Fantastic architecture
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The term fantastic architecture is used by various authors to summarize buildings that contradict the prevailing norms and conventions of the established architecture and appear unreal and dreamlike in terms of structure, use of materials, function and structural logic. There was particular interest in such examples, judging by the number and popularity of relevant publications, in the 1960s to 1980s. The examples of fantastic architecture cited in various publications are multifaceted, so it is not a stylistic form , but a residual category of the extraordinary and astonishing.
Fischer Lexicon of Fine Arts, 1961
Günther Feuerstein names the colossal and the megalomaniac , the visionary , the pathetic , the literary - idealistic and the utopian , as well as the dominance of the symbolic , low usability and ephemeral improvisation as criteria for a fantastic architecture . Buildings of a naive - amateurish character, the curvaceous that merges with nature and the decorative - hypertrophic , the expressively exaggerated and the exotic - but also rationalist - exaggerated, and the construction that challenges the laws of statics or is at the limit of technical feasibility. As a rule, according to Feuerstein, several such characteristics would have to be present in order to identify an architecture as fantastic.
Fantastic architecture , 1980
George R. Collins divides the phenomenon in the book Fantastic Architecture , which was published in 1980, into half a dozen main groups: artist buildings, private castles and palaces, buildings in the symbolic "form of" (such as geometric figures or animals), visionary architecture, architecture unusual materials and fantastic garden architecture .
- Among the artists 'buildings, Collins mentions the unbuilt visions of Giambattista Piranesi and Juan O'Gorman's private house , Edward James ' Monkton House , Robert Tatin's La Frénouse and Bruno Weber's house in Dietikon as examples ; further works by Niki de Saint-Phalle and the Merzbau by Kurt Schwitters .
- Among the private castles and palaces, he refers to the buildings of Ludwig II and the Sicilian Villa Palagonia as realized fantasies. Examples of this are Taródi-vár , the “Palais idéal” by Ferdinand Cheval and the sand castles by Pieter Wiersma , but also the Belgian “Tower of the Apocalypse” by Robert Garcet and the Watts Towers by Sam Rodia.
- Under the title "in the form of" Collins quotes the "symbolic functionalism" of French revolutionary architecture and bridges the gap to commercial buildings of the present in the form of animals and plants, shoes, barrels, etc., to the " elephant hotel " in Atlantic City 1883 and to houseboats in the shape of pagodas or churches.
- In the “Visionaries” section, Collins again treats French and Soviet revolutionary architecture, mentions Antoni Gaudí , Bruno Taut and Hermann Finsterlin . Rudolf Steiner , Erich Mendelsohn , Paolo Soleri , Richard Buckminster Fuller's visions of domed cities, but also Ron Herron's Walking Cities .
- Under the title “unusual materials”, the bottle houses by George Plumb, Godfried Gabriel and David Brown are presented, under “inside and outside” the trompe l'œil effects of painted fire walls and under the heading of garden art the figurative Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong and the millennia-old art of bizarre hedge cutting.
literature
- Günther Feuerstein: Keyword “Fantastic Architecture” in: Werner Hofmann (Ed.): Fischer Lexikon der Bildenden Kunst, Volume III, pp. 174 ff, Frankfurt-Hamburg 1961, DNB 456624406
- Ulrich Conrads and Hans G. Sperlich: Fantastic Architecture , Hatje, Stuttgart, 1960, second edition 1983, ISBN 3-7757-0179-6
- Michael Schuyt, Joost Elffers: Fantastic Architecture , DuMont, Cologne, 1980, ISBN 3-7701-1034-X
- Olga Quadens: Architecture du rêve . Éditions Peeters, Louvain, 1990, ISBN 90-6831-264-2
- Ingo Kühl Architektur-Fantasies / Architectural Fantasies . Verlag Kettler, Dortmund 2015, ISBN 978-3-86206-470-0 .
Web links
- www.artefacti.de - Excerpt from Fischer Lexikon on the private homepage of the artist Michael Külbel
- www.strangebuildings.com - website with numerous "curious" buildings