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Posts Tagged ‘Ruins’

Inflatable Interventions: Soft Spikes Bring Roofless Ruins Back to Life

16 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

A series of architectural installations in Scotland contrast sharply with the centuries-old stone architecture and natural landscapes, featuring spiky white inflatables filling in aged cracks and gaps.

Titled XXX, these designs by Steven Messam add movement to Mellerstain’s House and the surrounding gardens — they are the first part of a series of contemporary exhibitions planned for the Borders Sculpture Park on this historic estate. The white inflatables refer abstractly to old marble sculptures that were originally to adorn the grounds.

“Pointed” emerges from an old gatehouse; “Scattered” is spread across the lake, comprised of floating bubbles; and “Towered” pokes out of an aged laundry column. Each one invites interaction and exploration of the site.

“In the use of historical buildings and the designed landscape, XXX draws on the architectural significance” of the estate, says Messam. “As interventions, the sculptures speak the language of scale – all three are bigger than a house. As studies in scale and form, these artworks have to be directly experienced in the environment to be fully appreciated, so i hope they will encourage even more people to visit this wonderful architectural gem in the Scottish borders.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Industrial Rehab: Ruins Provide Framework for Expansive Beach House

07 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

bay house

A stunning blend of old and new, this lovely oceanfront home is intertwined with remnants of an industrial ruin; the two are combined while differentiating existing from added architecture.

beach floating home

The house seems to grow out of the deserted walls of the former structure, resting above and pushing beyond them. Designed by Razvan Barsan + Partners of Romania, the program of this seaside California home consists of a series of residential buildings and outdoor decks leading out to a private island.

reused architecture industrial site

Local materials like wood, reed and bamboo along with modern lines and copious amounts of glass set the additions apart from the existing remains of both functional and ornate masonry.

industrial containers

Miscellaneous metal cylinders and barrels were also left, the primary home space floating above them on the shore.

beach front home

private home aerial

private island

The island, bridged by a minimal walkway, features trees, seating and a fire pit for gatherings, all balanced against the secondary structure between it and the mainland..

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Sunken Ruins of Alexandria to be World’s First Underwater Museum

04 Nov

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

sunken egypt underwater museum

The Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt is planning to turn submerged ruins of ancient Alexandria into an underwater museum, allowing tourists access to 2,500 of subsurface stonework dating back to 365 AD.

sunken ruins

Plans or this ambitious intervention, designed by French architect Jacques Rougerie, were put on hold for years during a period of regional turmoil, but are now back on track. Fiberglass tunnels will connect waterfront galleries to underwater viewing areas where visitors can see the ruins in context.

The 270,000 square foot area in Alexandria Bay is protected by the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and includes the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Much of the area was submerged in the Middle Ages due to earthquakes.

underwater museum

Part of the purpose of the project is to further protect the ruins, which are prominent targets for thieves and difficult to police without permanent surrounding infrastructure and round-the-lock eyes on the site. “The museum will reshape the Arab region, as it will be the first of its kind in the world,” said Youssef Khalifa, chair of the Central Administration of Lower Egypt Antiquities. “Undoubtedly it will revive tourism and boost the Egyptian economy after a long recession.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Ruins to Art: Timber Addition Transforms Abandoned Building

27 Oct

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

sculptural wooden bar 1

An abandoned traditional building on the coast of Madalena, Portugal has come back to life with a sculptural wooden extension that emerges from the back like a living organism. Cella Bar by FCC Arquitectura and Paulo Lobo leaves the original structure intact, merging the vernacular architecture with a wholly modern aesthetic in pale curving timber.

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Missing elements of the abandoned building, like the doors and windows, were restored to make it look just as it did when it was first built, minus the charming weathering on the stones. The interiors were transformed to suit the building’s new purpose as a restaurant, the wooden floors flowing out the rear doors, onto the original terrace and continuing onto the roof of the addition.

ruins

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“The new extension is a contemporary creation, exposed to a completely different language,” say the architects. “It is an organic, dynamic construction that contrasts with the orthogonal, classic language of the building where it is embedded. The design is defined by great plasticity, both in terms of forms and materials, and is markedly inspired by the natural environment around the site. Several features of that environment are present in the architecture of the building, including the outline of the island, rocks, whales and wine casks. The new volume acts like a giant sculpture, tailored for its location.”

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Abandoned Ship: Artist Paints Figure Onto Floating Ruins

22 Sep

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

ship graffiti 2

Hawaiian artist HULA paints the head and arm of a floating woman onto the rusted steel surface of an abandoned ship, all while balancing on a surfboard. The woman’s face appears and disappears with the tides, the rising water sometimes only revealing her hand. This large-scale guerrilla mural is the latest waterside work to be completed by HULA, who’s known for his unusual balancing act technique.

