Designboom_ Architecture, illustration, and animation intertwine with ‘ARCHIMERA’, the new series by Federico Babina in collaboration with Daniel Giordano. The project stages the theatricalization of built structures as they embody the silent life of objects and things, capturing their transformation into vivid characters with stories to tell. The series animates structures with a serene existence expressed through vibrant volume, form, color, and plasticity without any noise or movement. They are posed as ambivalent figures that represent illusion, fantasy, ambiguity, challenging the concept of ‘still life’ by remove its notion of still-ness.

Across the architectural theatre of ‘ARCHIMERA’, the buildings take center stage. In his playful style, architect and graphic designer Federico Babina approaches the buildings as actors playing a role, each with their unique personas. ‘Fashionable actors, unknown actors, forgotten actors, action film actors and silent film actors’ —these small characters become part of a grand ensemble following a precise script. The Archimere don the garb of comedians, embodying light, earth, art, fire, and ice as the architecture disguises itself to perform a show that transcends the realms of the metaphysical and the surreal.

The project is an illustrated experiment that explores the possibility of creating and shaping architectural ‘still lifes’ in order to be able to listen to the sound of their silence and to see the secret dances of their stillness. ‘ARCHIMERA takes us on a short journey with a daydream imagination through an aesthetic universe bathed with sensations, emotions, perceptions and metaphors,’ notes Babina.