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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

reclaimed mine data center 2

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

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Jenga-Like Twisting Tower Won’t Leave Neighbors in the Shade

12 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

twisting tower 1

In order to get around strict city zoning regulations that forbid new structures from putting neighbors in the shade for more than two hours a day, architecture firm MVRDV devised a tower that twists upon itself to the point of seeming as if it could snap and fall over at any time. The twist creates an ultra-narrow profile right at the section of the building that would cast a shadow on nearby buildings.

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From certain angles, it seems like chunks of the Hochhaus Tower have been taken right out near the base in a Jenga-like effect. Not only does this mean the bottom ten floors won’t cut off sunlight, it also routes strong winds away from the building’s plaza.

twisting tower 4

The twisting floors have outdoor terraces, while the rest feature glazed walls and 12-foot ceilings for sweeping views of Vienna and lots of natural daylight. The steel and glass facade will also have operable windows and full-height French doors.

twisting tower 5

Designed to be multifunctional for residential units, offices or other businesses, the Hochhaus Tower won three-stage international competition. Construction will begin in 2016, with an expected completion date of 2018.

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Abandoned Mine is Now World’s Largest Indoor BMX Bike Park

11 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

underground bmx bike park

Boasting 5 miles of trails, ramps and obstacles, this cavernous subterranean space sits 100 feet underground and totals 320,000 square feet. The wide-open footprint and copious mounds of dirt, able to be endlessly reformed into new types of terrain, lend themselves to this particularly fitting form of adaptive reuse.

underground converted limestone mine copy

Located in Louisville, Kentucky, and open as of yesterday, the Mega Underground Bike Park gains a number of advantages from being far below the surface, including a relatively consistent temperature and protection from wind, rain and other weather (without the typical costs of constructing a building to house these activities).

underground bike park ramps

Originally a limestone mine, there were plans to create a highs-security business park in the space – while there are a few businesses actually occupying other parts of the underground complex of caves, the big idea fell through, replaced by a plan to create zip lines, challenge courses and now the biggest interior bike park on the planet.

Currently the space offers 45 trails with differing degrees of of difficulty as well as clever additions like cargo containers turned into ramps and overpasses. Most of the materials needed, though, were already in place – it was mainly a matter of lighting, accessing and shaping the space.

underground dirt ramp caves

From their website: “Are you ready to experience a one of a kind Underground Bike Park? Over 320,000 square feet including over 45 trails, Jump Lines, Pump Tracks, Dual Slalom, BMX, Cross Country and Single Track all in a former limestone cavern 100 feet sub-surface. Enjoy the comfort of our 60 degree temperature year round. Come experience what the buzz is all about. You simply won’t believe what you see.”

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Freezeways: Using Bike Paths as Winter Ice Skating Corridors

11 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

freezeway design concept drawing

Proposed by a landscape architect from Edmonton, Alberta, this 7-mile urban project may not be as far fetched as it first sounds – in many regards it is simply a linear extension of an ice skating rink or more pragmatic variant of for-fun skateways found in Holland and Russia.

freezeway bike path summer

freezeway design concept drawings

For the many cities in the United States, Canada, Northern Europe and elsewhere that are only warm (and thawed) enough for comfortable biking half of the year, designs like The Freezeway by Matt Gibbs could provide a means to modify extant bike pathways to get exercise, have fun and commute to work during colder months. The process is not as simple as pouring ice on existing paths – issues of grade, embankments and connections would need to be addressed – but the concept is gaining momentum and these problems all have solutions.

freezeway winter commuting skaters

The idea has local appeal for places like its architect’s hometown, which is ice cold for much of the year and dark to boot, providing an excuse to get outdoors as well as a way to move about the city. It also has potential international appeal as a tourist attraction and urban icon akin to the High Line in New York, Garden Bridge coming to London, Sea Wall in Vancouver and other one-of-a-kind landscape projects around the world.

freezeway winter ice path

More details from the designer: “By shovelling a mapped out route, the space between snow banks could be flooded, perhaps by a fire hydrant at first (though it’s not ideal), creating a web of trails to explore on skates, requiring minimal expenditure …. This space could eventually be animated by lights and music. If popular, it could incrementally expanded every year.”

freezeway urban skate path

More on the advantages for and beyond commuting: “This project is not meant to be a tax payer’s burden. The Freezeway is meant upgrade city infrastructure for a multitude of uses, potentially doing wonders for the redeveloping City’s core, our international reputation, as well as attract investment into the City. The proposed route exists entirely on existing City infrastructure; the land is already secured. The numerous character areas along the route could be developed in phases, lending themselves well to private funding/sponsorship, like Calgary’s GlobalFest, or Vancouver’s Festival of Light fireworks shows, funded by donations of over 1 million dollars annually. The design team is currently exploring numbers.”