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Otherwise known as Sean Yoro, the Oahu-born, NYC-based artist gained attention this summer for translating his oil paintings on canvas to urban surfaces located along canals or other bodies of water. HULA’s favorite subjects are bathing women, painted with photorealistic detail onto crumbling concrete.

ship graffiti 1

The artist was inspired to create ‘Ho’i Mai’ (which translates to ‘Come Back’) on the stern of a half-sunken ship off the Hawaiian coast after watching the water rise and fall as the tides change throughout the day. Floating out to work alongside the ship on his paddle board, HULA hand-painted the image without the apparent use of a projector or, in fact, anything other than a few cans of paint and some brushes.

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Yoro hopes to turn the ship into a public work of art rather than just a forgotten vessel left to slowly sink into the water over the decades. The painting won’t last forever, though, as the artist uses traditional oil paints knowing they won’t stand up to the elements for long.

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“I use it in a traditional old masters’ technique, mixing both loose brushwork with very tight strokes of sharp lines,” he told CNN. “I’m always trying to make the paint have a juicier texture to really help the portrait come alive. Oil paint outdoors definitely isn’t the best and it doesn’t last nearly as long as acrylics, but I kinda like that my figures have their own lifespan.”

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Abandoned McBarge: Floating Fast Food Restaurant in Ruins

14 Jul

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned mcdonalds 1

Built in 1986 in the hopes of enticing diners who were gravitating toward more high-end fare, this now-abandoned floating McDonalds might just be the saddest-looking fast food ruin around. Known as the ‘McBarge,’ it’s been anchored in Burrad Inlet near Vancouver, Canada since its debut and served its last Big Mac in 1991.

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The idea was to show off the future of technology and architecture while also attempting to regain some of the market share it lost during an ‘80s trend toward bistros and boutiques.

Abandoned Mcdonalds 3

How, exactly, McDonald’s aimed to do that with a clunky-looking barge serving the same old menu is unclear. The chain dropped $ 12 million on the floating fast food joint and four other locations built just for Expo ’86 in Vancouver, thinking they could simply move the barge elsewhere if it didn’t catch on.

Abandoned Mcdonalds 2

For whatever reason, it was never reopened, and hasn’t budged from its apparently permanent spot in the inlet. Owner Howard Meaking proposed renovating it into the showpiece of a new waterfront development along the Fraser River in 2009, but the city council still hasn’t approved the idea.

A group called ‘Vancouver’s Worst Ghost Hunters’ took a tour of the abandoned barge, using a legal loophole to get aboard and filming the experience. Check out the (surprisingly vermin-free) interior in the video (Images via Wikimedia Commons, Ashley Fisher/Flickr Creative Commons).

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Brutal but Beautiful: Book of 88 WWII Coastal Military Ruins

08 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

world war eerie images

Traveling 23,000 miles over 4 years, photographer Marc Wilson has amassed an amazing collection of images spanning bunkers, gun emplacements, observation posts, command centres and other wartime infrastructure around Europe.

wwii coastal war ruins

war time bunker remnants

In his book, The Last Stand, 86 of the resulting images are arrayed to tell a complex story of different times and places. More than merely photographing these haunting remnants of war, however, Wilson also provides highly articulate reflections on everything from their site-specific purposes and aesthetics to their broader places in military and architectural histories.

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world war remnant architecture

“Composed of copious quantities of poured concrete,” many of these structures “defy and eschew any established aesthetic sensibilities: no hint of the classical, the gothic or the baroque here. Their geometries, purely contingent, were designed to resist the effects of the latest developments in projectile technology, their profiles shaped to deflect such missiles and avoid any direct percussive explosions on their structures.”

orld war brutalist remains

world war encampments

world war concrete bunker

His shots are carefully composed and timed, often taking place in the early hours of the morning when eerie mists and dim lights grant the subjects a surrealistic atmosphere. There is a dreaminess and dreariness to his work that manages to make the objects captured seem both ordinary and otherworldly. Prints of many of the pieces featured in the book can be purchased as well.

world war castle tower

world war winter imagery

world war water barrier

Unlike even the most pragmatic warehouse of the time, “there was nothing speculative or arbitrary about the bulwarks of their sometimes bizarre and often ungainly forms: they were purely functional. While far from being graceful or classically proportioned, there is something visually appealing about the alien (and sometimes sinister) forms of those bunkers. Novelty does not quite describe this appeal: more surprise perhaps – a surprise that courts the sublime.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Rocky Ruins Reclaimed: 12 Mining Facilities Transformed

12 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

reclaimed mines main

Abandoned subterranean pits once used to mine everything from gold to salt have been reclaimed as theme parks, restorative spas for asthmatics, data centers, cathedrals and even the world’s largest underground bike park. These 12 projects reclaim disused mines both above and below the surface of the earth, restoring communities devastated by strip mining and making smart use of the secure, insulating properties of subterranean spaces.

Mega-Cavern Bike Park, Kentucky

reclaimed mine bike park

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A former limestone mine 100 feet below the surface of Louisville, Kentucky is now the world’s largest underground bike park at 320,000 square feet. The Mega Underground Bike Park maintains a steady temperature around 60 degrees year-round and features over 45 trails marked for different skills and styles.

