A large part of the world of architecture exists on the edge of unreality. We architects spend a lot of our days drawing things that don’t exist, and then have to pull our imaginings into reality (sometimes they come quietly; more often they come kicking and screaming). Whether the reality is monumental or mundane, the only real leverage we have to succeed comes from understanding the prosaic details of the built environment that most other people overlook.
Take bricks, for example. Knowing not just the difference between a course and a wythe, not even just the difference between Flemish course and an English course, not just the difference between a queen closure and a king closure, not just the difference between a squint and a single cant stop (are bricks not amazing?), but something about the, oh, it must be millions of kinds of bricks made around the world means the difference between hauling yet another boring building into the world and designing something that deserves to be here. And that’s just bricks, but I’m sure you get the idea—architects use the verb detailing a lot.
OK, so the whole point of this is to introduce you to architectural photographer and montage artist Filip Dujardin. He understands about the bricks and the rest of it, and in addition to photographing exisitng buidings also fabricates carefully constructed unrealities. The only difference between these and a really really good architectural rendering is no one’s planning to build these. He juxtaposes stark contrasts, slams buildings up against each other, tangles ductowrk and hallways around each other, and piles buildings on top of themselves in realistically impossible ways, if that makes sense.
He gets the details right—from bricks to vanishing points—so I’m left marvelling that the buildings he depicts can’t possibly not exist. He’s managed to pull the buildings he imagines into reality without ever building them. [Read more about his work on BLDG|BLOG]
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