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Posts Tagged ‘Deserted’

Deserted for Decades: Derelict Old Building Houses New School

10 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

abandoned school reskinned

A remarkable example of architectural rehabilitation, this abandoned structure has been given a second life via a fresh facade that wrapping a rundown shell. The before-and-after shots illustrate the (realized) potential of even the most dilapidated-looking building, and in this case specifically: one that was exposed to the elements for over 20 years.

abandoned building before photo

abandoned building new view

abandoned building corner view

abandoned school other view

In the GELM annex, architect Víctor Díaz Paunetto AIA worked with a limited budget and existing building, effectively turning a stabilized ruin into the basis for a vibrant new structure boasting weathering steel and colorful accents. The building has already recieved Honor Awards from the AIA Puerto Rico Chapter in 2013, XIII Puerto Rico Architecture Biennale in 2013 and AIA Florida and the Caribbean in 2014.

abandoned school exterior skin

abandoned new stairway entry

abandoned building interior reuse

In alignment with the ecological focus of the school to be housed on the site, the client and designer agreed to maintain the existing structure at the core and to add exterior surfaces around it rather than demolishing it. Today, it is used for classes, meetings and gatherings as well as storage for the school and its students.

abandoned interior view back

abandoned building cut out

abandoned interior colors corten

From the designer: “This project aspires to be an example of how the recycling of existing structures can potentially serve as a vehicle for a sustainable development of our built environment. The challenges of demonstrating how adaptive reuse could be seen as a new model for redevelopment was intertwined with the challenges of a designer also working as the builder with an extremely limited budget and time for the execution of this project.”

abandoned building reused reskinned

abandoned building facade scheme

abandoned buiding site elevations

abandoned adaptive reuse

More about the design, site strategy, program and inspiration: “GELM Annex is a second commission of the joint Early Head Start and Pre-School Program of Guarderia Ecologica La Mina (GELM). The design solution for the rehabilitation of this existing structure dating back to the 1960’s and abandoned since the 1980’s had to strive for simplicity, uniformity and longevity. To this effect a corten steel skin perforated in a pattern derived from the abundant and extensive bamboo hedges that surround the site was designed in an effort to establish a dialogue with the immediate natural context. The skin becomes a sunscreen and jointly with the colored glass panels, introduced in reference to the existing pre-school the building serves, help bathe the interior space with filtered and colored light.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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No Sweat: 10 Abandoned Gyms & Deserted Fitness Centers

20 Jul

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned gyms & fitness centers

Gotta be at the gym in 26 minutes? Don’t get bent outta shape but no amount of blood, sweat or tears can rejuvenate these abandoned gyms & fitness centers.

Weight Of The World

abandoned European Health Spa Westchester New York

The long-abandoned European Health Spa in Westchester, New York has seen better days but on the bright side, the statuesque Atlas out front must enjoy having the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. One wonders, though, who would – or COULD – make off with a massive metal globe? Obviously the gym worked miracles for someone before it shut its doors for good. A tip of the hat to Urban Landscaped for capturing the images above on a crisp, frosty day in December of 2010.

Aww, Phuket

abandoned Chalong Gym Phuket Thailand

When its American owner abandoned the Chalong Gym on Chao Fa East Road in Phuket, Thailand, members with pre-paid memberships likely cursed up a storm. Luckily for those eager to keep their bronzed bods buff for the beach, the gym re-opened under new management in July of 2009. All of this isn’t especially noteworthy but hey… check out the ridiculous amount of overhead wiring in the image above!

Ultimate FAIL

abandoned Ultimate Fitness Columbia SC

Ultimate Fitness, formerly located at 1603 Broad River Road in Columbia, SC, advertised “24 HOUR ACCESS TO OUR FACILITY”. Sounds legit. According to Columbia Closings, “This 24 hour gym was in Boozer Shopping Center on the Bush River Road side just a few slots down from Dunkin’ Robbins.” Yeah, they never stood a chance.

Unfitness Center

abandoned Asahi Sports Center Japan

Florian from Abandoned Kansai must have worked up one heck of a sweat exploring the abandoned Asahi Sports Center in the depths of an oppressively humid (aka typical) Japanese summer. No doubt the complex’s putrid green outdoor pool provided billions of mosquitoes – not to mention the odd, possibly rabid bat – that made his task that much more miserable. The things urban (and rural, in this case) explorers go through to make your net browsing experience so enjoyable!

