Used by architects and engineers, Autocad and other computer-aided design (CAD) programs have a long history as boring and blunt instruments of drafting, but this architectural illustrator has breathed new life into these drawing and rendering tools.

Fabiola Morcillo Núñez is a young Chilean architect who builds imaginary landscapes inspired by exotic architecture and pop art, a sort of modern-day Escher intent on blurring the improbable with impossible.

Many of her scenes play on elements believable at first look, like a deconstructed isometric or axonometric drawing of a house … but on fire, or flooded or featuring an impossible room or staircase.

“Architecture as a discursive tool has helped me a lot in constructing my own form of representation,” she says of her work. She is interested in deconstruction, spatial limitations, layers and multiplicity.

Her pieces borrow from various sources of inspiration in the media and world around her: “I like to take several references, be alert to life itself, be very observant and have a broad sense of understanding of beauty and the tools of creation that are presented throughout the day, for example; the internet, books, movies, the street, travel, personal stories, aesthetic preferences, dreams, philosophy etc.”

Beyond her artistic explorations, Fabiola’s work is an implicit statement about how the tools we use, even the ones with less-rich histories of creative expression, can be turned to new and inspiring purposes.