While studying at Miyagi University in Japan, artist Macoto Murayama noticed the similarities between architectural and scientific illustration, and was inspired to combine them.
In a series called ‘Inorganic Flora’, Murayama dissects flowers with a scalpel, removes the different parts under a magnifying glass, and then sketches and photographs them.
Using computer graphics software, Murayama then reconstructs the flowers, creating blueprint-like illustrations.
The illustrations are a representation of “the intellect’s power and its elaborate tools for scrutinizing nature”.
The “transparency” of his illustrations refer “not only to the lucid petals of a flower, but to the ambitious, romantic and utopian struggle of science to see and present the world as transparent (completely seen, entirely grasped) object.”
[via Macoto Murayam and Neatorama]