From Miami’s Coral Castle to LA’s Watts Towers, Architectural Fantasies explores over 60 dwellings across more than 30 states. These artist-built spaces allow one to step directly into the artwork, and range from scratch-built creations and modified structures to monuments, sites of devotion, and intricately decorated interiors.

These fantastical, idiosyncratic buildings and sites straddle a space between art and architecture. While not always understood, these sometimes whimsical, sometimes reverential constructions are often conceived by the artist as a gift to the public; to inspire them to slow down and to open their eyes and their hearts to alternative spaces.

Featured in this book are rare looks at singular constructions—buildings and spaces that have been created from scratch or modified in unusual and unexpected ways. Untethered to conventions, these structures push the parameters of what we would normally consider “architecture.” They may break through height standards, utilize materials in innovative ways, ignore ease of accessibility and norms, and disregard any attempt to maintain stylistic consistency among the various components. These provocative places unite function and fantasy.