See what?

Fake buildings are a thing in Europe. Mostly it's cosmetic with graphics of what the building is going to look like concealing the work site but sometimes it goes somewhere else. Now we know a collage when we see one but how about a 3D architectural collage? This cut and paste effort twists one of Paris’s Belle Époque buildings into a classical Roman facade for the exhibition Augustus Emperor of Rome. Mind bending to see in place but weirdly as a photograph you lose much of its giddy impossibility. Classically inclined museum buildings in NZ like the Auckland Museum or the Sarjeant or even the City Gallery could carry off this effect but saying that makes you realise how much of that style has been superceded. (and the opportunity for this sort of 3D marketing mash-up lost). The old National Art Gallery, the pre-revamp Auckland Art Gallery, the McDougall in Christchurch, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in the park have all moved to buildings with see-through glass facades. Still maybe one day someone will find it amusing to get out the scaffolding and see what happens when you play 3D-façade-cover-up on such obvious metaphors for transparency.