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No Sweat 10 Abandoned Gyms Deserted Fitness Centers

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Real-Life Panopticons: Deserted Dystopian Prisons in Cuba

16 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

panopticon central guard tower

Imagine life inside a ring of cells around a central watchtower, where you can never be sure whether you are being observed. This surreal setup became an extreme reality under dictator Gerardo Machado on the Cuban Isla de la Juventud.

panopticon prison complex exterior

One of the creepiest concepts in the history of architecture, the Panopticon model of incarceration design proposes keeping prisoners forever on edge, fearing their watchers.

panopticon real life cuba

Both Fidel and Raul Castro spent time within the walls of this Presidio Modelo (Model Prison) complex, which, at its peak, held over 8,000 political prisoners. Apparently they found the approach sufficiently effective, since the Castro regime kept them open as well.

panopticon island cuba set

panopticon gathering space center

Originally the vision of Jeremy Bentham (and later nightmare of philosopher Michel Foucault), this 18th-Century idea was never realized in its creator’s lifetime but found expression in many structures after his death.

panopticon model prison diagrams

panopticon interior cell details

While there are other Panopticon-inspired prisons around the world, this complex in Cuba may be the most literal and direction realization of the original diagrams. It features circular structures and guardhouses in the center of a vast open spaces, all to keep residents in a perpetual state of uncertainty (images via Jason Florio and Wikipedia).

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Modular Retrofit: Bamboo Micro-Homes in Deserted Factories

09 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

bamboo example demo unit

A pragmatic twist on visionary plug-and-play architecture, this project combines a cheap and fast-growing material with existing (abandoned) infrastructure to address the extensive needs of existing informal communities of Hong Kong.

bamboo dwelling infill plan

Putting buildings within buildings, the Bamboo Micro-Dwelling plan was born of both practical realities and city-in-the-sky ideas of Utopian Modernists like Le Corbusier.

bamboo micro dwelling factory

Designed by AFFECT-T, each basic micro-dwelling starts out at just a few meters in length, width and height, with essential cooking, sleeping and sitting areas. Thanks to their placement inside a larger deserted structure, these units have fewer active-system, insulation and cladding demands than autonomous exterior equivalents would.

bamboo temporary home wall

bamboo factory deserted plan

Like a more formalized (less-dystopian) version of Kowloon Walled City, the design calls for community and education spaces to be built into the open spaces of the factory floors and voids between individual dwellings.

modular housing solution proposal

Within the bigger building around them, this group of “homes will be serviced through a singular backbone providing water and electricity to individual units and disposing of waste, while cooling, heating, structure, and enclosure are provided” at scale by their surroundings.

bamboo retrfofit temporary home

At the individual-unit level, flexibility “aids in the overall adaptability of the larger community as units can be joined and easily separated and altered as the population changes. “

bamboo interior dwelling configuration

The demand for such a solution definitely exists: in total, an estimated 280,000 Hong Kong residents are without permanent, stable and legal structures to call home.

bamboo loft room interior

However, these micro-dwelling deployments are conceived of not as a permanent state but, rather, a transitional set of spaces. They simply make maximum use of available materials and existing buildings to create effective temporary communities for a population that needs to be shifted off the streets and out of shacks toward sustainable long-term housing.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Deserted Parisian Metro Stops as Underground Pools & More

16 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

paris converted subway pool

The myriad abandoned subway stations of Paris are full of hidden potential – and one current candidate for mayor is working with architects to show the city just how much these semi-secret and long-neglected subterranean spaces can hold.

arc park

paris abandoned dance club

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, together with designers Manal Rachdi and Nicolas Laisné, pictures fresh uses ranging from restaurants, theaters and night clubs to green parks and swimming pools.

paris converted metro restaurant

Given their positions around the city, it only makes sense to reactivate these ready-made voids: after all, metro stops are planned around hubs of activity and along lines of transportation.

paris underground performance space

Imagine for a moment the acoustics of a auditorium in such a setting, or the echoes of splashing water, all aside from the immersion in historical structures below the city.

paris vintage underground station

Many of these stations have been deserted and boarded up for decades – some for nearly a century, and others (attached to since-abandoned lines) were never opened to the public in the first place. Over time, some have been used to shoot commercials or scenes from films, and others have had wartime uses as shelters or for stockpiles.

paris historical metro photo

There are eight stops in total that have been deemed suitable for revival, including Champ de Mars, Arsenal, Porte Molitor, Haxo, Croix Rouge, Porte des Lilas, Saint Martin et Martin Nadaudso. More on the mayoral candidate’s proposal can be found here, via Messy Nessy.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Extreme Street View: Google Employee Maps Deserted Island

31 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Global & Urbex & Parkour. ]

street view battleship island

Street View has mapped much more than roads in its, but sending a lone urban explorer through the haunting multistory ruins of a remote island may be one of their riskiest geographic ventures yet.

