Fill Your Mind with Images of Extraordinary Minimalistic Architecture

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Making images of architecture is not a very easy task. One needs to look for the right location and perspective to get a beautiful image of the building.

More often than not, these areas are crowded and cluttered, meaning it's near to impossible to make a neat picture of just the building!

But when you look up at buildings, you get a totally different perspective and you get to include some interesting elements into your frame like clouds in the sky, birds flying past, an airplane or a jet with those amazing trails!

Sometimes, even the sun or the moon neatly framed can create something visually calming. As we'll discover here, just to have the clear blue sky as a “negative space” to bring focus on to the “positive space” (subject) i.e. the architecture.

Florian W. Mueller Explores Architectural Photography Like You've Never Seen

Architectural photography takes a lot of patience and planning. Plus, with architectural photography, you need to be in the location at the right time – when there are not too many distractions like people, vehicles, etc. Life just gets in the way!

What we see here are some stunning minimalistic architectural images, from Florian W. Mueller, who is an Internationally awarded photographer, with a love for searching the unusual in the ordinary, and a passion for creating pictures that almost demand an interaction with the beholder.

In minimalistic architecture, the elements of the design convey a message of simplicity. All you see are some basic ordered geometric forms, repetition of structures in an orderly fashion and simple clean design.

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HongKong – Image by Florian Mueller

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HongKong – Image by Florian Mueller

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Dresden – Image by Florian Mueller

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New York – Image by Florian Mueller

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Düsseldorf – Image by Florian Mueller

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Düesseldorf – Image by Florian Mueller

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Berlin – Image by Florian Mueller

In Florian’s work, it's all about the evocation of thoughts, associations, emotions and memories.

Since 2013, Florian has been a professional member of the honorable BFF (Berufsverband Freie Fotografen und Filmgestalter) and he works as a home-based photographer and artist in Cologne, Germany.

In 2016, Florian joined the honorable AOP (Association of Photographers) in London and was the prompt finalist at the great 2016 AOP Awards.

Florian specializes in architecture, landscape, people and abstract photography. He quotes,

“In times of an endless flood of images and greed for perfection I see the necessity to look into an entirely different direction: The images is not enough, it is the abstraction and the individual view of the beholder, together they reach into and below the surface of customary patterns of conception.

In this case, abstraction is focused on the reduction to certain facts, forms, and objects but not as an experience of pure non-objectivity.

The imagination of the viewer supplements what is absent; what thematically is not dissolved receives, an invisible layer through the observer.”

One of Florian’s projects is “Singularity” where he captures architectural images in their simple and minimalistic form. The term “Singularity” has many definitions, but in everyday English, singularity means the quality of being one of a kind, strange, unique, remarkable or unusual.

In fact, according to “The Wiktionary” singularity means, “the state of being singular, distinct, peculiar, uncommon or unusual.”

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Hongkong – Image by Florian Mueller

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Hongkong – Image by Florian Mueller

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New York – Image by Florian Mueller

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Hamburg – Image by Florian Mueller

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Cologne – Image by Florian Mueller

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London – Image by Florian Mueller

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Cologne – Image by Florian Mueller

Here is what Florian has to say about his project, “Singularity:”

“For me, architecture is a kind of sculpture. In the 70’s there was this amazing trend in Brutalism, like the churches from architect Gottfried Böhm, made of concrete – the origin of that movement’s name: French “concrete brut”, raw concrete. Then you have buildings in that wonderful clean, function-oriented bauhaus style, and in the former German Democratic Republic the very reduced “Plattenbauten”.

For me as a photographer, all these buildings are artworks. In Singularity, I reduce the buildings to themselves. Like a sculpture on a pedestal in a clean gallery or museum. I come around. I am exhibiting all over the world and I am traveling a lot.

As a matter of fact, I take a lot of pictures when I am on the road. You can imagine what a guy with a fable for architecture often shoots right? Buildings.

To be honest, this series started with playing around with a couple of pictures I took in New York last November and I instantly fell in love with that reduced look.

Then I crawled through my archive of the last two years and found more candidates for the series from Hong Kong, England, Spain, France and Germany.

Before I go now on the road, I make a research of the area if there are any buildings that might fit into “Singularity”.

I try with every single picture in this series to picture the original colors of the sky. I create gradients from the original colors, so I have a “cleaned” sky. But yes, most time I was lucky or I had to wait for the right light and color of the sky.

One thing I learned over the years: Patience is not only a virtue, sometimes it's the most important thing.”

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Lisbon – Image by Florian Mueller

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Cologne – Image by Florian Mueller

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Madrid – Image by Florian Mueller

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New York – Image by Florian Mueller

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New York – Image by Florian Mueller

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Düsseldorf – Image by Florian Mueller

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Cologne – Image by Florian Mueller

Florian Mueller – Further Resources

If you like Florian’s work, you can look at more of his projects on his website and social media below.

About Author

Dahlia is a stock photographer and full time educator at Light Stalking. You can find her on Gurushots and see some of her more popular articles at The American Society of Media Photographers. Get to know her better here.

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