The deeper you look into the incredibly detailed drawings of artist Benjamin Sack, the more the cities depicted seem to multiply, as if you could travel through his fractal cities forever and ever without stopping. Drawn in a classical style in black and white, his works play with the topography of architecture that has run amok, growing and expanding upon itself without limits. A little bit Leonardo da Vinci, a little bit MC Escher, the surreal pen-and-ink drawings draw you into fantastical worlds where ‘urban density’ has taken on a whole new meaning.

The American artist, who received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011, also produces time lapse videos of his work, so you can watch it come alive on the page.

“Sacks’ work explores architecture as a flexible medium capable of expressing the unique space between realism and abstraction; where interpretation and our ability to create meaning is in flux,” says Robert Fontaine Gallery, where the artist has displayed work many times over the years. “Within this space, Sack, furnished with pen and ink, encapsulates both the infinite and the infinitesimal. His work invites the eye to explore drawings of the ‘big picture,’ to gaze into a kaleidoscope of histories and to look further into the elemental world of lines and dots.”

“Sack draws a majority of his inspiration from art history and classical music. By combining these interests, Sack’s works become symphonies of ink. As well as art history and classical music, Sack derives a great amount of inspiration from the sciences, history, literature and the contemplation of paradoxes.”

When 3D printers are widely accessible and affordable, will we see another industrial revolution, enabling us to manufacture just about everything we need on demand? Progress made in 3D printing thus far looks promising. Designers, engineers, architects and even novices are printing everything from fully functional human hearts and custom biodegradable shoes to full-scale architecture and bicycle bridges. One designer even printed himself a large-format camera based on three models he couldn’t afford.

Beating Artificial Heart

Created by researchers at ETH Zürich, this 3D-printed silicone heart beats almost like a real one, and though it’s not yet considered a viable long-term replacement, it can help keep a patient’s blood flowing while they’re waiting for a donor organ. Right now, the material can only withstand about 45 minutes of usage, but the team sees it as a proof of concept showing a way forward for artificial hearts in the future.

Ceramic Constellation Pavilion

Made entirely of 3D-printed terra-cotta bricks with a unique shape that allows them to slot together without conventional brick bonding techniques, ‘Ceramic Constellation Pavilion’ gives us a glimpse at what we might be able to achieve with 3D-printed architecture in the decades to come. The structure was created by the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Architecture along with Sino Group. “In a context that has largely been shaped by standardization and mass production, the project seeks to overcome the constraints of today’s architectural production through the introduction of a structure made entirely of non-standard components.”

Robotic Sign Language Arm

Shortages of sign language interpreters internationally (and the difficulty of finding one on the spot) led the students behind Project Aslan to seek better ways to bridge the communication gap between the hearing and deaf communities. This robotic sign language hand is one result, using 3D printing to make it more affordable and easy to build. The robot receives information from a local network to activate its joints, allowing it to interpret written language into sign language. It’s not meant to replace human interpreters, but rather step in when they aren’t available, and can be used to teach sign language, too.

Digital Grotesque II 3D-Printed Grotto

Designed entirely by algorithms, ‘Digital Grotesque II’ is a 3D-printed pavilion made of 7 tons of printed sandstone, with an incredible 1.35 billion surfaces. It’s another look at how we could achieve unprecedented complexities, porosities and spatial depth in future architecture using 3D printing and other new methods of fabrication as robotics become more accessible.

Flying Iron Man Suit

Considering the optimism and rapid rate of progress in the 20th century, many of us expected to have cooler toys by now. Are we finally about to get a suit that lets us fly? Kind of. The Iron Man suit by Gravity Industries is set to be 3D printed in metal, with six miniature jet engines mounted to the arms and back for vertical takeoff and flight. However, it’ll literally take an Iron Man to wear the thing, as it takes enormous strength to control the jets. The suit itself weights up to 90 pounds.

