Cartoon Casa: A Strange Home Made of 100% Paper
Imagine stepping into a real life “Alice in Wonderland” world, or walking inside the movie “Waking Life.” Sometimes art lets us explore design options that would never world in the real world, but are inspiring nonetheless – like this series of sketched spaces and papercraft furnishings, which constitute what may be the most fire-vulnerable paper structure on the planet. That’s right: an artist built an entire strange home out of nothing but paper.
From kitchen appliances to bathroom fixtures, built-in cupboards to free-standing cabinets, every interior object was constructed by artist Luise Valdez as a combination of quick-sketch black marker and rough-cut white cardboard (including some pieces of recycled pizza boxes). As for electricity, plumbing and other such amenities … well, you will just have to suspend your disbelief for a bit inside this space.
Cooking implements and eating utensils are simply flat cut-outs while sinks, shelves and other three-dimensional kitchen elements are built to hold up the smaller pieces. Bed, chairs, stools, rugs and even skateboards can be found in the bedroom and living room spaces. And yes: even the bathroom is crafted of paper – from the toilet down to the toilet paper itself.
Outside, a crashed paper car is wrapped around a stop sign – a none-too-subtle signal to a visitor that they should prepare to see an interior living space unlike anything they have experienced. One does have to wonder, though, where the paper people went – surely this is a place perfect for those cardboard cut-out, life-sized celebrity stand-ups. Practical? No. Flammable? Yes. Ingenious? Perhaps – it at least makes you wonder what it would be like if architects sketched out their ideas in the real world and in full scale instead of just on, well, paper.
Little is known about the artist Luise Valdez, who posted these images on Flickr for his installation entitled “Casa de Karton.” Check out the rest of his work here.
