Stretched and exaggerated almost to the point of absurdity, otherwise ordinary architecture takes on a bit of an uncanny feeling. Digital artist Alex Lysakowski describes it as “imaginary magnitude,” a change in proportion that’s a bit too extreme to be real, but straddling the line, sometimes making the viewer unsure whether they’re looking at a real building.

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A post shared by Alex Lysakowski (@mdviii_mcmxc)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alex Lysakowski (@mdviii_mcmxc)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alex Lysakowski (@mdviii_mcmxc)

For his series “Antistructure,” Lysakowski manipulates photos of buildings and the cargo boxes of trucks to create fictional structures that look a bit like monuments, standing tall in mundane settings.

“Antistructure is a body of work that focuses on exaggerated architectural forms within banal spaces. The farcical nature of the manipulated structures creates a surreal world of absurdity in an otherwise mundane landscape eluding to an environment beyond the realm of any real architectural forms but still preserving the potential for their existence.”

Lysakowski says his father is a chemical engineer, and as a child, he’d flip through engineering manuals and catalogs in his home office, filling his head with ideas about what could be made with the components. Maybe the results shouldn’t be real, from an engineering perspective, but there’s something fascinating about the possibility.

Check out more of Alex Lysakowski’s work on Instagram @mdviii_mcmxc.

Architects are sometimes criticized for taking creative liberties with their artwork, setting unlikely green scenes or populating their rendered scenes with an improbable array of happy figures. While these “literal renderings” (per Mike Rosenberg) may in some sense be figurative, using signage one would not likely see on an actual structure, they also are refreshingly blunt about the contents of the structures represented.

Surely, no one will actually call their store “Retail” or building “Signage” or mixed-use community “Mixed-Use Apartments,” but at least the viewer gets an actual sense of what they should expect to find inside.

In some cases, these are generic elements are simply temporary markers for mid-stage designs without a name — in others, they can be used to pitch developers, communities and local approval boards.

A kind of architectural equivalent to plain-packaging, minimalist companies (like Brandless), these exist at the other end of realism spectrum, countered by more playful and surrealist approaches like the one below.

The art of architectural representation has changed a lot over time, including the scale figures used to set stages, but at least these kinds of experiments show there is further room to adapt and grow.

Cracked open like a coat (or pair of pants), the walls of this structure in England, have been opened up to expose its abandoned interior ahead of its scheduled demolition.

“Open to the Public” is an art installation by Alex Chinneck located in Kent that deconstructs a mid-century tannery to create a mind-bending, giant-sized illusion of flexibility alongside solid surfaces.

Wood columns, glass windows and plaster walls all seem to bend and morph in uncanny ways. Along one face, the building is zipped down the center — along another, a zipper seems to slide sideways just below the roof.

The artist describes the work as “theatrical and surreal,” and notes that the zipper approach is a nod to the clothing that was fabricated inside the architectural shell.

“When introducing a narrative, we take complex paths to get to simple moments, which are quite accessible and conceptually light – we kept it playful with the zipping element.” This is also not his first deconstruction project.

This is no illusion – what you’re looking at is literally the facade of an abandoned building peeling away from the structure itself, a gigantic metal zipper running down the center. The surreal installation entitled Open To The Public makes use of a building slated for demolition, the zipper referencing its past as a leather and textile manufacturer. It’s just the latest jaw-dropping facade manipulation from sculptor Alex Chinneck, who remains mum on the technical details of how his creations are produced.

“There is a history of textile that fed into the language of the zip,” Chinneck told Dezeen. “The building presented a good opportunity because, facing demolition, it gave us sculptural freedom to open it up to the elements. When introducing a narrative, we take complex paths to get to simple moments, which are quite accessible and conceptually light – we kept it playful with the zipping element.”

The building is located near Chinneck’s own studio, and he says the installation took about two months to plan and execute. The location is Brundrett House, Tannery Lane, Ashfield, TN23 1PN in Kent, England if you’re nearby and want to take a peek in person. It’ll be up through the end of August.

Previously, Chinneck seemingly split a brick building in London apart, slid down the neat and orderly facade of a home to reveal decay underneath, turned structures upside down, tied knots in columns and peeled away a section of the street, a car somehow clinging to its underside.

His photographic manipulations are uncanny, creating bizarre effects and optical illusions, all while remaining highly realistic and (perhaps most impressively) quite true to the original real-life source material.

By working from actual photographs, Erik Johansson manages to capture but subvert everyday built environments. Take Under the Corner, for instance, a photo montage he worked on for months.”I shot all the buildings in Prague,” he explains, and “combined the photos using Photoshop. No CGI or illustrated elements.”

He also spent a long time with one of his latest works, Self Supporting, which he says was an “idea I’ve been carrying with me for a long time. I find the structural properties of an arch interesting, where each part is supporting the other. If you remove one it will all collapse but as long as the structure is untouched it will remain strong.”

The landscape for Self Supporting was shot in Bohemian Switzerland in the Czech Republic and the houses were photographed in Prague and Stockholm. One of the constituent structures is shown above. “The sketches start very simple but over time become more detailed.” He sometimes uses SketchUp to model his ideas, but says they also get reshaped by the source material he photographs.

Full Moon Service is about as surreal as the come, but there is a surprising amount of reality baked in per the behind-the-scenes video above. “I brought out 7 rice lamps, 7 light bulbs, an electric generator, a car and two models out in a field” in Sweden, recalls Johansson. It still required some magic, though. “The main part that has been retouched in this photo is to replace the rice ball with a moon texture, the light and the mood was very close to what you see in the photo.”

More from the artist’s website: “Erik Johansson (born 1985) is a photographer and image creator from Sweden based in Prague, Czech Republic. His work can be described as surreal scenes created by combining different photographs. Erik works on both personal and commissioned projects with clients all around the world. In contrast to traditional photography he doesn’t capture moments, he captures ideas with the help of his camera and imagination. The goal is to make it look as realistic as possible even if the scene itself contains impossible elements. In the end it all comes down to problem solving, finding a way to capture the impossible.”