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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. — The New York Times
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... View full entry
Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury has long been creating interventions in Beirut’s urban landscape to draw attention to these symbolic sites of warfare [...] Khoury has now taken on the imposing Murr Tower for a two-month installation: ‘The Burj El Murr soars from Beirut’s skyline, filled with scars, constantly provoking the city’s residents, whose past is shadowed by war, and present is spent dealing with those harsh memories.’ — theculturetrip.com
Artist Jad El Khoury's temporary installation Burj El Hawa (Tower of Air) inhabits a 34-story skyscraper in Beirut, known as Murr Tower or the Beirut Trader Center. Using brightly colored curtains found in a typical Beirut home, Khoury transforms this empty building which was used as a... View full entry
Artist Guido Zimmermann's Cuckoo Block series present a brutalist take on the traditional cuckoo clock design. Based in Germany, Zimmermann's pieces are largely inspired by local brutalist housing blocks found in Frankfurt and Berlin. He has also ventured out to create clocks based on notable... View full entry
Fjordenhus (Fjord House) is the first building designed entirely by Olafur Eliasson and the architectural team at Studio Olafur Eliasson. Located in Vejle, Denmark, Fjord House is set to open on June 9th. The structure rises out of Vejle Fjord and can be accessed through Havneøen (The Harbour... View full entry
A 30m-tall Gothic cathedral built of branches and twigs that was set alight on Saturday (17 February) causing controversy in Russia. The burning took place at Nikola-Lenivets, a rural artists’ colony 200km south of Moscow, and was the culmination of pre-Lenten carnival festivities known as Maslenitsa. The event is often likened to the US Burning Man festival. — theartnewspaper.com
Artist Nikolay Polissky, founder of Nikola-Lenivets, creates impressive land art installations to burn for Russia's Maslenitsa festival each year. This Russian folk tradition is celebrated during the last week before Lent and traditionally ends with the burning of a scarecrow. This year, the... View full entry
Photographer Francois Prost's recent photo series, Paris Syndrome, reveals just how far China's "duplitecture" went in the city of Tianducheng. Pairing images of China's replica city with its Paris equivalent—side by side it can be initially unclear which is the original. ... View full entry
Photographer Gerco de Ruijter is widely known for his work focusing on grids and other signs of human-imposed geometry on the landscape. His latest work explores instances in the North American landscape where the Jeffersonian road grid is forced to go awry due to the curvature of the Earth. His... View full entry
At the 2016 Venice Architectural Biennale, Ban and Choi presented a scale model of a 13-kilometer (about eight-mile), garden-lined bamboo walkway meandering between North and South Korea, elevated to protect visitors from ubiquitous DMZ landmines. Along its length would be towers for viewing nature and, every kilometer, open-air “Jung Ja” meditation pavilions designed by different architects and artists, including several reserved for North Koreans. — Los Angeles Times
With support from Shigeru Ban and others, artist Jae-Eun Choi envisioned a garden-lined bridge called "Dreaming of Earth" that would meander through the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has ironically grown into one of Asia's most significant wildlife sanctuaries. The initial proposal, which Choi... View full entry
Australia-based artist Joshua Smith expresses his love of decrepit urban spaces by recreating them in 1:20 scale. Building all of his miniatures from scratch, Smith designs every element himself. The artist's work is built on his past experiences as a stencil artist and gallery director. Inspired... View full entry
During LA CoMotion — a downtown event featuring the so-called city of tomorrow — a Los Angeles artist group is reframing what the city of tomorrow is by bringing the art to the screens and streets. A local group of Los Angeles video artists is making strides — and having fun while doing it... View full entry
"Buildings are just giant sculptures after all!" describes George Byrne, the Los Angeles-based photographer who points his camera towards architectural compositions as subject matter for his work. The Australian born artist has now been a resident of Los Angeles for eight years and it shows. ... View full entry
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. — Calvin Seibert, sculptor
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... View full entry
[Rosa Parks' home] on South Deacon Street had become blighted and faced demolition in recent years, but its fortunes have since changed. The home’s facade has been removed and will be refashioned into a replica-style artwork that will be shown in museums across Europe...“She loved the city, but I don't think the city loved her very much back,” [Parks' niece Rhea] McCauley said. “This house should have been preserved here. But we live in a world where every other project takes precedence.” — Detroit Free Press
You would think that the Detroit home of Rosa Parks would have more easily garnered local support for its preservation in the present day. But as Parks' niece Rhea McCauley described, her aunt was still treated with hostility when she moved into the city in 1957, two years after she refused to... View full entry
[Jorge Mañes Rubio] plans to 3D print portions of the temple; other sections will incorporate an existing boulder, creating a cross between a building and a cave...The work will engage with a wide swath of architectural history, including the Pantheon, Mayan temples, and the Egyptian pyramids, [he] says. But when considering the possibilities on the moon, 18th-century French utopian architects like Étienne-Louis Boullée or Claude-Nicolas Ledoux have been the most influential. — Artsy
For his current endeavor called Peak of Eternal Light, artist Jorge Mañes Rubio is working with the ESA to build a temple on the moon, as a way to “examine the potential social and anthropological aspects of colonizing celestial bodies”. More on Archinect:ESA proposes a village on the... View full entry
The French artist who goes by JR, known for flyposting large-scale photographs in cities around the world, has set up shop in Rio, just in time for the Olympic opening ceremony this Friday. As part of his ongoing worldwide Inside Out project, and under the invitation of the IOC, he's installed... View full entry
