NEW YORK, NY.- VandM.com has announced that Justin Hui, Cornell University, Architecture B.Arch 2011, has won the Piranesi 2010: An Interpretation of the Prison Series Design Competition.

"We were looking for a fresh take on Piranesi and Justin's design really captured that,” said Bill Indursky, Co-Founder of VandM.com and lead judge for the contest. “The Prison Series talked about the nature of man and to talk about man today means to also address technology. Justin's wrapping and spinning space constructed in CAD perfectly captures this”.

It was said that Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) got the idea for his now famous Prison Series (otherwise known as Carceri Series) when he was suffering from a strong fever. No matter what the real cause of this work was, this master etcher has left the creative community something that has delighted and intrigued them for over 265 years.

The Prison Series depicts an imaginary "prison" which has no beginning and end and is spatially impossible. It has inspired movies, comic books, and even Yo Yo Ma.

VandM.com asked design professionals and students to come up with their own 2010 interpretation of the Prison Series, to reexamine it, and to see what it means in today’s culture. This could have meant philosophically, visually, categorically, or any other thing that the prints inspired them to create.

"In my entry, I wanted to further explore the enduring qualities which I found particularly powerful in Piranesi's Carceri series, the personal gaze into the seemingly infinite and irrational space rendered in an evocative duality between light and darkness,” said Justin Hui about his winning entry.

Winning entry by Justin Hui
”Inverting the traditional darkness of the Carceri,” said Justin, “I fragmented forms to render the anti-gravitational effect of passages punctuating the spaces with the promise of destinations that are always just out of sight."

Bill kicked off the contest with his own interpretation of the Prison Series.

Bill Indursky’s sample entitled, “This is no god. Just things I cannot explain.” "As a Classical Realist painter myself I believe very much in the power and beauty of tradition,” said Bill Indursky. “So many people dismiss something because it is old. There is something to be said for ‘by hand’. So in my piece, while nodding to the past, I acknowledged the present. My own interpretation looks hand drawn but it is computer generated. Humanity as filtered through technology.”