street view abandoned island

street view japanese employee

Strapped with panoramic photography equipment, this video shows a lone Google employee crawling through rubble, scaling partially caved-in abandonments and standing on precarious roofs, all to document one of the most unique deserted cities on the globe.

street view urban exploration

Occupied for over a century, and briefly the world’s most densely-populated island, Gunkanjima, Japan (aka Hashima) is now one of the loneliest places on the planet.

street view overview aerial

street view island rooftop

A giant concrete wall surrounds the ship-shaped Battleship Island, giving it its nickname. At one point it was packed with an average of 1.4 residents per square meter of space, almost like an overcrowded sea vessel.

street view inside walking

street view building infiltration

Parts of the deserted island have since been reopened to the public, but Google secured special permission to go off the beaten path and pass through long-abandoned buildings that only intrepid infiltrators have seen in recent decades past.

street view ruin interior

street view routes paths

Thanks to their carefully mapping, virtual visitors (web viewers) can now tour the corroded corridors, crumbling stairs and uncertain roofs from a much safer distance, almost look a choose-your-own-adventure for urban explorers.

[ By WebUrbanist in Global & Urbex & Parkour. ]

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Deserted Elevator Shaft Hides Single-Room Street Museum

15 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

pop up micro museum

Like so many secret spaces of New York City, this one-room exhibit space (hidden inside an abandoned elevator) is not exactly on the beaten path.

nyc museum peep holes

This pop-up project is naturally camouflaged, set behind a pair of rusted metal doors along an inconspicuous alley between a pair of dull gray block walls. Only a few small rectangular punched openings suggest that something might lurk beyond the black steel.

nyc one room exhibit

Behind its unmarked entry lies a surprisingly pristine white room lined with red-padded shelves. These in turn support an array of contents, many of which city dwellers may find strangely familiar.

nyc everyday object museum

The Elevator Museum‘s collection sports a sampling of everyday urban objects, from discarded coffee cups and potato chip bags to tip jars, found dollar bills and losing lottery tickets.

nyc worlds smallest museum

The exhibits rotate, however, between temporary pieces and a permanent collection featuring some seriously unique and one-off objects. The latter includes the shoe infamously thrown at President George W. Bush during a televised 2008 press conference.

nyc elevator shaft museum

The museum founders Alex Kalman, and brothers Benny and Josh Safdie “want [the] museum to relay the intimate stories behind strange, colloquial items, finding beauty in absurdity.” To construct their secret museum, ”the team gutted the shaftway [at the ground floor] and renovated it to include lighting and shelving.”

nyc elevator museum gift shop

It has operating hours, but like most things in NYC, it is worth dropping by any time of the day or night: “Glass peepholes at the door allow passersby to marvel at the collectibles 24/7, and for those visitors who miss the museum’s opening hours, a toll free hotline has been developed that relays information about each exhibited artifact via phone. The 60 square-foot, free museum also accommodates a cafe and shop. It is a fitting microcosm of the essence of New York City, an unusual myriad of characters, quirks, and curiosities congregating in extremely small spaces.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Half Invisible: Deserted Desert Cabin Remixed with Mirrors

05 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

see through cabin

Unlike a mirage on the horizon, this quaint little abode is entirely real, even if it seems to half-disappear through alternating wood and (seemingly) see-through slats.

see through

A project by Phillip K Smith III (images by Stephen King Photography and Lance Gerber), Lucid Stead modifies an existing abandoned home shape that is straightforward and familiar.

see through night light

Through its materials, however, the artist makes the building interact with the landscape in mind-bending ways, reflecting its surroundings via long horizontal siding and framed rectangular (faux) windows that slowly light up at night. The effect is a strange partial vanishing of the structure.

see through house art

Of the work, the artist writes: “Lucid Stead is about tapping into the quiet and the pace of change of the desert. When you slow down and align yourself with the desert, the project begins to unfold before you. It reveals that it is about light and shadow, reflected light, projected light, and change.”

see through day stars

From the portfolio page: “Composed of mirror, LED lighting, custom built electronic equipment and Arduino programming amalgamated with a preexisting structure, this architectural intervention, at first, seems alien in context to the bleak landscape. In daylight the 70 year old homesteader shack, that serves as the armature of the piece, reflects and refracts the surrounding terrain like a mirage or an hallucination. As the sun tucks behind the mountains, slowly shifting, geometric color fields emerge until they hover in the desolate darkness.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Deserted Paris of the East: Chinese Replica Now Ghost City

