Archinect - News

The New Yorker dissects the immersive potential of Sphere and City

2023-11-14T08:00:00-05:00

The differences between “City” and the Sphere are deep, true, yet narrower than you might suppose—the works are trying for the same things but in opposite ways. Both are big, expensive, geometric structures in the desert that offer visitors a vivid encounter with the natural world—one with exquisite footage of jellyfish and the like, the other with deftly roughened rock and concrete.

The New Yorker’s art critic Jackson Arn takes on two of the most recent (and spectacular) cultural offerings of the Silver State — "One with a deluge of images and the other with a tantalizing lack of them," as he writes.

Related on Archinect: Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut (45°, 90°, 180°, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome)

Portuguese street artist combines tagging, illustration, and animation to create building-scale optical illusions

2019-09-16T19:30:00-04:00

A Portuguese graffiti artist who goes by Vile has been painting since he was a teenager, a depth of experience that, when combined with his skills in animation and illustration, allows him to "create stunning optical illusions whereby his name appears as a window cut into the side of a wall," as My Modern Met reports.

"The most challenging part of his creative process," My Modern Met explains, "is color matching, as the palette must be selected carefully in order to make the final product convincing."

Below is an image of the wall before the painting:

Image courtesy of Vile

Check out his instagram for more of his work.

A fake Harlem in Sweden and other architecture illusions documented by Gregor Sailer

2018-07-13T16:01:00-04:00

The caption to the photograph reveals that this isn’t New York at all, of course, but Sweden: a life-size replica of Harlem in a forest in the west of the country, near Gothenburg. The asphalt and snow are real enough, but nearly everything else is fake. The streets are void of people and cars; the store fronts are life-size photographs, printed on canvas and hung on steel frames. Welcome to the Potemkin village: a place of clones, impostors, facsimiles, frauds. Maybe don’t plan to stay.

Why is there a life-size replica of Harlem in Sweden? This bizarre space turns out to be a test track for self-driving cars. Why Harlem? Even Austrian artist Gregor Sailer who photographed the space doesn't know. Sailer traveled around the world to capture 25 of these false architectural landscapes for his project titled “The Potemkin Village”.

Check out some of these unreal images below:

“Carson City VI/Vargarda, Sweden, 2016” © Gregor Sailer

“Jeoffrécourt, French Army, France, 2015” © Gregor Sailer

“Holland Town VI, Gaoqiao New Town, China, 2016” © Gregor Sailer

“Complexe de Tir en Zone UrBaine II, French Army, France, 2015” © Gregor Sailer

“Schnöggersburg X, German Army Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, 2017” © Gregor Sailer

“Junction City IV, Fort Irwin, U.S. Army, Mojave Desert, California, U.S.A., 2016” © Gregor Sailer

Find out more on these imitation spaces captured by Sailer from Andrew Dickson.

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FreelandBuck's "Parallax Gap" installation goes up at the Renwick Gallery

2017-07-14T13:31:00-04:00

Created by architecture firm FreelandBuck, the piece consists of nine different illusions that click into place only if you stand at the exact right point underneath each of them and gaze upward. “We want people to wander through this room and really figure out this puzzle for themselves, while also enjoying this wonderful, confusing, complex shifting of patterns and geometries,” Renwick curator-in-charge Abraham Thomas says. “Touch wood, there won’t be collisions.”

Back in May, the Los Angeles-based studio FreelandBuck was selected to design and install a temporary ceiling in the Renwick Gallery’s Grand Salon in the Smithsonian. This is a first for the gallery that plans on turning this into a recurring installation series called "Above the Renwick." The firms project, which utilizes digital technology to achieve the trompe l'oeil effect, recreates iconic American ceilings from quintessential buildings such as D.C's Eisenhower Executive Building and SF's Palace of Fine Arts. The visual puzzle opened to visitors July 1st and will be on display through the rest of the year.

FreelandBuck craft a temporary trompe l'oeil ceiling for the Smithsonian

2017-05-19T12:54:00-04:00

The Los Angeles-based studio FreelandBuck has been selected to design and install a temporary ceiling in the Renwick Gallery’s Grand Salon in the Smithsonian, the first in what is expected to be a recurring installation series called Above the Renwick Installation.

Their project draws on the tradition of trompe l’oeil ceilings, using various techniques to create an illusion of depth. The design comprises a “catalog” of various notable American architectural styles, brought to life with 21st century technology.

“Trompe l’oeil illusion functions from a single key point – the center of a nave or directly under a dome,” they write. “From other points of view, the illusion malfunctions: figures appear suddenly out of scale, space flattens out, or an entire dome seems to change orientation. Given the constant stream of visual illusion we encounter every day, the glitches may now fascinate more than the intended illusion. The Renwick installation amplifies and coordinates these gaps, opening...