Alex Chinneck's playful architecture experiments are almost like more modest, subtle variations of Frank Gehry's dancing structures across the world. The London-based designer has created curved buildings that look like they were made for extreme skateboarding stunts, melted brick walls, and recently unveiled an inverted take on architecture (literally): an upside down building.The project, called Miner On The Moon, involved Chinneck manipulating a building from the 1780s so that the entrance and doors are near the roof, the windows are flipped, and pipes scale from the sky, down towards the ground. Like Gehry, Chinneck's work is playful and cheeky, but it isn't as in-your-face as the work of the Canadian-American architecture icon. You might not notice Chinneck's designs while walking down a street, but when you do….woof.Maybe a better comparison is the sculpture work of Czech artist, Kristof Kintera. Like Chinneck, Kintera takes mundane, bland objects (pillows and bikes in Kintera's case, brown buildings in Chinneck's) and make them whimsically surreal.Below is a statement from Chinneck on the project:Below are some past projects by Chinneck:A Pound Of Flesh For 50pFrom The Knees Of My Nose To The Belly Of My ToesAnd to compare to some of Gehry's more ostentatious work:And here is some work by Kintera:Analysis ResultsHat tip to Dezeen @zachsokol
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The work is titled Miner On The Moon. It is located just south of Blackfriars Bridge at 20 Blackfriars Road SE1 8NY and was produced as the finale to Merge Festival 2013.
Built in 1780, the site was originally used as livery stables housing horses and carriages for hire. The access through the site (the underpass to the bottom right of the building) was used to ferry live cattle from the rear yard to the Thames for trade. I was interested by how the architectural silhouette of the building had been created with this function in mind and I wanted to conceive a concept that responded to this shape and the buildings history.
The material and aesthetic decisions within the project celebrate the architectural heritage of Southwark and the timeless charm of its fatigued buildings. By presenting a very familiar architectural scenery and narrative in an inverted way, the audience hopefully re-appreciates the buildings and moments of our daily environments that we allow to slip into our subconscious.
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