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Houses To Human Hearts 13 Recent Breakthroughs In 3d Printed Designs

A ghostly ship sails through the Bay of Sapri in Southern Italy, just translucent enough for onlookers to doubt whether they’re imagining it, its silhouette obscured by a jumble of rectilinear columns. The latest wire mesh masterwork by artist Edoardo Tresoldi, ‘Locus’ is a collaboration with Italian musician IOSONOUNCANE, bringing sculpture and music together in a public performance enjoyed by a crowd gathered on the nearby shore.

The musician debuted his unreleased composition during the installation, presented as part of Sapri’s Derive Festival, an experimental art, music and poetry project curated by Antonio Oriente. The combination of the ship’s visuals, the lighting, the music and the setting truly made it a one-of-a-kind experience, with the sounds amplified by the water.

“Sapri Bay become sone of the characterizing elements of the event, acquiring a temporal and performative dimension,” states the Derive website (translated from Italian. “Collaboration blends different contemporary languages, redefining the relationship between audience and artist in a kind of hic et nunc [here and now] unrepeatable.”

Edoardo Tresoldi is known for his eerily beautiful wire compositions, which are typically architectural in nature, recreating entire classical and historic structures like echoes of churches that fell into ruins centuries ago and palatial interior installations augmented by flying birds.

Pinched, warped, rippled, steeply angled and mirrored until they disappear into the sky, these buildings are not quite what they seem at first glance. Sometimes, it takes a nice long look at their outlines and proportions to determine where their facades actually begin and end, and how they can possibly be balanced so precariously.

Rachel Raymond Mirror House

In the space once occupied by the historic Rachel Raymond House in Belmont, Massachusetts, a beautiful mirrored illusion rose: ‘Mirror House’ by Pedro Joel Costa Architecture and design, which pays tribute to the original home’s modernism while looking to the future.

The Dancing House, Prague

Prague’s ‘Dancing House,’ also known as ‘Fred and Ginger,’ is actually the Nationale-Nederlanden building by architect Vlado Milunic, built in cooperation with Frank Gehry in 1996. One of the dual towers of the building appears to be warped and distorted, as if someone squished it up against the other.

Australian Customs Service Building, Melbourne

From most angles, it’s virtually impossible to tell what’s going on with the facade of the Australian Customs Service Building in Melbourne, clad as it is in an unusual graphic black and white pattern. The theme is reportedly repeated inside.

Pinnacle at Symphony Place, Nashville, Tennessee

The tall and thin mirrored Pinnacle at Symphony Place almost manages to disappear into the sky altogether when conditions are just right, becoming like a ghostly suggestion of a building instead of something decidedly solid and real.

Lucid Stead by Phillip K. Smith III, Joshua Tree, California

Alternating its logs with long stretches of mirror, artist Phillip K. Smith III makes his Joshua Tree installation ‘Lucid Stead’ blend with its environment so effectively it seems to be little more than a few dark brown lines floating in the desert.

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Optical Illusion Architecture These 11 Buildings Are Not What They Seem

Seeming like a ghostly image of structures long gone overlaid onto the current reality, these wire mesh architectural creations arch over 75,000 square feet of event space in Abu Dhabi. The way the mesh shifts between transparency and opacity depending on how it’s layered, paired with its grid pattern, gives it the look of a light-based projection, yet it’s physical and three-dimensional, crafted in full-scale skeletal form to suggest structures rather than bring them to fruition.

Artist Edoardo Tresoldi previously resurrected an ancient church in Puglia, Italy that had been destroyed by earthquakes in the 13th century right where it once stood, allowing visitors to get a sense of how the structure interacts with the site before and after its demise. This time, Tresoldi sculpts a whole series of architectural sculptures, along with flying birds and cubes that hang suspended in midair.

The Abu Dhabi installation acts as a decorative tableau for a royal event attended by 1,900 guests from all over the Middle East, and took three months to complete, representing the artist’s first time creating a large installation for an indoor space. After the event, some of the structures will be moved and reassembled in public places across the UAE capital, including museums, parks and universities.

Many of these forms are reminiscent of previous Tresoldi works, including an archway used on a fashion runway, and a caged bird. Tresoldi creates figurative wire mesh sculptures, as well. You can see the evolution of his process at his Behance profile.