Sprawling out in a radial growth pattern, a bench in Korea seems to grow organically, stretching and stretching to fill a lawn in a public park. Designed by Yong Ju Lee for the Hangang Art Competition, “Root Bench” is technically not just one bench, but a network of dozens of them seemingly emerging from the grass. Measuring 30 meters in diameter (about 98 feet), the bench is part seating, part meditative walkway that elevates you above the ground in some areas and brings you back down in others.

The designer integrated three different heights of platforms into the massive public sculpture: chairs sized for children and adults, and tables. Yong used a computer algorithm to generate the the dynamic form, including its three-dimensional qualities. Made of a metal frame with concrete footings and wooden decking on top, “Root Bench” aims to provide “visual stimulus” and “spatial connectivity” that blurs the boundary between the natural and the artificial. It looks especially cool when illuminated from underneath at night.

“To articulate spreading-out branch intensively, reaction-diffusion system is applied to design process,” says Yong. “This mathematical model describes the change in space and time of the concentration of one or more chemical substances: local chemical reactions in which the substances are transformed into each other, and diffusion which causes the substances to spread out over a surface in space. Through the algorithm from it, overall radial form is generated with the foreground (installation) merging into its background (grass).”

As striking and skillfully painted as each one of Bik Ismo’s chrome murals are, the coolest part might just be peering into each one and trying to discern what’s in its reflection. It might just be a wisp of sky or what looks like the interior of an art studio, but at other times, you can spy mysterious figures, strange architecture and other scenes, or a glimpse of the artist himself. The layers of depth in each piece are pretty incredible.

While Puerto Rican-born Bik Ismo has dropped spectacular metallic murals all over the world, including New Zealand, Dubai, Belgium, Taiwan and Miami, he’s especially dedicated to his home country. The chrome bust he completed in April, for example, was created for an upcoming series of videos about portrait and Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria for the Foundation for Puerto Rico. Another recent piece adorns the Museo de Arte de Ponce with a skull, pig and pineapple.

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Bik Ismo also made a big splash at Art Basel 2014 with ‘Chromed Dog,’ an oversized mural at the Jose de Diego Middle School in the Wynwood area of Miami. Bik was one of 33 artists who painted the prison-like school in vivid imagery to show that low income kids deserve access to the arts, too.

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Bik has been painting in the streets since 1993. You can see more of his work on Facebook and Instagram.

Street artists turn entire cities into open-air galleries, but there are countless ways to carry out urban art interventions, and they’re at their most fun when they subvert existing structures. Virtually anything can be transformed into a surface or medium for art: billboards, phone booths, construction walls, street signs and even furniture discarded on the curb. Sometimes the motivation is political – calling attention to how much public space is dedicated to advertising, for example – but sometimes it’s just fun, like painting clown faces on busted couches.

Art in Ad Places Takes on Phone Booths

Pay phones themselves may have largely disappeared long ago, but the shelters that held them can often still be found on the sidewalks of large cities like New York. ‘Art in Ad Places,’ a campaign replacing outdoor advertising with artwork, partners with artists to install their work in these shelters. 55 new pieces went up in 2017. They say they believe outdoor advertising is visual pollution, psychologically damaging and pushed on viewers without their consent – but the places it’s found is ripe for subversion for other messages. “By replacing advertisements with artwork, Art in Ad Places provides a public service and an alternative vision of our public environment,” they explain.

Vermibus Remixes Ads with Acid

An artist known as Vermibus reduces the impact of advertisements by sweeping through cities and modifying ads with acid to rob them of context and turn them into strange painterly works of art. It’s a literal smear campaign, and it’s kind of genius. All he has to do is don a safety vest, remove the ads, take them home to transform them and then put them back up.

“By opening those spaces, I make them vulnerable and I create a conversation not only with the brands or the companies that put advertising in the public space but also with the citizen, breaking the unidirectional message,” the artist says in an interview with Open Walls Gallery. “Awareness is a very important and personal part of every artwork… the adverts might be legitimate if the viewer decides consciously to see them. But in order to have a conscious decision about that, we need to be aware of their dangers and for that we should be informed in the first place. [Advertising] is addictive, affects mentally and chemically our body, our decisions, our environment… it has a huge risk on all the levels that we are ignoring.”

