OakOak’s Urban Interventions Turn Crumbling Buildings Into Playful Games in France

Posted By Bridgette Meinhold On January 3, 2013 @ 11:39 am In Art | No Comments

• Tweet ^[1]
• Share on Tumblr ^[2]
• Email ^[3]

 

^{[4]  [5]}

OakOak's street art ^[6] is created to amuse and inspire - this self-described "fun-loving" artist plays with urban elements to make people laugh. He finds broken infrastructure, crumbling buildings and cracks and gives them a facelift with the simple addition of a character in play. Everything from simple stick figures to smiley faces, animals, objects and superheroes can be seen gracing OakOak's hometown of St. Etienne, France, where they turn the less than perfect facades into something playful and fun.

  ^[5]

^[7]

OakOak ^[8] is a street artist in St. Etienne, France who loves to decorate his industrial city with funny little characters and superheroes. As explained by OakOak on The Outsiders ^[9], “I like this city, her atmosphere and I wanted it to look nicer. It was an industrial city with many coal mines; now it’s in regeneration and still quite poor. But it’s easily travelled by foot with awkward aspects ideal for art. I saw shapes everywhere, and wanted to realise them.” While not officially a trained or full time artist, OakOak’s hobby is to decorate his city.

Most often, OakOak turns crumbling buildings, broken elements and forgotten streets into playful games. He’s added a game of Angry Birds to the side of a building, transformed cracks into a spider web for Spidey, made a battered gate seems as though the Hulk were pulling it apart and much more. OakOak also likes to play with other urban elements by adding faces and references to pop culture. While his work is not authorized and definitely falls under the category of graffiti, the additions are playful, fun-spirited and meant to make people smile and laugh. Crumbling buildings would otherwise just be broken without the help of OakOak’s creative interventions.

+ OakOak ^[6]

Via This Is Colossal ^[10]

Images ©OakOak

Article printed from Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building: http://inhabitat.com

URL to article: http://inhabitat.com/oakoaks-urban-interventions-turn-crumbling-buildings-into-playful-games-in-france/

URLs in this post:

[1] Tweet: http://twitter.com/share

[2] Share on Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/share

[3] Email: mailto:?subject=http://inhabitat.com/oakoaks-urban-interventions-turn-crumbling-buildings-into-playful-games-in-france/

[4]

[5]  : http://inhabitat.com/oakoaks-urban-interventions-turn-crumbling-buildings-into-playful-games-in-france/urban-interventions-oakoak-11/?extend=1

[6] OakOak's street art: http://oakoak.canalblog.com/

[7] Image: http://inhabitat.com/oakoaks-urban-interventions-turn-crumbling-buildings-into-playful-games-in-france/urban-interventions-oakoak-11/

[8] OakOak: http://oakoak.canalblog.com/archives/_who_s_oakoak/index.html

[9] The Outsiders: http://www.theoutsiders.net/artist/oakoak

[10] This Is Colossal: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/01/brilliant-urban-interventions-by-oakoak-turn-crumbling-city-infrastructure-into-a-visual-playground/

Click here to print.