“Cardboard gave me means to realize ideas I had only imagined previously,” Daniel Agdag recently told The Guardian. “The pieces are like mathematical problems, which I work through as I create them, decoding the world around me.” Using glue and a scalpel, the Melbourne-based filmmaker and artist fashions intricate miniatures of amusement parks, houses, hot-air balloons, and public buildings. Last April, Agdag completed Lattice, a 10-foot-long sculpture that mimics the designs of Coney Island and Luna Park Melbourne. It took 897,560 individual pieces of cardboard to complete the truss section, and in its final form the work serves as a metaphor for life’s ups and downs. Lately, Agdag has shifted his focus to Tide Houses, a new series of pared-down yet elegant structures on stilts—a lighthouse, a hot-air balloon, and a birdhouse with an imposing megaphone on top. Beautiful from afar, these whimsical designs are best appreciated up-close. —Elena Clavarino