Architecture Through an Artist’s Lens
Mapos Designer
You may remember me from a little while back. I was the one insisting that illustrations of windows were going to help you make sense of the city. But there’s something really fascinating about these simple collections. It’s architecture drawn through an artist’s lens.
Which brings me to Frederico Babino, who has taken to doing just that. He has been looking at art, music, film, but always using architecture as the organizing factor throughout.
Being a movie buff, the collection of illustrations that stands out to me is “Archicine” that represents films through the iconic architecture in it. From Rear Window to The Big Lebowski, these images help to assert how the architecture can become a character and reminds us that setting the stage is a huge part of the movies.
Like with the windows before them, the most interesting to me of this collection are the outliers like Dogville where Babino reveals the absence of architecture from the the film.
The “Archist” series takes on artists instead, turning each individual’s style into a building. Some lend themselves easily to the translation. Mondrian becomes a structure simply by adding a figure within it. Lichtenstein ends up being one of my favorites. His art used the ideal housewife from advertisements, so here Babino takes care to play with the traditional house in his composition.
Once again, the contrast between Mondrian to Salvador Dali is the most interesting. Crutches are used to prop up an irregular form, capturing how the artist’s work usually inhabited a space with which we weren’t familiar. All rules of architecture like structure and columns obviously wouldn’t apply.
A look around his other work reveals a careful cataloging of the field, whether that be in Architect’s portraits, or revealing architectural style through a simple square. Although an individual illustration may appear simple, his constant cataloging of the field helps reveal a sharp eye for our profession.
