Ace Architects
This Web site showcases the work of Ace Architects, “the court jester of California architecture,” along with highlights from their collection of souvenir buildings.
Described by Vanity Fair as “the court jester of California architecture,” Ace Architects’ unique collection of full-size and miniature buildings from around the world are on display in Aceland. In this site, several of the firms homes and commercial buildings are featured on unique layouts that reflect the metaphors and inspiration behind the projects. The miniature collection features whole cities, grand monuments, and even “useable” buildings, where pencil sharpeners, lamps, and coin banks create a unique union of form and function. A thorough exploration of the site by visitors rewards them with a souvenir snow dome movie. Aceland was created with the release of Netscape 1.0, when the World Wide Web finally supported graphics, images, photos, colored backgrounds, and other design dreams. Netscape liberated Aceland from the fate of Mosaic’s gray backgrounds and blue-bordered pictures, but compared to the large file-size capacity of CD-ROMS, the Web was a step backward for multimedia. The medium didn’t yet accommodate the demands of animation, motion graphics, video, and music. Despite these restraints, Aceland still packed a lot of punch with body background graphics and colors, QuickTime movies, and QuickTime 3-D animation.