Imprint of the Future. Destiny of Piranesi's City

This book is a catalog of the exhibition by the architect and draughtsman Sergei Tchoban, which is scheduled for October 2020-January 2021 at The Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome. However, the book goes far beyond the format of describing the artworks presented at the exhibition. It is a research aimed at studying trends in the urban development of a contemporary European city.

A native of St Petersburg who has organically absorbed the harmony of this city’s proportionality and similitude, Sergei Tchoban has always striven to understand the laws which govern the development of cities like St Petersburg and the great prototypes in whose image it was created. Is it possible to preserve these cities’ outstanding quality? And is it possible to pursue this quality today, at the current stage of development of architecture? These are the central questions posed in the exhibition and the book, which marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778).