Dezeen Magazine

Tower Series by Toby Melville-Brown

Tower Series by Toby Melville-Brown

British illustrator Toby Melville-Brown imagines impossible architectural structures in his latest drawing series.

Tower Series by Toby Melville-Brown
Favela Arch (above and top)

The Tower Series depicts three fantasy skyscrapers, each intended to explore a different architectural scenario.

"Through drawing, I try to convey my obsession with civilisation," explains Toby Melville-Brown. "I'm not commenting on environmental issues, nor condemning our excessive nature; I'm merely fascinated with the synthetic landscape we have constructed around ourselves."

Tower Series by Toby Melville-Brown
Regency Tower

Favela Arch presents an entire city's worth of buildings piled up as a single structure, as a way to overcome a scarcity of land. Melville-Brown describes it as "like barnacles clinging to a rock".

Regency Tower is intended as an oversized trophy, celebrating the ingenuity of mankind, while Power Station is an industrial building on a mega scale.

Tower Series by Toby Melville-Brown
Power Station

"Each explores a different facet as to why we build the way we do," adds Melville-Brown.

The artist is selling 30 limited edition screen-prints of Tower Series from The Print Club in London.

Tower Series by Toby Melville-Brown
Power Station - detail

Other fantasy architectural illustrations we've featured include Tom Ngo's Architectural Absurdities, which feature a building made of stairs and an impossible lighthouse. See more architectural illustrations »

We've also published several fantastical photography projects, including a series of flying houses and giant Lego buildings. See all stories about manipulated photography »