My sis­ter intro­duced me to this artist sev­eral years ago, and my recently acquired inter­est in archi­tec­ture reminded me of his work. Achilles Riz­zoli is an excel­lent exam­ple of what the human mind can accom­plish when cre­ativ­ity and imag­i­na­tion are given ample time. Although the most of his body of work was drafted between 1935 and 1944, Riz­zoli went undis­cov­ered until 1990!

Achilles worked as an archi­tect for a firm in San Fran­cisco where he was a suf­fi­cient, but oth­er­wise nor­mal drafts­man. How­ever, his own archi­tec­tural work was far more than just suf­fi­cient, it was mag­nif­i­cent. He would, dur­ing his free time, con­struct an elab­o­rate fan­tasy world of exquis­ite build­ings. Many being archi­tec­tural car­i­ca­tures of his friends and family.

Riz­zoli would occa­sion­ally make the front room of his home into museum called the “Achilles Tech­tonic Exhibit”. Vis­i­tors that gave com­pli­ments or befriended Achilles would often return to find that they too had been depicted as a man­sion or castle.

I par­tic­u­larly like the build­ing at left. Notice the how symet­ri­cal it appears over­all, but up close (click for a larger ver­sion) it isn’t at all. And, in addi­tion to the build­ing itself, all the intri­cate notes and excel­lent typog­ra­phy really pull it together.

I’ve ordered a col­lec­tion of his work called “A. G. Riz­zoli: Archi­tect of Mag­nif­i­cent Visions” and should receive it soon. I’ll post some pic­tures when it gets here.