Some super-serious and highbrow architecture news: San Francisco-based artist Liz Hickok makes buildings out of Jell-O. Featured on Architizer today, Hickok's transient worlds include housing tracts in Vegas, neighborhoods in San Francisco, and skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan. Of course, she's not the only person to make a living crafting elaborate model cities from an offbeat material, but her installations are completely different than, say, those of the guy who builds cities from toothpicks or any other such "brick." After all, the exhibits just wouldn't work without the unstable, ephemeral qualities of Hickok's material of choice: each piece is designed knowing that the tallest buildings will droop and the entire ecosystem will eventually dissolve.
Hickok's work is not just for laughs: in 2006, 100 years after San Francisco's massive 1906 earthquake, Hickok used Jell-O to inspire a discussion about structural engineering in an earthquake hotspot. In 2009 she produced a video of her Jell-O White House brightening and firming up, a project she called a "hopeful vision" of Obama's first days as President. And just a month ago, she took advantage of what she called "the fugitive nature" of gelatin to comment on the boom-and-bust housing economy in Las Vegas. View some of Hickok's additional work below.
· Hello, Jell-O: When Architecture Meets Foodie Culture [Architizer]
· Artist Fashions Iconic Buildings From Millions of Toothpicks [Curbed National]
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