Tuesday, December 2, 2008

20 Artistic Architectural Optical Illusions

Seeing is believing… or is it? Aided by high-tech materials, today's amazing 3D street graffiti artists, 3D mural painters and other clever geek artists. designers and architects are finding that if it can be imagined, it can also be built. This selection of architectural optical illusions showcases 20 more very public ways to fool the eye, please the mind and satisfy the soul.

(image via: Big Illusion)

Artists like Felice Varini like to think big, and this installation is so vast it requires the aid of distance to complete the illusion. "Three Ellipses for Three Locks" in Cardiff, Wales, was completed in 2007 and proves that with a small amount of material - in this case, some yellow paint - something grand can emerge.

(image via: BBC)

The piece is a classic "anamorphic illusion" in that to view Varini's art as intended, one must be in a certain position where the sightlines can perfectly converge. Costing a mere $50,000, the work was one year in the planning stages yet took only two weeks to create.

http://weburbanist.com/2008/11/29/architecture-optical-illusions/

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