Mind-Bending Buildings That Were Never Meant to Be Built

A new book called Imagine Architecture: Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm is a collection of buildings that were never built. They exist in art, literature, or in our imaginations. This one is from a series called Interacciones. Dionisio González from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

A new book called Imagine Architecture: Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm is a collection of buildings that were never built. They exist in art, literature, or in our imaginations. This one is from a series called Interacciones.

Dionisio González from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Artist and photographer Victor Enrich's retouched photo montages imagine some of the most improbable buildings in the book. Victor Enrich from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Artist and photographer Victor Enrich's retouched photo montages imagine some of the most improbable buildings in the book.

Victor Enrich from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

His work is inspired by the puzzle-like qualities of cities, which he says are "a complex system of nodes that involve and connect everybody’s blurry dreams, exacerbate passions, fearful nightmares, or even tedious social life.” Victor Enrich from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

His work is inspired by the puzzle-like qualities of cities, which he says are "a complex system of nodes that involve and connect everybody’s blurry dreams, exacerbate passions, fearful nightmares, or even tedious social life.”

Victor Enrich from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

The Flying and Floating series by Thomas Overweg features slivers of scenes taken from computer combat games. These are from Mafia 2. Robert Overweg from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

The Flying and Floating series by Thomas Overweg features slivers of scenes taken from computer combat games. These are from Mafia 2.

Robert Overweg from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

The floating windows and fire escapes that lead to nowhere are one way that Overweg emphasizes the limitations of videogame architecture. Games tend to reproduce “what we already know," he says. Robert Overweg from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

The floating windows and fire escapes that lead to nowhere are one way that Overweg emphasizes the limitations of videogame architecture. Games tend to reproduce “what we already know," he says.

Robert Overweg from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

These floating, magpie-like houses by artist Laurent Chehere don't look like it, but they were all photographed in Paris. Laurent Chehere from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

These floating, magpie-like houses by artist Laurent Chehere don't look like it, but they were all photographed in Paris.

Laurent Chehere from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Chehere composes each one by editing together different elements that create a story based on what he can find out about the history of the building. Laurent Chehere from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Chehere composes each one by editing together different elements that create a story based on what he can find out about the history of the building.

Laurent Chehere from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Artist Larissa Fassler combines traditional architectural methods like blueprints and maps with actual human interactions that she observes on the street. Larissa Fassler from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Artist Larissa Fassler combines traditional architectural methods like blueprints and maps with actual human interactions that she observes on the street.

Larissa Fassler from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

This series is based off a Berlin neighborhood and is a collapsed visual narrative of advertisements, Google searches, and graffiti that sprung up over time. Larissa Fassler from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

This series is based off a Berlin neighborhood and is a collapsed visual narrative of advertisements, Google searches, and graffiti that sprung up over time.

Larissa Fassler from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

These black and white photo engravings belong in the book's last chapter, "The Ruin," because as imagined here, they're abandoned homes of the future that have been claimed by the environment. Dionisio González from Imagine Architecture,Copyright Gestalten 2014

These black and white photo engravings belong in the book's last chapter, "The Ruin," because as imagined here, they're abandoned homes of the future that have been claimed by the environment.

Dionisio González from Imagine Architecture,Copyright Gestalten 2014

In Interacciones, Dionisio González created a series of surreal buildings that have melded with nature. Dionisio González from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

In Interacciones, Dionisio González created a series of surreal buildings that have melded with nature.

Dionisio González from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

The buildings in the Climbing in Love series are often based on real buildings, but have flourished details, like cement windows. Giordano Poloni from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

The buildings in the Climbing in Love series are often based on real buildings, but have flourished details, like cement windows.

Giordano Poloni from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

In each seemingly deserted scene, the artist Giordano Poloni paints in a tiny romantic human interaction. Giordano Poloni from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

In each seemingly deserted scene, the artist Giordano Poloni paints in a tiny romantic human interaction.

Giordano Poloni from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Unité built the world's largest replica of Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation housing block in Marseille out of foam, Bristol board, and Wite-Out. By creating such an exact replica, the unit is meant to express how impossible it is to stay original in modern architecture. Tom Sachs from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Unité built the world's largest replica of Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation housing block in Marseille out of foam, Bristol board, and Wite-Out. By creating such an exact replica, the unit is meant to express how impossible it is to stay original in modern architecture.

Tom Sachs from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Artist Matthew Cusick's collages of imagined highways are scrapped together from old road maps and atlases. Matthew Cusick from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Artist Matthew Cusick's collages of imagined highways are scrapped together from old road maps and atlases.

Matthew Cusick from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

When we talk about architecture, we’re usually talking about buildings that serve some practical purpose. The walls keep us warm and out of the wind, the roof shields us from rain. These are our homes, our office buildings, our banks and our restaurants—the structures that keep society going. But architecture can serve more quixotic purposes, too. A new book focuses on this side of the field: buildings that don’t really exist at all.

Gestalten

From wild, speculative blueprints of future cities like these from a young North Korean architect to the adobe-like buildings of Star Wars’s Tatooine, there are countless examples of the architecture of imagination. These structures don’t really exist in our world, but they enliven our narratives—and sometimes influence structures we do end up building.

A new book called Imagine Architecture: Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm , from publisher Gestalten, is a collection of these kinds of buildings. In the book’s introduction, architectural curator Lukas Feireiss writes that imaginary architecture—the kind found in art and literature—can be seen as a way for people to wrestle with new ideas about themselves, their intellect, and their social, political, and cultural environments.

“Even scientists begin their experimentations with pure speculation and imagination,” Feireiss writes. “The fruits of their investigations are often not expected to materialize in the near future. Like science, artistic imagination is experimental, but in a way that values invention, and attempts to establish new forms of knowledge and representation.”

Artist Laura Kicey’s images of buildings could never exist, because they’re stitched together from photos she’s taken around the world. Laura Kicey from Imagine Architecture, Copyright Gestalten 2014

Imagine Architecture is broken down into four sub-sections: “The House,” “The Tower,” “The City,” and “The Ruin.” References to great thinkers and creators dot the opening text for each chapter. Marco Polo, Carl Jung, and architect Rem Koolhaas are all quoted, framing the unexpected images that follow: upside down apartment flats, office buildings that split like zippers in mid-air, levitating houses, skyscrapers made of clouds.

The Ruin sub-section is especially curious. It makes sense to envision buildings that could someday be—you can think of them as dreams for the future. But why imagine a decaying building that never was?

“The future of any building is its ruin. So why not plan, draw, or build one from the onset?” Feireiss writes. This section is the most speculative of the bunch. It invites us to have a hand in the imaginary building ourselves. As Feireiss puts it, “The incompleteness of the ruin calls to be completed in the mind’s eye of the onlooker.”