Artist Calvin Seibert races against time in building these modernist sandcastles

2016-11-22T18:04:00-05:00

Building “sandcastles” is a bit of a test. Nature will always be against you and time is always running out. Having to think fast and to bring it all together in the end is what I like about it...Once I begin building and forms take shape I can start to see where things are going and either follow that road or attempt to contradict it with something unexpected.

Professional sculptor Calvin Seibert builds “sandcastle” structures that look like they could be straight from the sketchbooks of architecture's modernist icons. Whenever he starts sculpting his next sand structure, he usually only has “a vague notion of trying to do something different each time”, and mixes various ideas and inspirations as he goes.

Here are a few of Seibert's sandcastles he has sculpted over the last few years.

All photos © Calvin Seibert. Used with permission.

You can find more of Seibert's sandcastles on his Flickr, or follow him on Instagram.

h/t Colossal

Renzo Piano knows how to build a mean sandcastle

2015-07-15T20:14:00-04:00

Making sandcastles was my training in fantasy. Now, as an architect constructing buildings like the Shard, I have to think about the final result, but as a child making castles of sand I didn’t, they were ephemeral.

Imagine the architect responsible for such momentous projects as the new Whitney Museum, The Shard in London, and reunified Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, on his hands and knees on a sandy beach. Imagine him digging a trench and piling buckets of wet sand into a mound with concerted precision, only to start laughing and cavorting like a child as the tide comes in and his work is destroyed. Then doing it all over again.

He may be on to something: as quoted in The Guardian, he explains matter-of-factly, "I have four children; the oldest is 50 and the youngest 16, so I have been making sandcastles for a long time. There is no age limit – you can enjoy making a sandcastle however old you are, although it helps to think like a child."

His method for sandcastle building is at times very precise (the angle of the sand mound's incline should ideally be 45°) and decidedly whimsical: "The magic moment is when the waves come and the ditch becomes a moat ... To capture the image in your memory quickly...

Archinect - News

Artist Calvin Seibert races against time in building these modernist sandcastles

Renzo Piano knows how to build a mean sandcastle