A city of pure imagination

Architectural designer Victor Enrich tends to prefer the company of buildings to people. "I'm a bit shy," he said in an interview. He'll wander for miles around a city, getting to know the buildings — "Sometimes I even talk to them," he said. — and letting his imagination flow.

Deportation | Tel Aviv, Israel | (Victor Enrich)

For his whimsical project City Portraits, Enrich, who lives in Barcelona, photographs structures in cities, including Latvia, Tel Aviv, and Munich, and then gives them a Tim-Burton-like makeover: Stairwells jump off of walls, slides spit out from third-story windows; buildings float precariously on a pointed piece of rock.

The enchanting nature of his images reveals nothing of their laborious process. Enrich creates a 3D rendering of the photographed building, a manual process that can take weeks, and then digitally reconstructs it — bending, carving, and expanding the building in unnatural yet delightful ways. There are technological advances that can cut Enrich's work in half, but he said you lose something in the details when a drone does the work for you. "It's a beautiful way to learn about the architecture of a particular building," he said.

Below, tour Enrich's wondrous cityscape.

Mersand | Tel Aviv, Israel | (Victor Enrich)