What are Piet Mondrian's famous red, yellow, and blue Composition paintings doing on the side of the building in this fancy little graphic? Well, the graphic itself and a whole suite of others are the latest front of Italian architect Federico Babina's one-man campaign to capture the world of architecture in pleasant, share-worthy images. After starting things off with a series of 8-bit portraits of starchitects, Babina led folks on a few poster-based tours of iconic silver screen buildings, as well as an alphabetical primer of influential designers. This time, he's seeing how famous artists would shape up as architects, or rather, how some of their well-known works would look in building form. Neat, huh?
It's been done before with interiors—and in Mondrian's case, at least once with a real building—but perhaps the most enjoyable part of Babina's 27-structure series, entitled Archist, is seeing how many artists you can recognize from the clues he gives. (Or, for the really next-level design-conversant, what building styles he employs for each. And no, "postmodern" doesn't count.)
Yes, the Duchamp has a spinning wheel, the Warhol is topped with a giant soup can, and the Picasso looks like a complete mess, but just because Babina pitches a few easy ones doesn't mean he isn't aiming to get into the thick of things, critically. As he explains, "the definition and function of architecture is changing constantly with the development of contemporary art." Visit Dezeen for the full set.
· Famous works of art transformed into buildings in Federico Babina's Archist Series [Dezeen]
· All Federico Babina coverage [Curbed National]