Art and architecture collide in many ways. But some of the more hilarious collisions lie in large-scale sculptures, where giant animals and food interact with museums, convention centres, and even anonymous facades. Architecture has long been a vehicle for this type of art since the days of cathedrals and caryatids, when figural forms decorated buildings as part of the stone facade or as columns.
Today's architectural sculptures are different: typically temporary and independent of the actual building. This leaves the two parts separate and allows a narrative to appear from their relationship.
For instance, in Vienna, artist Erwin Wurm "attacked" the Museum Moderner Kunst by plopping a small residential house upside down at the top of the building. This could be considered a tongue-in-cheek assault on the institution of modern art, or on the museum itself.
In contrast, the ice cream cone that Claes Oldenburg built on top of the Neumarkt Galerie, a mall in Cologne, Germany, adds a playful note to the urban landscape. It takes into consideration its location, as there was no room on the street for such a display. The cone itself is detailed with a diamond pattern in relief, to avoid looking like surrounding commercial signs, and it tilts so as not to resemble church steeple.
Here is a collection of sculptures of all shapes and sizes that interact with buildings. Each one tells a different story. Do they make sense to you?
1. House Attack by Erwin Wurm - Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria
Image via Boum! Bang!
This small family home is trying to bring down the large, modern art museum that sits below it. It is the first thing that visitors of the museum see upon arrival, challenging their perception of reality in a humorous way.
2. Bad Dog by Richard Jackson - Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, USA
Image via Life With Dogs
This 28-foot tall labrador retriever periodically pees on the facade of the museum through a built-in hose that dispenses yellow paint. The matte-black metal giant is part of Jackson's retrospective at OCMA, though there is no explicit explanation of the piece, only critics' interpretations.
3. Dropped Cone by Claes Oldenburg - Neumarkt Galerie, Cologne, Germany
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Such a classic. The giant food sculptures by Oldenburg are a fixture of museums across the world - from Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Walker Art Center to Giant Pool Balls at Skulptur Projekte Münster. This one - dubbed Dropped Cone - happens to be plopped on top of the building.
4. Giant Buddhas on Building - Jinan, China
Image via Tosh Comedy Central
Presumably a contemporary update of the ancient tradition of carving giant figures, these buddhas scale this otherwise un-noteworthy building with relative ease.
5. Big Blue Bear by Lawrence Argent - Colorado Convention Centre, Denver, USA
Image via flickr user Elizabeth Thomsen
The 40-foot high bear has become an icon of downtown Denver as it peers into the otherwise ordinary convention centre.
6. Salmon - Portland, USA
Image via Whimpulsive
This embedded salmon faces Salmon Street in downtown Portland.
7. Dispatchwork by various artists - Worldwide
Image via Dispatchwork
This project of artist Jan Vormann features submissions from all over the world by users who upload their Lego building patches. They fill in gaps of structures, such as cracks, chips, and missing tiles or bricks.
8. Biografias by Alicia Martin - Casa de America, Madrid, Spain
Image via The Book Bag
9. Song 1 by Doug Aiken - Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Centre, Washington DC, USA
Image courtesy Doug Aiken
This installation employs 11 projectors to wrap the circular building in a 360-degree video, a contrast between ephemeral, dynamic video, and rigid, solid concrete. It features original music by Beck, No Age, Devendra Banhart, Lucky Dragons, and High Places.
10. Flash:Light by SOFTlab - New Museum, New York City, USA
This large-scale installation by SOFTlab includes "1500 LEDs and a bunch of Mylar" and was organized in conjunction with NuitBlanch New York, a night-time light art festival in 2011.
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