Forget gargoyles, a new building facade is covered with emojis

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Gargoyles may be the status quo for most Old World buildings, but a new millennial-targeted development in the Netherlands has eschewed classic spirit chasers and opted for emojis.

Architect Changiz Tehrani of Dutch firm Attika Architekten was tapped to design a new building in the in the city of Amersfoort, with shops on the ground floor and apartments above. It was completed last year, but only recently — since photos were released — did the rest of the world realize what he had done, according to the New York Post.

“In classical architecture they used heads of the king or whatever, and they put that on the façade,” Tehrani told The Verge. “So we were thinking, what can we use as an ornament so when you look at this building in 10 or 20 years you can say, ‘Hey, this is from that year!’ ”

Tehrani selected 22 different emojis from the messaging app WhatsApp for his project.

“Emoji is a thing of now,” Tehrani added. “We always like to put in small details that makes the project a little bit more than a boring building.”

Credit: Attika Architekten

[NYP | The Verge] —Christopher Cameron