Amman’s quick-practicality and “just do it somehow” attitude has the potential for producing both ugly, self disrespecting scenes and beautiful acts of spontaneous urban art.
Walking in the middle of Shmeisani, a district dominated by Jordan’s banks and other businesses, I find this scene. Notice the empty flowerpot, the sign-less sign mast and the tile fragments.
Shmeisani is a district of with lot of modern urban potential. Its sidewalks, lined with fully grow trees, cafes, shops and 70’s villas could be the ‘next Jabal Amman’. It was the ‘cool area’ of the 70’s and 80’s. It can be a place where Amman can show it own kind of contemporary urbanity.
Broken sidewalks and flowerpots like these should not be part of this picture.
Then, yesterday morning, I was driving in Jabal Amman, down from the 2nd Circle area towards Prince Mohammad Street. On Youssef Izz Al-Din Street I saw this..
[click to enlarge images]
The owner of this grocery (its called ‘Hearts Grocery’) decided to take the left over plastic sheets from a sign maker as a quick solution to create a mashrabiyya wall for the outdoor extension of his shop. On these sheets the cutouts of Arabic calligraphy and type meets English letters in a mix created both by chance and the practical considerations of the sign maker. The sheet is the ‘negative image’ of several signs. It’s like a ‘mother sign’ that shows the pictures of all its different children.
I find it beautiful.
Comments
8 responses to “Amman, the ugly. Amman, the beautiful..”
this blog makes me smile
I love the mother sign!
Ahmad, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see these pictures of this Jabal Amman shop, I passed there a couple of times and loved how haphazardly artistic it looks!
That’s the beauty of Amman… There is still some space for creativity to witness here & there…
Man you notice everything !! , I love this show , It’s very creative and artistic , I used to work in jabal amman 2nd circle and used to pass from this shop everyday , And every time i look i say wow this is nice , I actually told that to him.
But i don’t like the top cover !! he should replace it with a hard top , It will look much better.
Shop*
groovy sign. it doesn’t take all that much to turn crap into something beauty. that piece of plastic was manure turned to flowers.
Man.. unbelievable.. I can’t believe it.. I was just going to blog about this shop and i took two picture the same angle you’ve took.. this shop is near kharabeesh office and each time I pass from there i want to blog about it.. unbelievable..
This is the case in all the streets of Amman and this dicusts me the most as this is where our tax money is going! It’s even worse at the Airport. Amman is becoming an ugly cement city that lacks trees, propper pavements, propper roads, real parks!