Concrete Art: Urban Wallscapes & Beyond

I love to have urban-inspired interior around me. That’s why you can not just find street signs and slot-machines already in my apartment, but that’s also why I would love to have this beautiful concrete chair made by Swiss architect and designer Stefan Zwicky! Zwicky, who took Le Corbusier’s LC2 armchair and transformed it into a monolithic piece of furniture which expresses the weight and cold nature of concrete (as was mentioned by designboom.com), created in that way a must to have for every fairfaced concrete enthusiast like me. ...

After hitting California, China and Lisbon, destruction muralist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils (here our interview with him), just popped up on the Archipelago of the Azores for the currently running Walk & Talk festival… Recently, he and his team finished up a pretty impressing decayed church mural! This new piece entitled Abraço to ruin (Embrace the ruin) depicts a women retaining the ruin’s walls as if protecting a child. Looks just amazing to me - especially the view over the trees (see above) is killing it. Here are some more impressions, via Vhils’ Facebook: ...

Graffiti Architecture in Melbourne In Melbourne, Australia, a building complex called Hive combines graffiti and architecture in an exciting new way! Whereas usually graffiti is added afterwards to the facade of a building, the facade of the Hive incorporates a giant three-dimensional concrete tag! This project by ITN Architects is real graffiti architecture! Built for an architect and artist, this building has its name written right into its walls and also comes with other graphical elements like arrows giving the entire complex an urban, sci-fi dynamic… ...

Wow, I’m totally flashed - Portuguese hero and artist of destruction Alexandre Farto aka Vhils just redesigned one of the oldest concrete blocks in Lisbon! In Eixo Norte-Sul, a district in Portugal’s capital, Vhils added parts of a face onto the facade of an abandoned concrete tower. Right next to the motorway, it’s now attracting people’s attention… For Vhils, who visited California and Shanghai before, it’s one of the first stops at home for a while. Hope to see some more new works of him in Europe in near future! ...

In Cairo, Egyptian graffiti artists made this military street barrier disappear, by painting a fantastic mural that makes the concrete wall visually transparent! Here’s the story about the Sheikh Rihan mural: *Following deadly clashes in Tahrir that erupted last November, and resumed more than once after that, which have left over 50 civilian protesters killed, SCAF, the military ruling junta of Egypt has built walls around Tahrir square and its side streets to prevent protesters from passing around. More than 4 walls have been erected, turning Downtown Cairo to a maze-like area with citizens forced to find longer routes to cross the obstacles. ...

I just fell from my chair. Toronto-born, Tokyo-based entrepreneur, occasional artist and almost architect Christian Forestell (here a short interview) is right away starting the world’s largest painting project entitled Bikini Lines to benefit children orphaned in the 2011 Fukushima disaster! Bikini Lines - The Cactus Dome Painting Bikini Lines is a proposed massive, mixed media project inspired by a lack of standardized nuclear disaster reporting, in particular the panic that set in over Tokyo following the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent meltdown. Based on crowd-funding, the project’s main focus is on painting the huge Cactus Dome on the Marshall Islands, an enormous, foot-and-a-half-thick, 107m wide dome consisting of 358 gigantic concrete panels built over a nuclear crater, seriously! ...

Freerunning is a form of urban acrobatics - we all know that. Nevertheless I was totally flashed after watching the Storm Origins freerunning short film which was shot for a Channel 4 documentary called Concrete Circus! The film shows in action packed scenes the three frerunners Phil Doyle, Paul Joseph and Mathieu Ledoux running, jumping, flying and inline skating through an urban concrete landscape. Of course, the fire action is somehow exaggerated but the DIY SuperSoaker fake flamethrower seems to be good fun! ...

Mural Art | After Spanish graffiti and street artist Aryz painted his concrete wall, Barcelona-based GR170 is the next artist participating in the “Concrete Walls” project! GR170 was born, and now paints and lives, in the outskirts of Barcelona. He began painting in 2001, and now considers himself to be a painting addict, who loves painting on the streets, and the stale smell of plastic (paint) in the morning. Due to the zero tolerance police, and the hypocrisy of the government bodies behind it, the creation of murals on the streets of Barcelona has become more and more restricted. For this, and other, reasons, the majority of murals created are illegal, and done with no profit in mind, in abandoned factories, tunnels, motorway bridges, and any other places with big cement walls which are not watched over by police. (mtn-world.com) ...

Mural Art | I can’t understand anything but I really love that brilliant video showing Spanish graffiti and street artist Aryz painting a concrete wall in Barcelona earlier this year as a part of the Concrete Walls Project! Living in Barcelona, he got in contact with the local, very creative and inspiring street art scene early and developed an own, unique characters style. Now, he is well-known around Europe for his amazing murals and pieces (just remember that beautiful work he did together with Smash137!) that he uses spray-cans as well as paint rollers and brushes for. ...

Reverse Graffiti | I really laughed when I watched that new urban art project “Searching for Something Concrete” by interventional artist Brad Downey today, because I had the same idea together with an friend of mine a few month ago when we visited an exhibition in a gallery were the walls are periodically painted by artists, whitewashed by the gallery owner, painted by artists, whitewashed by the gallery owner, and so on… ...