What would our Streetline panoramas look like realised as illustrations? We asked ourselves the same question and quickly realised it within the team. We present you the first examples here…
Transforming the architecture photographs into drawings gives us new opportunities to creatively reinterpret the complex structures and details of the architecture. When translating into an illustration, our artists (m/f/d) can emphasise, abstract or stylise shapes, lines or perspectives to redirect the visual focus. And we expand our options for using the visual material. Illustrations are often better suited for specific design purposes, such as editorials, branding or animations, as they can be easily adapted to different formats. There is also more room for artistic freedom, as colours, textures and styles can be added that go beyond pure photography.
As a first example, we had a Leipzig shopping street implemented as a colouring-in variant, using a street block from our panorama of Petersstraße in the centre of Leipzig.
The second example is a free artistic interpretation of a streetscape from Aue/Erzgebirge (city district of Aue-Bad Schlema). Here, various facades from different streetline panoramas from Aue were reassembled for a fictitious street.
Next, we picked out an example from New York. However, the published panorama was only implemented as a recognisable photo montage (framework variant), not as a finalised streetline. Our illustrator was therefore able to realise a finished streetline from an unfinished photograph in the artistic processing – this would actually be conceivable for numerous unfinished works in our archive.
New York | Park Avenue
Our cover picture at the top of the page is an illustration variant of a half-timbered street in Rouen, France. The contrasting characteristics of the half-timbered architecture (maison a colombages in french) make it particularly exciting to translate this into a black and white drawing.
Another example was realised from our stadium exhibition project for EURO 2024 – the “Stadion an der Alten Försterei” of the Berlin club 1. FC Union Berlin.
All illustrations shown were realised by our team member Ida.
In addition to these works in line art – sketching style, we will test further illustration techniques for our architectural photographs. And we are open to collaborating with other illustrators. Depending on which aspects of the architecture are to be emphasised (e.g. richness of detail, atmosphere, stylistic history), we see various possible approaches:
- Isometric representation – Three-dimensional but true-to-scale views in a clean, technical style for the visualisation of complex façade ensembles
- Vintage poster style – Inspired by old travel or advertising posters, with clean lines, pastel colours and strong typography for historical or nostalgic architecture
- Detailed pencil or charcoal drawings – Fine shading/textures to emphasise the realism and materiality of a façade for façades with lots of detail
- Collage style – combining photographic elements with hand-drawn lines or textures for streetscapes with a contrasting mix of styles
- Pop art style – Bold colours, strong contrasts and a playful approach for modern or iconic buildings
- Impressionist style – Loose, dynamic brushwork that emphasises light and colour over detail, for vibrant facades or Mediterranean old towns
- Architectural scheme style – Technical depictions with dimensions, grid lines and labelling for architectural exhibitions or educational purposes
-
-
-
In fact, we have already been able to collaborate with external illustrators – as an example, here is a work by Samuel Velasco that he published on his Instagram account. The original panorama of the Gran Via in Madrid was created by our colleague Victor Lavilla.
We would also like to mention the illustrated Advent calendar from Coppenrath Verlag (now in various editions), which was designed by Barbara Behr based on our Münster at night panorama.
Are you interested in working with us as an illustrator or would you like us to create an artistic realisation of one of our photographic panoramas? Perhaps you have completely different ideas for an artistic collaboration or would like to use our Streetline photographs in your artwork. In any case, we look forward to hearing from you!
