Taking Baroque to the Next Level: Mohammad Qasim Iqbal’s Midjourney

Baroque architecture is characterized by its grandeur, intricacy, and drama. It’s a style that has been around for centuries and continues to be popular today. In this series of Midjourney images, architecture student Mohammad Qasim Iqbal experiments with baroque design elements to create a surreal, baroque-inspired landscape. His structures emulate the idiosyncratic motifs of master architect Francesco Borromini. These structures will amaze viewers with their majestic facades and dizzying details!

Mohammad Qasim Iqbal explores baroque architecture’s technical and theoretical aspects in his research, examining prominent builders. Emulating the dramatic exuberance of 17th-century Italian architect Francesco Borromini, the architect utilizes Midjourney to generate undulating facades with lavish sculptural ornamentation. By continuing to give the AI program text-based prompts, the architect can create contemporary architecture that is surreal and new. The phrase “silk” brings the baroque façades’ inherent characteristics and qualities to the AI, allowing it to impart new properties of the cloth onto the masonry while also being a match for each building.

The details in the stone sculpture are combined with the delicate silk fabric to create a modern version of the baroque façade. The forms and materials flow together seamlessly, making it difficult for the viewer to tell where one ends, and the other begins. Qasim Iqbal has observed that certain aspects of the work resemble Bernini’s David sculpture. Iqbal says, “The level of detail and realism in the rope and hair makes it easy to forget that this is a stone sculpture.”