Murals: The Latest Architecture and News

Addressing themes involving memory, oblivion and gender, the Argentinean visual artist and muralist, Mariela Ajras, displays her art on the walls of numerous cities around the world such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Barcelona, Valencia, Salamanca, Mexico City, Bogota, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, among many others. With a background in psychology, she has participated in different urban art festivals, exhibitions, fairs and public art projects, one of the largest murals in the city of Buenos Aires being the one she developed for the project "Corredor de la Memoria", commemorating the 25th anniversary of the AMIA bombing.

This article originally appeared in The Genetics of Design and was then republished by Common Edge.

Since 2015, Ragusa, Sicily has hosted FestiWall, an international art festival devoted to enhancing the public realm and improving citizen engagement with the modern section of an old city. The image above shows two views of a residential tower before and after FestiWall. Which one grabs your eye?

We’ll guess you’re drawn to the one with the art at right. Running the image through biometric software predicts you’ll immediately focus on the man in the mural.

In this wide-ranging video, drone videographer Ian Wood captures the diversity of the built environment in Los Angeles, featuring architectural gems on equal footing with freeways and freight trains. The buildings and locations featured in the video span over a century of architectural history in LA, and cover the region’s vast geography, including such icons as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House, Cesar Pelli’s Pacific Design Center, Eric Owen Moss’ Stealth building, and Morphosis’ recently completed Emerson College Los Angeles.

But what truly sets this video apart is how it highlights the many murals spread throughout the city. Often utilizing otherwise blank facades facing parking lots and alleys, these murals are nonetheless an integral part of LA’s urban fabric, as illustrated in this video. Sadly though, as Wood notes on the video description, there were many more murals that vanished before he was able to get them on video.

Spanish designer and photographer A.L. Crego has brought street art to life in his latest project, adding movement to murals from the around the world. In order to maintain the original artwork, Crego first photographed the sites and then digitally intervened to convert them into animations.

All the murals selected by the designer convey messages about dependence on technology and its effects on personal interactions.

View his urban GIFs after the break.