As I walk around the streets of a city, I am flooded by creative triggers. People and the way they live in that city are responsible for a part of them. However, the aesthetic triggers often come as a gift from Architecture and urban landscapes. They affect me not only with the lines, forms, or the graphic compositions - I am equally fascinated by the materiality, the volumes, and the spaces that are created within or in-between.
Architecture and urban subjects have been at the center of my creative practice ‘on the paper’ for some years already, so, quite naturally, I have recently felt the need to step out of the 2D plane into the more tangible and tactile the dimensional sphere.
It is reflected in my design object series “(Re)constructed Modernism” through which I seek to interpret modernist buildings which are dear to me for their aesthetics. That is a way for me to reconsider and appreciate those objects.
When I create my “(Re)constructed Modernism” objects, I reenact a mind game of mine which I play in the streets: as I am walking I part the buildings which I find attractive, I screen them, I scan the most prominent features - the lines, forms, the colors - and in my mind, I deconstruct them to reassemble them in my way. My objects are thus materialized in reality. The game is at times planned, at times not, but always immersive.
My “(Re)constructed Modernism” object series starts with the eccentric House of Iljinai family (1933, architect Arno Funkas) prototype - this building is the one that screams the loudest for me to stop, look at it, and “awe” whenever I pass by it.
Generally speaking, a circled window as an accent, as well as the great diversity of window shapes, their expressive contours, the language of the shapely lines, the horizontal axes, and the high entrance doors - those are the main things I notice when I look at this building. And that's what inspired the forms of my prototyped.
The frame - a volumetric grid - has been chosen as a hint to an empty architectural sheet. A sheet to interpret architecture.
I am very thankful to designer Justinas Dadonas (“Panama Workshop”) for the help in making my 3D prints.