like a gruyere cheese where the rats block any possibilities of reconstruction, while staring at us, far away from its holes.

This photographic work aims at calling people’s attention, just like painting those isolated walls yellow would. It demands the recreational use of those vacant lots through the eyes of a child, by filling them with impossible constructions, surrealistic installations in line with the problem. A children’s game as a neighbor’s shout, demanding the right to take part in their city.”

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