Suzanne's Mom's Blog

My husband thought readers might enjoy British sculptor Alex Chinneck’s whimsical take on the built environment. As Elle Hunt wrote for the Guardian, “His melting houses and floating building have earned the British sculptor a reputation as a master of urban illusion.”

For example, ” ‘From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes,’ [above] created the impression that the entire facade of a house in Margate had slid into the garden. Chinneck says he often aims to create something that fits in so well with its surroundings, it can be easily missed.

“The house in Margate had been derelict for 11 years when Chinneck found the right property for his ‘very large project.’ Ten companies donated all the processes and materials required for the project, and after its months-long run, it was reused as housing. ‘Architecture provides a fantastic canvas for sculpture,’ he said at the time. …

“His first-ever permanent work, ‘Six Pins and Half a Dozen Needles,’ … was commissioned as part of the Assembly London office and retail complex in Hammersmith, on the site of a former publishing house. A prominent part of the building had the same ratios to an A4 sheet of paper, planting the seed for Chinneck’s large-scale response. Chinneck says context is especially important to him when a structure will be permanent. ‘There’s something fantastic about responding to a new architectural context …

” ‘‘The path to realising these ideas is a very hard one, but the conception of them is quite simple. We just tore paper and scanned it and found one that we liked,’ he explains. …

“A crane had to be taken apart to access the back of the building, then rebuilt to lift each piece into the air and onto the building.” …

“In 2014, Chinneck made a building in London’s Covent Garden market look as though it was floating mid-air. The illusion of weightlessness took a lot of polystyrene and 16 tonnes of steel. He says his closest collaborator is his structural engineer, who he talks to every day. ‘I create the problems, and he solves them. He is that difference between it being an idea and the transformation into it slowly becoming a reality.’ ”

Check out the Guardian, here, for more great shots.

Photo: Charles Emerson
Alex Chinneck’s first permanent architectural sculpture, commissioned as part of the Assembly London office and retail complex. The biggest hurdle was attaining planning permission.