The town is like many others: blocks of flats flank a small main road, with trees breaking up the suburban concrete sprawl - and, in the centre, two towers suspend a giant silver orb. "I'm very rational and pragmatic, but when I draw my artwork I try to be as irrational and unpragmatic as possible," says Mykhailo Ponomarenko, 29, the winner of this year's Blank Space competition, which challenged architects to create stories and illustrations on the theme of fairy tales. His work (below), and other entries shown here, blends artistic licence with architectural concepts to create fantastical but familiar worlds.
Originally from Ukraine, Ponomarenko now works as a landscape designer at architectural firm EDSA in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Influences on his work range from the paintings of Simon Stålenhag to the books of Kurt Vonnegut and the architecture of Bjarke Ingels.
Last Day, the story behind his imagined landscape, is straight out of science fiction: a "Great Gravity Anomaly" has been discovered in rural Russia, leading to anti-gravity engines capable of suspending megastructures in the sky. "I love sci-fi, but I feel most of it is negative nowadays," he says. "Movies are usually about war, devastation, catastrophe, tyranny, invasion, apocalypse and extinction. I admit it's fun and thrilling to watch, but I don't understand why our future should be that creepy. I intentionally tried to do something more optimistic."
In his artwork, Ponomarenko was keen to show fictional architecture helping, rather than damaging, the natural world. "We humans are very ambitious, skilful and stubborn creatures who are capable of doing very beautiful things. But also, we change the environment and landscape of the whole planet."
Ponomarenko hopes his images - and the others on these pages - will encourage people to think differently about architecture's relationship with nature. "We need to change the way we interact with nature and each other. Most of us have way too narrow a world view."
Julien Nolin
Deep in the Amazon lies an improbable theme park. Created by artist Julien Nolin, the bustling illustration shows a world of towering roller-coasters where production lines and amusements run side by side. Visitors are expected to be cogs in a giant machine that churns out fizzy-drink cans and candy canes.
Ariane Merle D'Aubigné and Jean Maleyrat
The world of Skyland is an imaginative riff on the refugee crisis. To escape inequality and persecution, people have created a network of utopian shanty towns on stilts. Residents arrive in Skyland with nothing and have to endure harsh conditions to survive in their precarious communities.
Dakis Panayiotou
Panayiotou's dreamscapes place fragile structures in eerie, otherworldly settings. The intricate, birdcage-like tower in the middle of this image is surrounded by lush, cartoonish vegetation. In the background, a swirling mass of birds takes flight from behind a jagged mountain range.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
