Videos

Federico Babina has published the latest series from his extensive collection of architectural imagery. “Abstructure: architectural embryos” seeks to question the use of architecture in creating a drawing, rather than the use of a drawing in creating architecture.

Through the compositions, Babina proposes an ideal link between architecture as a form of representation and the representation used in the drawings. Volumes of architecture are broken down to achieve an “abstract” representation, without losing the essence of the design.

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Videos

Italian artist Federico Babina has published the latest in his impressive portfolio of architectural illustrations. “Planimal” seeks to convey the close link between architecture and the natural world, translating animals into architectural plans. Through his set of drawings, Babina reimagines the architectural spaces as “narrative subjects that host us and lead us into a fantastic labyrinth of a dreamlike reality, architectures imagined as allusively zoomorphic sculptures.”

Houses, museums, and churches are conveyed as roaring lions, crawling snakes, and swimming whales, with dynamic spaces formed from cocktails of asymmetries and symmetries, curves and straight lines, solids and voids, sounds and silences, lights and shadows.

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Italian artist Federico Babina has published the latest in his impressive portfolio of architectural illustrations. “Archivoid” seeks to “sculpt invisible masses of space” through the reading of negatives – using the architectural language of famous designers past and present, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Bjarke Ingels.

Babina’s images create an inverse point of view, a reversal of perception for an alternative reading of space, and reality itself. Making negative space his protagonist, Babina traces the “Architectural footprints” of famous architects, coupling mysterious geometries with a vibrant color scheme.

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Architecture is the scenography of real world.

In this latest set of illustrations from Federico Babina, the artist envisions set designs in the styles of 27 of history's greatest architects, using signature elements from some of their most notable works to "stage [architecture] as if it were an architectural play."

See the entire set of ARCHIPLAY illustrations, including takes on Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, after the break.

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“The architectural plan is a formula to order the anarchy of space.”

In these latest images from Federico Babina, the artist explores the design styles of 25 of history's greatest architects, abstracting the plans of some of their most famous creations onto simple geometric backgrounds. The resulting illustrations resemble dynamic labyrinths or abstract symbols, and are what Babina refers to as “Planimetric graphologies.”

“Analyzing an architectural plan is how to make a graphology study,” explains Babina. “The plans are like the signatures of architects and can reveal conceptual details about the artistic and aesthetic personalities of their authors.”

See the entire set of ARCHIPLAN illustrations, including takes on Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, after the break.

“Immersed in reading a book it feels like [being] inside an architecture, a metaphysical space surrounded by the words,” says Federico Babina, discussing his latest series of illustrations, ARCHIWRITER. In the new series of 27 drawings, the illustrator has created “portraits” of authors by personifying their writing styles, periods, and locations as built environments made from architectural elements and words. Heightening this sense of individuality, Babina states that the resultant portraits can be “fluctuating, vernacular, itinerant, ephemeral, concentric, labyrinthine, surrealist, oneiric, and futuristic.”

"I always liked play as a form of learning; toys are often a prelude to serious ideas," says Federico Babina about his latest series of illustrations, titled ARCHICARDS. "The game can also be a thought experiment. I'm interested in playing with architecture's seriousness and illustration's lightheartedness."

Babina's illustrations turn 12 of the architecture world's most recognizable faces into card-game caricatures, accompanied by the designs and symbols that most characterize their design style. Whether it's the dislocated planes of Mies van der Rohe (a Jack), Queen Zaha Hadid's jagged curves, or the modulor man that accompanies Le Corbusier - who is, of course, a king - Babina's playing cards are loaded with design references. They might indeed have some educational value, but they are mostly, as Babina points out, for "serious fun."

Read on to see the full set of 12 illustrations.