Famous Landmarks In The Wrong Places, DesignCrowd, the online design platform with over 450,000 members, recently held a playful competition entitled “Famous Landmarks in the Wrong Places”, with prizes of over $500 AUD.
Artists were invited to imagine a world where famous tourist attractions were placed in various locations around the globe. The challenge follows a series of competitions where the platform asked its members to imagine a world without people, disappearing landmarks or no more trees – “it’s all about finding a new angle and looking at what we see every day in a totally new way”, they mention.
Almost 100 people submitted their retouched images, which included the Statue of Liberty in Rio de Janeiro, the Sydney Opera House replaced by the Colosseum, or Mount Rushmore in Jordan. Rijan Hamidovic was the winner, with his retouch of the Pyramids in Egypt replaced by Moscow’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The designer from Bosnia and Herzegovina “didn’t only expertly insert the building into the desert landscape, but took care to adjust the colors of the original image so it integrates perfectly with the new addition“, DesignCrowd explains.
The results of the competition are as funny as they are interesting. They remind of the important factors, such as time, played in architectural design, as well as the impact a landmark has over a culture.
Ana Cosma is an editor at Arch2O with a deep-rooted passion for architecture and urban design. Drawing on nearly a decade of architectural experience across prominent firms in Stuttgart, Germany—including Exyte, BWK.Architekten, and SCD Architekten—Ana brings a practiced eye and international perspective to her editorial work. Her academic foundation in Architecture and Urbanism from Politehnica University of Timișoara, complemented by a study period at Sapienza Università di Roma, informs her nuanced approach to exploring contemporary urban challenges and design innovations. At Arch2O, Ana curates and contributes insightful articles that bridge professional practice with emerging trends in urbanism and architectural theory.