dreamscapes held on a screen
There is a moment when these images begin to look like places we might have been before. A swimming pool lies in absolute tranquility and a staircase leads upwards with no clear destination. An unusual subway car is sunny and sparkling, its interior flooded with clear blue water. The lighting looks familiar, even if the space itself doesn’t.
Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture moves through interiors and landscapes that read as architecture at first glance. However, something changes as gravity seems optional and the sense of scale slips away. These are spaces that cannot and it will never be builtfree of budgets, clients and physical boundaries. The book collects these moments and gives them weight, as if they belong to a forgotten memory.
Massimo Colonna, Ambiguous, 2018. see designboom coverage here
artificial architecture for the imagination
It helps to remember that renderings were once at the edge of architecture and served as a stepping stone to something concrete. Throughout Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture, it is the work itself. What you see is the final condition. There is no construction site waiting somewhere out of context.
This change changes the way these spaces are constructed. In the first place they are composed for the eye and the imagination. Light carries more weight than structure, and surfaces feel finished in a way that natural materials rarely do. Throughout her booka common language begins to form, with pastel skies, reflective waters and precise geometries appearing again and again. The repetition is intentional as it works to gradually build a collective atmosphere.
Ezequiel Pini, Six N. Five, The Circle, 2022. see designboom’s coverage here
remote utopia
There is a certain kind of space that constantly appears in Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture. With still pools of water reflecting ethereal skies, walls curving perfectly with no visible joints and light landing evenly with curated shadows. Scenes are held together in ways that feel complete even though they only exist as images.
These spaces are designed to be understood immediately. Viewers do not move through them, but instead take them in full, in a single view. Architecture shifts here from something experienced over time to something perceived in an instant.
At the same time, they move on a different trajectory than utopia as something applied to the world. There is no infrastructure here, no negotiation with location or context. Instead, the work creates space for imagination. It gives form to a set of desires often implied by architecture in the background.
Hayden Williams, World Underwater, 2020. see designboom’s coverage here
artists who shape frictionless atmospheres
What stands out is the cleanliness and the absence of friction. Nothing interrupts the composition. There are no signs of use, no traces of time, no adjustments are made for occupancy. Even when familiar typologies appear, courtyard, living room, subway car, they exist in a suspended state.
At Massimo Colonna’s Vaguea sequence of arches frames a courtyard that feels sealed off from its surroundings. The sculptural figures hold their positions, as if time has stopped in mid-gesture. At Ezequiel Pini’s The Circlethe interior flows as one continuous surface, where furniture and structure flow together into a single form without seams or hard edges.
Simon Kämpfer, Hidden Places, 2019
known forms, recalibrated
Other projects start with recognizable systems and then change their conditions. Hayden Williams’ World Underwater retains the structure of a subway car, poles, seats, overhead lighting, while introducing a flooded floor that reflects the entire interior. The system remains readable, although its environment has changed.
In Simon Kämpfer’s Hidden Places, a tiled pool sits within a symmetrical series of simple arches. The proportions of the portico are reminiscent of classical architecture, yet the scene is soft, stripped of detail and kept in a steady, even light. A floating inflatable flamingo introduces salts, although the space remains cut off from use.
image courtesy of Design
design without limitations: creating space for dreams
These environments prioritize atmosphere over activity. The absence of people allows the space to hold itself, without reference to movement or behavior. You are outside the scene, observing rather than participating. Through this distance, the viewer mentally completes the space, projecting himself into it without fully entering. The image becomes a container for imagined experience rather than a setting for actual use.
Placed within a larger discussion of utopia, these works follow a different path. They do not test systems or impose restrictions. They work ahead of these concerns, exploring what space can be like when it is free of them. This does not place them outside of architectural thought. Instead, they expand it. Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture presents a field where ideas can be promoted without consequence and then promoted as glimpses.
