Minimalism is chic and trendy, but sometimes, there’s nothing more satisfying than blotting out bland and boring surfaces with bold splashes of color and pattern. That’s especially true when the structure in question is an eyesore, abandoned or weighed down by the baggage of a difficult past. Giving architecture a maximalist makeover with colorful paint can utterly transform not just the buildings themselves but their entire communities, creating a ripple effect of cheerfulness. These vivid modifications are carried out for all sorts of reasons: easing the impact of blight, celebrating a change in the city’s fortune, preserving cultural traditions or simply for the love of art.

Reviving Abandoned Structures

Madrid-based artist Okuda San Miguel has quickly developed one of the most instantly recognizable styles in street art history with his massive paint projects and sculptures. His murals scale skyscrapers, his interiors have transformed church interiors into incredible skate parks and his faceted three-dimensional creations have played starring roles in major festivals, but of all his dazzling projects, his transformations of abandoned buildings make the biggest visual impact. They include turning a sad, deteriorating house in Arkansas into a “universal chapel,” giving an old abandoned church in Morocco a vivid yellow makeover covered in his signature animal faces and painting two enormous skulls onto an abandoned castle in Loire Valley, France for the LaBel Valette Festival.

Atlanta-based artist and muralist Alex Brewer, better known as HENSE, is often commissioned to apply his pleasingly chaotic and colorful style on abandoned and neglected structures all over the world. One of his best-known projects adds a watercolor effect to an old church in a downtrodden neighborhood in Washington DC with the aim of calling attention to the area’s potential as the city’s next bustling arts district. Another massive mural coats the exterior of a warehouse in Richmond, Virginia for the RVA Festival, and a third splashes across a historic building with a boarded-up facade in Atlanta.

Created for Philadelphia mural project “We the People,” which envisions each of its six murals as “a seed of hope for a bright future,” NTEL’s NATIV NTELIGENCE wraps around an entire block of currently empty buildings to provide a reminder of the “nourishing potential of the space.”

Tel Aviv’s derelict and abandoned Dolphinarium building, which was the scene of a 2001 suicide building, got a wild new look in 2015 courtesy of street artist Dede. The shape of the building was just too perfect to pass on turning it into a gigantic set of wind-up choppers.

Brightening Places of Poverty, Monotony & Blight

Poor communities simply don’t have the resources to maintain an outward appearance that the rest of the world finds “acceptable.” When you’re struggling to get by, fresh paint jobs, nice landscaping and even simple building maintenance is often a lower priority by default. But, with the permission and participation of the people living in those communities, projects that aim to revitalize them with a bit of color and care can make a big difference in general morale. The purpose isn’t necessarily to make these neighborhoods more palatable to wealthier people, but to show that they, too, are worthy of beauty and art. While projects like this can run the risk of glossing over deep systemic inequality, they’re beautiful when handled with sensitivity and awareness.

These large-scale mural projects can dramatically alter the mood of a neighborhood while bringing its inhabitants together to take an active role. Examples include German Crew’s transformation of Las Palmitas, Mexico, covering 224,280 square feet of architecture with neon colors, and a series of awesome painting projects by Haas & Hahn throughout Brazil’s favelas.

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In Indonesia, teacher Kampung Pelangi used $22,000 worth of paint to infuse the village of Semarang (which was a slum not so long ago) into a vibrant tourist destination (though it’s not clear whether the town’s poor residents were displaced.)

And in Mumbai, waterfront slums that are home to millions of people have grown far more colorful thanks to the efforts of art teacher Rouble Nagi.

In 2016, Haas & Hahn brought their “FavelaPainting” project back to their home city of Amsterdam to call attention to the need for safe and livable refugee housing. Currently, many refugees are housed in former prisons and other buildings “that have long been an eyesore in Amsterdam’s skyline.”

“The project aims at transforming the buildings, both in- and outside, in order to create their new identity as a new home to the refugees. It will offer opportunities in form of skill training, network building and job opportunity, while empowering the participants to ‘make the place their own.’”

But sometimes it’s little more than monotonous surroundings and a lack of color that prompt colorful architectural makeovers. The isolated and incredibly cold Siberian town of Ust-Yansk combats the potentially depression-inducing wash of gray and white winters with bright colors on the buildings’ roofs after a recent restoration project.

Tirana, the capital city of Albania, wasn’t in a great place before artist-turned-mayor Ed Rama took office. Low on funds, high on crime and suffering from a plague of corruption, the city was also visually bleak. Rama decided to paint one of the saddest-looking buildings a bright orange, and the community loved it. Once he had painted a few more structures in a similar way, a larger movement took off, with international artists turning entire city blocks into works of contemporary art.

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Maximalist Makeovers Transforming Architecture With Vivid Paint Jobs

Whenever street artist MurOne comes to town, you know your city is about to get a whole lot brighter. Vivid, graphic and often surreal, his murals are an “acid mix of pop and design elements,” as he describes them himself, and often cover the facades of multi-story buildings for a dramatic effect. Most recently, he wrapped up a large-scale piece in Rabat, Morocco as part of the Jidar Street Art Festival, the colorful paint creating a stark contrast with the city’s muted landscape.

