His world of imagination ---- Vito Acconci

I've always been fond of architecture, especially those which seem to be impossible to exist in reality; Those which can only appear in fantasy or some sort of alien world. Of course I do not see a lot of these kind of amazing structures. The ones I'm going to talk about today were created by Vito Acconci.

Island in the Mur River, Graz, Austria, amphitheater designed by Vito Acconci

When I first saw this, I got really fascinated because of the combination of modernism, unrealness, simplicity and elegance in one single structure. It serves as a bridge, but nobody would simply think of it as a bridge, it's more like a contemporary art theater or something far more then ordinary. It does have a bar and a coffee shop in it, it must be a great pleasure to sit inside the structure and have a drink.

Although being born in the 40's, the artist has very strong and modern aesthetic. The fluid of the lines of the building bring great elegance, and the fact that it's located in between a small peaceful river surrounded by plants gives the whole scene a remote and alien feeling. The shape of the structure is so distinct from what people usually see; it may be bizarre, but in a stunning way.

This is an even more bold and astounding design. It was for the performing arts center design competition for the city of Seoul. Unfortunately they did not pick this one, instead they picked to me an ugly and much less amazing design.

Vito Acconci has a very modern or even post-modern taste in beauty, you can tell strongly from this second design. The whole structure is like a gigantic spacecraft emerging from the undersea. It's 'floating' platform with bold pink color and crater surface challenge people's eyes because this is something people do not seen in the reality at all. Again, the whole structure is very fluid, matching the ever flowing sea water. To me, it's such an outstanding and exciting design it clearly ought to have been chosen.

Here is what the artist said in an interview about this architecture: "If you don't want to walk or drive across the bridge, you can come to the island by boat; you dock your boat in a crater. The largest craters are occupied: they're filled with transparent capsules, that function as hotel rooms. The Performing Arts Center proper is rotated on the floodable base of the island; it's cantilevered off the base, it escapes floods, it hovers above the water like a spacecraft."

I could not find a lot of information about this one, it's in a video presentation the artist did in 2006. Sometimes I think the artist just wants to implant his alien and unique imagination into our real world, but maybe it's usually very difficult to carry it out in the real world, and that's why we could only see the plans of his extraordinary architecture ideas. I deeply love all three designs I showed you today, I hope you can find the beauty in them as I did. To watch the video about the last design, go to http://www.dvblog.org/movies/01_2010/acconci/LMLaunchVitoAcconci_AcconciStudio_Presentation.mov