This architect embellished a building with emoji ornament

2017-04-25T12:38:00-04:00

Emoji are going to be some of the most recognizable icons of the 21st century, says architect Changiz Tehrani, which is why he decided to cast 22 of them in concrete and use them as decoration for a building in the Dutch city of Amersfoort.

“In classical architecture they used heads of the king or whatever, and they put that on the façade,” Tehrani told The Verge. “So we were thinking, what can we use as an ornament so when you look at this building in 10 or 20 years you can say ‘hey this is from that year!’” The answer was obvious: emoji.

The emojis cover only one side of the mixed-use building. Tehrani, who works for the Dutch practice Attika Architekten, based the emojis on the WhatsApp standard. "Only faces were chosen as they were the most expressive and recognizable emoji," the Verge reports. In his view, all architecture is timely—not timeless—so better to have fun with what's in vogue at the moment.

Started at the Gigantomachy frieze, now we're here. Thoughts?

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This architect embellished a building with emoji ornament