How Renaissance structural ideals and ancient Greek symmetry form a blueprint for mythological urbanism.

Transmission 404: Interview with Benjamin Sack

Benjamin Sack operates at the intersection of a cartographer’s precision and a dreamer’s sprawl.

Benjamin Sack is an artist best known for his monumental, intricately detailed pen-and-ink drawings of imagined cities. Working primarily in black ink on paper, he constructs vast architectural landscapes composed of densely layered buildings, towers, and labyrinthine structures that appear to expand infinitely beyond the edges of the page. His works evoke the logic of urban planning, ancient ruins, and futuristic megastructures all at once, creating environments that feel simultaneously historical and speculative.

Though painstakingly precise, his process is largely intuitive; cities evolve line by line, accumulating through sustained focus. The absence of visible inhabitants lends his compositions a contemplative stillness, inviting viewers to project their own narratives into these complex spaces. His art explores themes of time, memory, order, chaos, and the human impulse to build. Through obsessive detail and meditative labor, he transforms simple materials into immersive worlds that reflect both the grandeur and fragility of civilization.

His work explores the concepts of infinity, order, and chaos, with a style that feels part Da Vinci, part Escher. Benjamin Sack’s work looks, at first glance, like a vintage map found in a forgotten library. Look closer, and you will find a living, breathing metropolis that defies the laws of physics. From the microscopic detail of a single window to the telescopic view of an entire planet-city, he reminds us that the world is a much more intricate place than we often dare to imagine. His drawings are a masterclass in perspective, weaving together the structural grandeur of the Renaissance, the intricate geometry of the Baroque, and the dizzying scale of modern urbanism. By inviting viewers to lose themselves in a sea of rooftops and spires, his work serves as a bridge between the finite world of the page and the infinite expanse of the mind.

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Benjamin Sack is a pen-and-ink visionary who creates architectural landscapes of impossible scale.

What draws you to pen and ink rather than digital or other media? Does working in black and white shape the emotional tone of your worlds?

Its immediacy, permanence, and timelessness.

A black-and-white image possesses a sense of timelessness. With color, we often unconsciously infer the era in which something was made. Every decade—and every civilization, for that matter—has its own relationship with color: the 1960s, the 1980s, the 1860s. Color carries historical fingerprints.

Black and white is more ambiguous. It exists a little outside of time. Because of that ambiguity, I believe it can carry greater emotional and symbolic weight.

Are there real architectural traditions that subconsciously influence your imagined structures?

Absolutely.

Architecture is a mirror. To study architecture is to study humanity and psychology. A building is, in a sense, a person. It is a society. It can embody the dreams, fears, and aspirations of a people. It silently declares what they value. Every great building is a miniature cosmos, functioning both practically and symbolically.

I’m drawn to what you might call the psychological shape of architecture—its presence, its memory, the shadow it casts through history.

Early Renaissance architecture captivates me, especially Brunelleschi. His work represents an honest attempt to bridge epochs while creating something entirely fresh and poetic—not only aesthetically, but structurally and intellectually.

Ancient Greek and Roman architecture, Palladio, Piranesi, Venetian architecture, Art Deco, Moorish traditions, Middle Eastern and Indian architecture all find their way into my visual vocabulary. I draw from many traditions, though I have a particular affinity for antiquity and the Renaissance.

His breathtakingly intricate, architectural pen-and-ink drawings blend history, geometry, and a sense of the infinite.

Your drawings require immense patience. Has your relationship with time changed through making them? How do you physically sustain focus during such detailed work?

Drawing is a way of participating in the world. It is a form of meditation.

In that sense, the duration of time becomes almost irrelevant. Drawing connects you with the best parts of yourself. It establishes you within a vast and quiet presence.

Your cities often feel both ancient and futuristic, mixing Gothic, Classical, and futuristic elements. In your mind, is the world you’re drawing a lost civilization from the past or a blueprint for a distant future?

Yes—and no.

I think of my drawings less as worlds and more as scores for music. The drawing is the composition; the viewer performs it. Looking becomes an act of playing. The eyes, mind, and imagination become the instrument through which the work comes alive.

The image isn’t complete until someone wanders through it.

