Visitors may enter and walk through these habitat-like, modular structures grouped in a nonlinear configuration. Over the past decade, Saraceno has established a practice of constructing habitable networks based upon complex geometries and interconnectivity that merge art, architecture, and science. The multidisciplinary project “Cloud Cities/Air Port City” is rooted in the artist’s investigation of expanding the ways in which we inhabit and experience our environment. 

According to artist Tomás Saraceno: “Upside down, Central Park is a flying garden embedded in a cumulus cloud, mirrored buildings and skies appear under your feet, gravity seems to reorient itself, and people are multiplied in patchworks of cloudscape, forming unexpected interconnected networks…Cloud City is an invitation to perceive simultaneously a multiplicity of realities, making overlapping and multireflective connections between things, affecting and challenging our perceptions. Cloud City is a vehicle for our imagination, ready to transport us beyond social, political, and geographical states of mind.” 

Saraceno envisions floating or flying cities that defy traditional notions of space, time, and gravity. He challenges the boundaries of earthly living and explores the possibility of airborne habitation. The multidisciplinary project is rooted in the artist’s inventive exploration of new ways of inhabiting our environment, drawing on principles of architecture and engineering, physics and chemistry, aeronautics, and the social world, inspired by sustainable visions for future communities. His projects construct interdependent spaces that emphasize the ecological character of natural environments and social spaces. Inspired by an interest in changing the way we live and experience reality, each work is an invitation to conceive of alternative ways of understanding and interacting with others. Concurrently, Saraceno appeals to the creative faculty of his viewers, involving them in situations and actions that demand their ingenuity, participation, and responsibility. 

Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City is organized by Anne L. Strauss, Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

The exhibition is made possible by Bloomberg. Additional support is provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky, The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation, William S. Lieberman Fund, and Eugenio Lopez. Cloud City is lent by Christian Keesee.