Snarkitecture turns wallpaper into 3D art through optical illusion

The architects of the Brooklyn-based firm Snarkitecture are obsessed with excavation. Instead of building something up, as most architects do, they like to carve things out.

For the 2017 edition of Salone del Mobile, the annual design fair and festival in Milan, Snarkitecture created Topographies, a wallpaper featuring a pattern of torn paper.

The pattern appears to pop out of the wall, when looked from a distance. The designers stacked sheets of heavyweight paper and created a hollow by tearing the sheets one by one. Once finished, the stack looked like a topographic map. They photographed details of the shorn edges and printed that on wallpaper. When installed, it creates a three-dimensional optical illusion that gives a flat surface depth. “Alluding to the aging process of layered wallpaper, the design reveals an unexpected relationship between destruction and construction,” the firm said.