07 Sep

[ By Delana in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

Tianducheng, China

On any given day in Paris, you might see hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists in the streets. They go in and out of shops, snap pictures next to landmarks, stare in wonder at the opulent architecture. But over 5500 miles away, there is another Paris – a comparative ghost town where the streets stand nearly empty.

chinese paris ghost town

Construction on Tianducheng, in China’s Zhejiang district, began in 2007. It was meant to be a luxurious gated community resembling Paris in every way possible. The highlight of the town is its 354-foot replica of the Eiffel tower, but plenty of Paris’ other landmarks have been faithfully recreated here.

paris of the east ghost town

There is a major incongruity between one’s expectations for a “little Paris” and what you will actually see in Tianducheng. The streets are, for the most part, entirely empty. There are no throngs of tourists or business people rushing off to their offices. There is a lot of quiet, and there is a fair amount of traditional Chinese culture, seemingly completely out of place in the French surroundings.

agricultural chinese life outside paris replica

The development was built to house 100,000 people and to draw rural families into a bustling metropolitan area. As of 2007, (the last time the population was counted), only 2,000 souls inhabited the gated compound. The population seems to be dwindling, leading local media to refer to Tianducheng as a “ghost town.”

traditional chinese culture in paris replica

It may seem odd to build a replica of a famous city in a different country, but the developers were working on the idea that Paris was seen as a romantic destination. They felt that Chinese people would want to live in this faux-European environment with its stately townhouses and wide-open courtyards. Several other Western-style towns and communities have been built in China around this idea.

At least in Tianducheng, you are more likely to see empty streets and traditional Chinese agricultural life than the distinctly Parisian pastimes of shopping, strolling, and sipping wine on a restaurant patio. Daily life in the town is documented in the video above.

worker in tianducheng

Work is still in progress in the compound; its expected completion date is in 2015. So the Paris of the East, it turns out, isn’t quite a ghost town – it hasn’t had the time to develop ghosts just yet. In a few years, this now-quiet development could very well be chock full of Chinese residents ready to begin their European-style lives. (Images via: Business Insider and video by Caspar Stracke)

[ By Delana in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Animal House: Woodland Creatures Adopt Deserted Cabins

29 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned home animal portraits

These interior photos by Kai Fagerström depict wild forest inhabitants who have made derelict human-owned dwellings their own – domestic portraits-at-home with a undomesticated twist.

abandoned space fox hole

An abandoned series of small shacks and quaint cottages in Finland, slowly reclaimed by nature, show hints of slowly-invading of plant life, but the even faster introduction of woodland animals including squirrels, foxes, owls and more.

abandoned room animal pictures

This surprising variety of crafty creatures have adopted and reshaped the existing spaces to suit their own needs, tunneling through vents and fireplaces, nesting and resting between walls and below floors.

abandoned home wild animals

Though this photography project started with a few quick shots in a set of cabins in the woods near the photographer’s summer home, the deserted spaces have turned out to be so rich in potential wildlife portraits that the results now populate an entire book of images (The House in the Woods).

abandoned building door squirrel

Great patience is required to wait and take just the right desired shots, which are so well-composed you could almost imagine the animals posed to have their picture taken. “Deserted buildings are so full of contradictions [and] I am fascinated by the way nature reclaims spaces that were, essentially, only ever on loan to humans.”

abandoned space animal series

abandoned window sill squirrel

abandoned house badger family

Each image has a story, often elaborate, about how it was taken. About the last one above, for instance, from National Geographic: “On a summer night a family of badgers file into the kitchen from a tunnel they dug under the fireplace. It took four years before Fagerström finally caught the skittish, nocturnal weasels. For this shot he set his camera on a windowsill, then stood outside on a ladder for hours before pressing the shutter via remote control.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Deserted’

Deserted for Decades: Derelict Old Building Houses New School

No Sweat: 10 Abandoned Gyms & Deserted Fitness Centers

Weight Of The World

Aww, Phuket

Ultimate FAIL

Unfitness Center

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
No Sweat 10 Abandoned Gyms Deserted Fitness Centers

Real-Life Panopticons: Deserted Dystopian Prisons in Cuba

Modular Retrofit: Bamboo Micro-Homes in Deserted Factories

Deserted Parisian Metro Stops as Underground Pools & More

Extreme Street View: Google Employee Maps Deserted Island

Deserted Elevator Shaft Hides Single-Room Street Museum

Half Invisible: Deserted Desert Cabin Remixed with Mirrors

Deserted Paris of the East: Chinese Replica Now Ghost City

Animal House: Woodland Creatures Adopt Deserted Cabins

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Posts Tagged ‘Deserted’

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