An illustrator and graphic designer, MurOne started painting walls back in 2002, and these days he’s out in the streets with a can of spray paint a lot more than indoors working on a computer. It’s not hard to see why. The artist has found his stride making a striking impact everywhere from New York City to Berlin, taking influence from masters like Salvador Dalí, M.C. Escher and Math Klarwein.

“My psychedelic representation of the landscapes and textures that can be found on the Canary Islands,” says MurOne of the piece pictured below. “The sea, the volcanoes or ceramic sculptures are appearing into the faces of the local indigenous wich are called ‘guanches’ symbolizing the mysticism of an ancestral culture.”

“I don’t have a job and a stable life, but painting and giving life to places that don’t have any is very gratifying,” he told Brooklyn Street Art while working on a wall called ‘Video Games’ in September 2017 for the 12+1 project in Barcelona.

You can find lots more of MurOne’s recent projects at his Facebook and Instagram (@mur0ne).

Throughout the last year, dozens of terrifying monstrous butterflies as big as pterodactyls have begun landing on the facades of buildings throughout France, Austria and other European countries. Many of them appeared in Spain during September 2017 during the Festival Asalto, an international urban art festival showcasing mural artists. But, don’t worry, Mothra isn’t on the loose, after all, despite the incredible troupe l’oeil effect.

France-based street artist Mantra, who typically paints human subjects, has spent much of the last two years on a more entomological bent. His multi-story butterfly murals are framed and shaded like shadowboxes, making the giant Lepidopteras in the fourth stages of their lives look like preserved specimens under glass.

These ‘specimens’ are sometimes stacked as high as five stories, all the intricate details of their colorfully patterned wings magnified for our viewing pleasure. The shadow effects, which often still work at night as streetlights illuminate the facades of the buildings, really make the murals pop.

Here are a few examples of Mantra’s beautiful non-butterfly-related murals. Check out more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram.

Greek gods and other figures from antiquity tower over a very different world from the one in which they were born, entwined with contemporary graffiti on building facades and other urban surfaces across the globe. The style of PichiAvo, a Spanish street art duo composed of individuals nicknamed Pichi and Avo, is undeniably distinctive, taking imagery usually associated with static, immobile stone statues and enlivening it with a sense of movement and lots of vivid color.

Sometimes, these figures are playfully interacting with the imagery around them; at other times, they’re translucent against their colorful backdrops, almost like ghosts temporarily visiting our realm and checking out what we’ve done with the place. The duo began working together in 2007, painting their creations all over the streets of Spain. Since then, their work has only become more complex.

They were particularly prolific in 2016, splashing a cherub across a five-story apartment building in Denmark and completing a mural of Prometheus in Murcia, Spain for the Festival Arte Urban Mar Minor. They also painted a pair of Greek figures on the side of an abandoned factory building in Valencia, Spain. For the latter, they tried some new techniques, including using spray paint for the background and mixing it with acrylic paint to create the statues.

The duo recently did an interview with Global Street Art, explaining how their styles work together and why they choose these particular visuals.

“We started our style thinking we should bring everything we know about art together and adding graffiti to help bring classical art back to life. The best way we could think of to do this was by working with classical sculpture, sculptures that today are white but people don’t realise they used to be covered in paint, so our painting the figures with the graffiti is our small tribute to the classical sculptures that have marked many historical recognised artists.”

Psychedelic portals beckon you to enter another dimension, sea monsters lurk at the bottom of the stairs and illustrated figures playfully interact with urban infrastructure in works of art that bring color, levity and natural imagery to urban environments.

Sea Monster Stair Steps by Skurk

The creepy sea creature lurking at the base of these stairs is enough to make anyone nervous, even in broad daylight – but just wait until the sun goes down. Street artist Skurk used two existing lamps affixed to the building’s exterior as the eye and lure of an anglerfish to terrifying and delightful effect.

Site-Specific Wheatpastes by Levalet

Paris-based artist Levalet (Charles Leval) works with existing textures, colors and fixtures in urban environments to create playful site-specific works of art. Some are playful, some are a bit disturbing, but all of them pair sketched human and animal figures with fountain heads, drains, windows, utility boxes, staircases and other elements of the city.

Massive Murals in Italy by Millo

An illustrative black-and-white style accented by carefully chosen splashes of bold color characterizes the ground-to-roof murals painted onto buildings by Italian street artist Millo.

Giant Bees by Matthew Willey

50,000 bees now adorn surfaces around the world as part of the Good of the Hive Initiative, a project by artist Matt Willey aiming to raise awareness about the plight of the honey bee. Willey traveled all over the globe to paint a few dozen bees at a time in each location, with the goal number representing how many bees it takes to sustain a healthy hive.

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The City Is A Canvas 31 Murals Transforming Urban Spaces