Salt Mines to Subterranean Theme Park, Romania

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You’ll feel like you’re accessing another world altogether when you ride an elevator nearly 400 feet to the bottom of an old salt mine in Romania, exiting to take in strange architectural shapes set on black bodies of water, dotted with surreal LED lighting and surrounded by soaring cave walls. First excavated in the 17th century, the Turda Salt Mines feature a playground, ferris wheel, mini golf course, sports arena, amphitheater and bowling lanes in addition to views of the restored mining equipment and the cavern itself.

World’s Largest Underground Trampoline in a Slate Mine, Wales

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Children and adults alike bounce gleefully upon trampolines suspended from a Welsh slate quarry mining cavern twice the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral. ‘Bounce Below’ is the world’s largest underground trampoline, with a system of bouncy surfaces strung from the walls ascending between 20 and 180 feet from the cavern floor. Ten-foot net walls keep everyone from bouncing right out.

Limestone Mine to Data Center, Kansas City, Missouri

reclaimed mine data center 1

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The SubTropolis Technology Center in Kansas City, Missouri is a limestone mine converted to an underground data center, where the limestone walls act as insulation, absorb heat from the equipment and provide natural security. Making use of this existing space saved 3-6 months of construction work; the walls were left raw and very little above-ground architecture was required.

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Rocky Ruins Reclaimed Mining Facilities Transformed

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Ruins of Crumbling Church Salvaged with Geometric Addition

20 Dec

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

sant francesc 1

A faceted glass structure clings to the ruins of a stone church in Santpedor, Spain, filling in a gaping hole that was created with the demolition of an adjacent convent. Built modestly by priests between 1721 and 1729, the hermitage of Sant Francesc started to crumble long ago, and by 2000 the roof had sunk and the vaults of the nave and chapels had partially collapsed, leaving it looking as if it the rest of it would come down at any time.

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But anyone brave enough to step through the doors would have found an interior that was still stunning in its cavernous arched spaciousness, daylight streaming in through massive holes in the ceiling. That hint of promise, along with its historical value, is what led to the intervention by architect David Closes (photographs by Jordi Surroca.)

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Closes transformed the church with a stunning modern addition and interior renovation that integrates the character of the ruins into the new elements, creating contrast and preserving a perspective of the church’s past. Sant Francesc is now home to a multi-functional cultural center and auditorium.

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Smooth concrete and timber enhance the aged qualities of the stone in the new interiors, with partially-collapsed areas and holes simply filled in with windows to show off rather than correct the damage that was done to the structure over the centuries.

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Vandalized Villa Savoye: Imagining a Modernist Icon in Ruins

22 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Le Corbusier’s “machine for living in” is one of the most-studied works of Modern architecture, but what would it look like if it ceased to be preserved and was left to be ransacked and ruined?

Artistic photographer (and photo-editor) Xavier Delory is exploring just this possibility, starting with the Villa Savoye but planning to branch out to other monumental and iconic works as well.

The visual devastation is breathtaking: “The ribbon windows that navigate its perimeter have been shattered, haphazard strokes of paint ornament its pilotis, and large pieces of graffiti cover its stark white free façade. The manipulations intend to make a statement about the ‘five points of architecture’, and in turn, highlight the death of modernity.”

In part, he is making a point about preservation and putting architecture on a pedestal: in reality, few buildings are so carefully and lovingly maintained and restored as those few select works that make it into the history books. Indeed, in a way, these are almost architectural fictions that do not reflect ordinary realities of construction and use.

Other manipulated photo sets by Delory explore different aspects of our built environment and raise questions about contemporary cities, including a series of mixed-material structures that question our obsession with facades and the difficulty of creating variety at scale.

A sequence of hybrid churches-and-supermarkets examines the idolization of commercial structures (have shopping malls become our places of worship?), while a collection of rural homes sans windows and doors makes one wonder if conventional architecture does enough to integrate houses and their landscapes. For fans of faux facades, this series of dissected buildings is also well worth a look.

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Posts Tagged ‘Ruins’

Inflatable Interventions: Soft Spikes Bring Roofless Ruins Back to Life

Industrial Rehab: Ruins Provide Framework for Expansive Beach House

Sunken Ruins of Alexandria to be World’s First Underwater Museum

Ruins to Art: Timber Addition Transforms Abandoned Building

Abandoned Ship: Artist Paints Figure Onto Floating Ruins

Abandoned McBarge: Floating Fast Food Restaurant in Ruins

Brutal but Beautiful: Book of 88 WWII Coastal Military Ruins

Rocky Ruins Reclaimed: 12 Mining Facilities Transformed

Mega-Cavern Bike Park, Kentucky

Salt Mines to Subterranean Theme Park, Romania

World’s Largest Underground Trampoline in a Slate Mine, Wales

Limestone Mine to Data Center, Kansas City, Missouri

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Rocky Ruins Reclaimed Mining Facilities Transformed

Ruins of Crumbling Church Salvaged with Geometric Addition

Vandalized Villa Savoye: Imagining a Modernist Icon in Ruins

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Posts Tagged ‘Ruins’

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Rocky Ruins Reclaimed Mining Facilities Transformed