Artists Camille Benoit and Mariana Gella used the coronavirus lockdown to design architectural models of fantastical cities, made from paper and tools they had at home.
The London-based paper artists are flatmates and had brainstormed the 3D project, called Invisible Cities, for a while before the UK lockdown gave them the chance to build it.
The Saori model city, pictured above and top, is among four the duo created during lockdown
Their four paper models, called Saori, Azra, Calista and Ika, were informed by Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities, which "explores imagination through the descriptions of Marco Polo travels," according to the designers.
Benoit and Gella transformed their living room into a workshop to assemble the project. "Most of the days we would wake up with tiny pieces from the project in our beds. We fully lived this paper experience," they told Dezeen. Calista has winding stairs and is strewn with decorative leaves
Each model represents a different Invisible City. "We initially sketched the four cities on paper before developing the front elevations on Illustrator to get a general idea of how the architecture would look," the artists explained.
"Using a 3D software, Rhinoceros, we played around with the volumes until we found the right proportions for each city. We also rendered the models to understand and anticipate how light would affect the sculptures."
The city of Azra is the smallest and was the most diffic...