Curbside Furniture Art by Lonesome Town

The unwanted furniture we kick out to the curb gets a chance to vent, however temporarily, in the hands of artist Lonesome Town. Traveling through Los Angeles, the artist paints sad clown faces on couches, chairs, computer monitors and other rejects. For a few brief days, each piece gets its time in the spotlight, becoming a work of art before it’s hauled off to the dump to die. Follow Lonesometown9 on Instagram for lots more.

Spontaneous Temporary Interventions by Brad Downey

American-born, Berlin-based artist Brad Downey is a master of Dada hacktivism, turning everyday objects and infrastructure in cities into whimsical, temporary works of art. A bike left chained beside a river might become a fountain, for example; he’ll put a public bench on skates, cut out a chunk of the pavement and stand it on end, tear down street signs and reassemble them into spiky sculptures. Sometimes his larger sculptural works are commissioned, but more often, he’s working intuitively, taking opportunities as he sees them. Each piece is a fun reinterpretation of its materials, sometimes rendering the objects useless and sometimes making them more effective.

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Art Everywhere 12 Projects Transform Public Spaces Into Guerrilla Galleries

One of Santiago, Chile’s most congested streets became a colorful pedestrian promenade full of urban art after a 30-day transformation led by artist Dasic Fernández. Now, the city is fighting to keep it. The 400-yard stretch of road adjacent to Santiago’s government palace and main square was never meant to be a permanent pedestrian zone; it was temporarily renovated while closed to traffic for construction on the Santiago Metro. Now locals and the mayor want to keep it that way, but it’s uncertain whether the installation will remain in place.

The pedestrianized promenade opened on December 21st, 2017 and was an instant hit, with locals streaming through to gaze at the art, congregate and patronize nearby businesses. It didn’t cost the city any money, since Fernández was able to raise $550,000 in funding from businesses in exchange for exposure of their logos. The biggest feature is a 35,500-square-foot mural painted right onto the asphalt, which extends nearly four blocks.

“The first is inspired by the pre-Hispanic history of Chile, and begins at the intersection between Compañía and Bandera streets, where the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art is located; the second reflects the current diversity of the country, triggered by immigration and cultural changes; and the third, between Moneda and Agustinas streets, seeks to portray the future through more modern furniture and stronger colors,” says CityLab in a new feature on the project.

But what happens when construction is complete? The Chilean Ministry of Transport will have to decide whether to open it to cars again. Mayor Felipe Alessandri hopes it will remain a pedestrian route, and says he’d preserve it ‘forever’ if it were up to him.

What if, after the demolition of a neglected building, all that was left behind was the leafy exoskeleton of ivy that once grew up its outer walls? As shanty towns all along the Yuan River in the Hunan province of China are dismantled, a piece of them remains behind, paying tribute to their historical value in this setting. V Studio presents ‘Home for Boston Ivy,’ a recreation of these building-shaped ivy structures in metal, which will serve as a trellis for real ivy in the future. These welded shapes will be placed within the new, modernized version of the city so future inhabitants can get a sense of its past.

“Houses being covered with Boston ivy can be seen everywhere in shanty towns,” they explain. “While presenting a picture of harmonious coexistence between human and nature, it is also the memory of a home for residents of shanty towns. When the ivy attaches to the building and grows, it forms the turns and enclosures of the space. V Studio’s artwork has pulled away the building which the plant has attached to, and left only the Boston ivy with twisted roots and gnarled branches in the shape of the building.”

V Studio previously completed a series of sculptures relating to the same theme, all using materials from the same site in the Hunan Changde Yuanshui right bank shantytowns. ‘Sealing’ preserved building debris in a collection of cubes that function as urban seating; information about each home that was demolished is imprinted on the cement that contains the debris.

“At present, the shantytowns are being demolished,” they say (translated from Chinese.) “In the near future, a modernized metropolis will completely cover the area and all that is available here will cease to exist. How to preserve the emory of the old city and inject the memory of the origin into the new town in the process of demolishing the old building and building a new one is the basic starting point for the creation of the series of works.”