The site and setting of Modernist masterpieces is a key ingredient of their aesthetic, so what, wondered one architect, would happen if these famous buildings were repositioned, set instead in oddly idyllic landscapes ala painter Thomas Kinkade?

Suddenly, the Eames House, Farnsworth House, Eames and Glass Houses are all transformed into surreal standouts against incongruous backdrops of cobblestone walks, colorful gardens and old-fashioned wells. Some, though, like Gehry’s Deconstructivist home (actually located on a residential street in Santa Barbara) look surprisingly cozy in an impossibly idyllic rural setting:

Robyniko explains that it started as a one-off suggestion: “A fellow architect I’m friends with on Twitter asked if anyone did modernist paintings in the style of Thomas Kinkade. It was one of those things you chuckle to yourself thinking about ‘what if’ and then move on with your life.

“But my family was gone for the weekend,” he explains, “so I decided to indulge my curiosity about how these famous modernist homes would fit into Kinkade’s universe.”

The architect started with well-known photographs of these iconic structures, then set to work in Photoshop hacking them into new environments. The result is weirdly jarring in some cases, and oddly satisfying in others.

Overall, the mixed effects show just how much buildings (and our images of them) rely on what surrounds them, for better or worse.

Brutalist architecture is often criticized for seeming cold, impersonal and out of human scale, but the same can’t be said for these structures when they’re miniaturized and ephemeral, destroyed in seconds by the sea. In fact, when they’re crafted out of sand on a beach, outside their usual context, we can appreciate the beauty of their geometry more than ever. Calvin Siebert’s modernist sand castles might just be better than the real thing.

While staying on Rockaway Beach in Queens during the summer, the professional sculptor and self-described ‘box builder’ crafts amazingly complex architectural structures that remain in place just long enough to photograph them, inevitably washing away. You might say that nature is… brutal.

While it’s not hard to imagine seeing some of these designs in the hills of Los Angeles, using sand as a medium enables Siebert to get more creative than the average architect in envisioning fantasy structures that could translate to concrete.

He doesn’t start with sketches, plans or even anything particular in mind, preferring to work intuitively, allowing the forms to take shape. He’s been creating these temporary works of art for the past six years, and has thousands of photos documenting them on his Flickr.

“Building ‘sandcastles’ is a bit of a test,” he says. “Nature will always be against you and time is always running out. Having to think fast and bring it all together in the end is what I like about it… once I begin building and forms take shape I can start to see where things are going and either follow that road or attempt to contradict it with something unexpected.”

“In my mind they are always mash-ups of influences and ideas. I see a castle, a fishing village, a modernist sculpture, a stage set for the oscars all at once. When they are successful they don’t feel contained or finished. They become organic machines that might grow and expand. I am always adding just one more bit and if time allowed I wouldn’t stop.”

Actual murals made by architect Le Corbusier have been digitally added to the walls of one of his most famous buildings, transforming Notre Dame du Haut, added an array of colors to its complex curves.

Architect Le Corbusier, who passed 50 years ago, remains famous for his rigid Modernist works, but for spiritual spaces he made an exception, shifting from a rule-based to an artistic approach.

Still, the resulting structure was simply white and gray, devoid of color until these murals were introduced. The thin-seeming walls are covered from the ground up, but so too are the thick swooping roofs that curve up and around, seeming almost to float above the sides.

The fictional images were crafted by Belgian photographer Xavier Delory, who applied a set of artworks Corbu made for an architectural colleague.

“Le Corbusier was not only an architect, he was also a painter and sculptor. He is the author of the phrase ‘synthesis of the arts’ meaning an alliance between painting, sculpture and architecture. At first he thought about what painting and sculpture could bring to architecture, not playing a decorative role but rather ‘as a house guest’ in a second phase, he moved this level of synthesis to a fusion of modern architectural styles at Ronchamp.”

In a previous series, the same photographer re-imagined the Villa Savoye, another famous work by Corbu, sparking a series of fake stories suggesting the iconic house had actually been vandalized.

Foster an appreciation for fine modernist architecture and design from an early age with Bauhaus dollhouses, Eames block sets, mini Corbusier lounge chairs and urban planning board games. There’s a minimalist dollhouse that doubles as a coffee table, a Matryoshka-style set of paper modernist estates and of course, the pleasingly all-white Architecture Studio set by LEGO. Sure, you can get these architectural toys and games under the pretense that they’re for your kids, but we all know it’s really you who’ll be playing with them.

Home Puzzle, Babel Tower Game & Archiblocks by Cinq Points

A 3D puzzle made up of 17 minimalist white pieces that fit together into a house shape, the ‘Home Puzzle’ by Cinq Points is greater than the sum of its parts. The individual pieces are made to resemble pieces of furniture as well as buildings in a town, so kids can use their imagination to change the purpose of each shape. The Babel Tower game is like an architectural version of Jenga, while the Archiblocks construction set is “designed to capture modularity, balance and composition, their form giving them an intergenerational appeal.”

Qubis House Modernist Doll House & Coffee Table

Functioning as a modernist dollhouse for kids and a coffee table for adults, the Qubis Haus features sliding panels made of wood and perspex so the ‘architect’ can create various room layouts. Made of solid birch, it has clean modern lines honoring a period of architecture that’s not often seen in doll houses.

Dollhouse-Sized Modernist Furniture

Not just any old furniture should be placed inside a modernist dollhouse. From the Vitra Design Museum Shop comes a series of iconic pieces in miniature form, true to scale and replicating the originals down to the smallest details including the materials, the grain of the wood and the reproduction of the screws. The collection includes chairs by Charles Eames, Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.

Eames House Blocks

Bring the famous Eames House and Studio to your coffee table or playroom with this “authentically engineered” set of 36 alphabet blocks created in direct collaboration with the Eames family. The colors were so carefully matched to the original, the block set requires 29 separate hand-pulled print passes when it’s being produced.

Blokoshka: A Modernist Architectural Matryoshka

Rather than dolls, this nesting paper set reveals one modernist building after another, getting successively smaller and smaller as you pull them apart. The Blokoshka set by ZUPAGRAFIKA comes pre-cut and pre-folded so you can put them together and take them apart as many times as you like (or until the paper starts to disintegrate.) “Inspired by the former Eastern Bloc concrete modernist estates, Blokoshka is a playful tour inside out the ‘sleeping districts’ of Moscow, plattenbau constructions of East Berlin, Warsaw estates built over the ruins of old ghetto, and the panelak blocks in Prague.”

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Mini Modernists 15 Designer Toys For Young Architecture Fans

Whether your furry friends are canine or feline, this pair of posh pet architecture companies have your Modernist domesticated animal needs (quite literally) covered.

And for those domiciles home to both cats and dogs that do not share space, fear not: the Puphaus is made for the outdoor dog and Meyou created for the indoors cat.

First, the Puphaus borrows domestic architectural design elements but employs a tools-free approach for easy assembly, creating a backyard home for your pup that could be cooler than your own house.

“Sporting backgrounds in graphic and industrial design, dog-loving founders Roy Fleeman and Zach Griggs wanted to design & build something unique for man’s best friend: the Puphaus. Time to ditch the plastic igloos and give our pups some stylish new digs.”

The Meyou line of cat furniture by Parisian designer Aude Sanchez approaches the problem as a question of interior design, aiming to create habitats that will not just look good next to but also become part of your decorative scheme.

The resulting cat cocoons are made for curious and playful kitties to use for shelter, napping, hiding or even sharpening their claws.

The Ball, The Cocoon and The Bed are variations on the same design approach, each with slightly different layouts and features – they can work individually or as a set for various rooms.