What is the relationship between art and the city and how did the modern practice of art in the city develop? These issues are studied here with both theoretical and practical work. The work consists of research and visual essays. The essays can be read alone or in support of each other. The research essay is divided into two parts: The first part is a critical discussion on the topic of art in the contemporary built environment; the second part is concerned with the art guides of the Marja-Vantaa project in the City of Vantaa and presents the Vantaa Housing Fair 2015 art guide with particular emphasis on the participative colour scheme.

Part one has as its starting point the phenomenon of art in the city today and is split into four sections. In the first section, a history of art in the city is sketched out only in as much as can be deemed it has been directly formative to the current phenomenon. The second section differentiates between what is meant by art and what is meant by creativity, cross-referencing the Marxist, art criticism of John Berger and the theories of "desiring production" of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is found that the relationship between creativity and art is more complex than simply process and product. The third section outlines a phenomenological approach to understanding the object of the city. A central tenet of the thesis is that an attempted understanding of the city as "complete object" is not only impossible, but also undesirable, since this view neuroticises the creative flows which constitute the city. In order to discover truths on the city, one must take as fragmented and multifaceted approach as possible. The fourth chapter, the Bilbao Complex attempts to deconstruct the apparent paradoxical relationship between creativity and art in the city. This section proposes that the contemporary fixation on styles and complex building forms, together with an attempt to give these forms meaning obfuscates the phenomenal flattening of the city. Exposing the well hidden disconnect between physical and phenomenal complexity/flatness becomes the crux of exploding the J3ilbao Complex.

The two sections of part two deal with the topic in practice and have been produced as a consultant job for the Marja-Vantaa project. The fifth section explains the approach of implementing art in the Marja-Vantaa project with -the help of Marja-Vantaa Centre Art Guide and the Art Concept of the Marja-Vantaa Housing 1. The Housing Fair Art Guide, comprising two parts, is explained in more detail. The first part focuses mainly on outdoor public places. Metaphor taken is the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. The second part is the participative colour scheme for the area, which is explained in the sixth chapter. The work contains a colour mapping field study, from which a colour palette has been developed as a base palette for the participatory colouring scheme.