illustration: The Latest Architecture and News

John Redington, a Texas-based illustrator, documents abandoned rural sheds and their modest architectural impact. In this visual essay he reveals this unseen, underrepresented vernacular arguing that the "shaky charm of the abandoned shed could offer a look into a more humble form of inspiration for architects."

The car rattles on a loose road as thick white dust rises from the back of its tires. On either side seas of sunburned grass just barely keep themselves from breaking onto the path. The sky sits heavily on the horizon, as the fragrance of both wild and cultivated plants fill the air.

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A renowned symbol of the modern world, Tokyo is a city commonly associated with bright lights, innovative technology and sleek buildings. So when Polish artist Mateusz Urbanowicz first moved to Tokyo, he was taken aback by the number of old, architecturally eclectic storefronts that continued to flourish within the city.

“When I moved to Tokyo, more than 3 years ago I was really surprised that upon my walks I encountered so many shops still in business in really old buildings,” Urbanowicz explains. “Differently to Kobe, where the earthquake wiped out a lot of these old downtown houses and shops, in Tokyo they still survive.”

Inspired by the buildings’ resilience and their unique architectural features, Urbanowicz set out to document the storefronts in a series of watercolor illustrations, capturing the process through making-of videos.

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We want to see your designs for an architecture Halloween pumpkin! Download the design template below and illustrate/animate/build something that will squash us with your talent. We'll be accepting entries until October 24, at 12:00 pm EST and we'll publish our favorites before Halloween!

The British Library has continued to release images from its digitized collection, now bordering over one million images on public image-sharing platform Flickr, reports Quartz. Since 2013, the institution’s “Mechanical Curator” has been randomly selecting images or other pages from over 65,000 public-domain books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

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Lima-based architect Karina Puente has a personal project: to illustrate each and every "invisible" city from Italo Calvino's 1972 novel. The book, which imagines imaginary conversations between the (real-life) Venetian explorer Marco Polo and the aged Mongol ruler Kublai Khan has been instrumental in framing approaches to urban discourse and the form of the city. According to Puente, who has shared six drawings with ArchDaily, "each illustration has a conceptual process, some of which take more time than others." Usually "I research, think, and ideate over each city for three weeks before making sketches." The final drawings and cut-outs take around a week to produce.

Architect, illustrator and cofounder of the Miniatura project, Bruna Canepa has shared with us a stunning collection of her illustrations and collages, which offer a fresh gaze onto one of architecture’s most common tools: the drawing. Beyond depicting examples of unreal architecture, her works present architecture that replaces firmitas, utilitas and venustas for complexity, wonder and irony.

From extrusions and explosions of familiar typologies to surreal and sterile atmospheres of empty spaces, we suggest three subcategories to frame Bruna’s illustrations as shown below: Houses, Cubics, and Displacements. 

André Chiote, a Portuguese architect renowned for designing illustrations that represent some of architecture’s most iconic buildings, has agreed to give five lucky winners a copy of their favorite print. To participate, browse through Chiote’s collection on his online shop and tell us which illustration you like the best in the comment section below.

You have until Wednesday, January 29th to submit your comments. Winners will be contacted the following day. Good luck!