Do you plan your compositions extensively, or do they evolve organically as you draw? How do you decide when a drawing is complete in a world that seems infinitely expandable?

Unity through multiplicity.

Every drawing begins with a simple overarching idea—a structure capable of holding complexity together. Once that foundation is established, intuition takes over. Detail emerges naturally from that dialogue between order and spontaneity.

A drawing is complete when it begins to feel inevitable.

His drawings are marathons of focus and endurance; he doesn’t just draw buildings, he builds worlds where the past and future collide in a single, swirling ink stroke.

Your artwork often utilizes a bird’s-eye perspective. Do you feel like a historian documenting a world or a deus ex machina constructing one as you go?

Between the two, probably more a deus ex machina.

I sometimes think of myself less as a cartographer of places than a cartographer of music—the music being intuition, something ultimately ineffable. My hand, eye, and mind simply become the instruments through which that intuition passes.

History has given me a rich visual vocabulary, but the resulting worlds are ultimately less historical than mythological.

Your work is a marathon of fine motor skills. How does the physical process influence the architecture you create?

The marathon is run in the mind.

If one’s mental approach is sound, the drawing will sing, and the body generally follows. Of course, sitting in one position long enough will eventually be felt, so I simply get up and walk. The work itself never feels physically burdensome.

What role does repetition play in your creative or emotional state while working? Has drawing ever felt like meditation or escape?

Very much so.

Drawing is meditation.

Drawing is many things. At times it can be an escape; at other times it becomes a vehicle for confrontation.

Repetition functions much like it does in music. A recurring theme impresses itself more deeply upon the psyche. In The Empire Strikes Back, for example, the Imperial March appears dozens of times. Each repetition deepens its emotional resonance.

My drawings have recurring architectural motifs that function in much the same way. Columns and arches establish rhythm. Towers lift the emotions. Bridges create anticipation, tension, and focus. Architecture becomes musical.

You embrace horror vacui—the fear of empty space. When you finish a piece, do you feel relief that the void is filled, or do you immediately begin looking for the next silence to break?

It’s funny, because a paradox emerges.

I know a drawing is finished when it sings. Yet a completed drawing also possesses an immense silence.

I know a work is complete when I find myself looking at it more than drawing it. A finished drawing captures and holds your gaze. An unfinished one continues pulling at my hand.

The sheer scale of his art philosophy encompasses both the physical size of his pieces and the metaphysical depth of his work.

Your work feels built to last for centuries, yet it’s made of fragile paper and ink. Does that contradiction play into your motivation to create?

Very much so.

That’s part of its poetry.

Like the sand mandalas created by Tibetan monks, every drawing is made with the knowledge that one day it will disappear. Its impermanence gives it meaning. Sometimes, as with the monks, the act of letting go becomes part of the work itself (I’ve drowned, burned and torn a few works and have brought them back to life).

Some of your works suggest labyrinths protecting something precious at their center. What beats at the center of your cities?

The journey.

A labyrinth pulls and turns you, much like life itself. Every corner presents another lesson, testing and forging faith, determination, and character.

At the center, you don’t find treasure. You find yourself.

The viewer becomes the deus ex machina.

Your cities appear densely populated with structures but rarely with people. Is that absence intentional?

Yes, very much so.

He turns every blank sheet of paper into a dense, sprawling universe of classical beauty and mathematical wonder.

If you could step inside one of your cities, what would you hope to find? Is there a building or space you return to repeatedly in your imagination?

Within Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man lies an ancient problem: the squaring of the circle.

On its surface, it appears to be a mathematical puzzle. At its heart, however, it is a spiritual one. It asks how the square—the measurable, earthly, and material—might become the circle, representing heaven, infinity, and the divine.

Leonardo’s answer is humanity itself.

Man is the bridge between earth and heaven.

This idea is embedded within many of the great temples and sacred spaces of the pre-modern world. My drawings seek that same place—the point where the measurable gives way to mystery, where architecture becomes a bridge between the finite and the infinite.

As for a building I return to repeatedly, that would be Brunelleschi’s Dome and more generally, any domed building. The Dome (Circle… Vault of the sky/heaven) harmonized with the base (square…earth, the physical). 

Photos courtesy of © Benjamin Sack

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.