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Curious Collections: 15 of the World’s Weirdest Museums

10 Feb

[ By Steph in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

phallological museum 2

You might wonder why anyone would pay money to gaze at collections of dog collars, toilets, packets of ramen and mammalian penises in jars, but one thing we’ve learned from this list of weird museums is that absolutely anything can be collected and put on display. These unusual exhibitions range from the bizarre and macabre, like a Peruvian museum of brain abnormalities, to the oddly specific, like Massachusetts’ Museum of Burnt Food.

Icelandic Phallological Museum
phallological museum 1

On the busiest street in Reykjavik, you’ll find a museum filled with shelf after shelf of animal penises in jars. Iceland’s Phallological Museum started as a private collection in 1974 when the founder received a bull’s penis as a joke gift, and it took off from there. “Some of my teachers used to work in summer in a nearby whaling station and after the first specimen they started bringing me whale penises, supposedly to tease me. Then the idea came up gradually that it might be interesting collecting specimens from more mammalian species.

Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, India

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Run by a social service organization that works to protect human rights, sanitation, waste management and social reform through education, New Delhi’s toilet museum showcases the 4,500-year history of toilets around the world, including one disguised as a bookcase and King Louis the XIV’s royal throne, upon which he was said to defecate during court sessions. Sulabh International has been credited with bringing sanitation to India’s poor, and founded the museum to send a message about how important proper disposal of human waste is.

Avanos Hair Museum, Turkey

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The names and addresses of over 16,000 women around the world are taped to delicate little samples of hair hanging from the walls at the Avanos Hair Museum, a bizarre treasure tucked into the caves of Turkey’s surreal Cappadocia beside the owner’s pottery studio. The first lock of hair went up in 1979, supposedly as a memento for founder Chip Galip, starting a bit of a trend in which women voluntarily left their locks behind. Every year Galip chooses ten hair samples at random and invites the women to come back for a pottery workshop and to stay in his traditional guest house for free.

Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum, Japan

instant ramen museum

The history of ramen noodles and Cup Noodles is celebrated at the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Osaka, a free exhibit with recreations of the ramen inventor’s workshop and thousands of cups and packets of instant noodles on display. There’s also an instant ramen workshop where visitors can make their own noodles.

Meguro Parasitological Museum, Japan

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Get up close and personal with tapeworms, mites and other parasites at the world’s only parasitological museum. Located in the Meguro neighborhood of Tokyo, this museum has over 45,000 specimens in its collection, including the world’s longest tapeworm at 8.8 meters. You can even get yourself a parasite-themed souvenir.

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Curious Collections 15 Of The Worlds Weirdest Museums

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[ By Steph in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

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Invasions: Clouds of White Balloons Take Over Public Spaces

10 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

invasion 1

Profusions of white balloons seem to explode from the interiors of houses, squeeze through basketball hoops and hover between the trees in the forest like odd bulbous clouds in this series by artist Charles Pétillon. ‘Invasions’ gives these normally free-floating objects a life of their own with a swarm-like presence within architectural spaces and landscapes.

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Each photograph depicts a particular metaphor, making a statement on various topics. ‘Family Memories,’ top, shows the white balloons “symbolizing childhood naivety,” while ‘Play Station 2′ aims to “question the viewer on the uses of games in all forms, their evolution and their influence in society.”

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The forest scene, entitled ‘Mutation 2,’ mimics the molecular structure of DNA, placing it in a picturesque environment to symbolize the effect of humans on natural spaces, with our tendency to modify everything to our own uses.

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‘Invasions’ brings the balloons to retrofuturistic architecture designed in the late ’70s and early ’80s to examine our visions of the future and how quickly they become obsolete. ‘CO2′ represents the scars we leave upon the world with our lust for objects like cars. The artist sees the balloons as a way to visualize each of these ways in which we thoughtlessly proliferate, invade or evolve.

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New Frank Gehry Building So Ugly it Has to Wear a Paper Bag

09 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

frank gehry building exterior

Featuring over 300,000 custom-designed bricks, the latest work of one of the world’s most famous architects is an impressive feat of engineering, but hard not to compare to a crumpled grocery bag. Even Australia’s governor general Peter Cosgrove introduced it as “the most beautiful squashed brown paper bag I’ve ever seen” at its opening ceremony. Gehry himself reportedly does not mind the comparison, but there is not much he could do or say about it even if he did.

frank gehry bag building

paper bag building gehry

Gehry’s first work in Australia, the structure’s inspiration supposedly came from a combination of local sources (Sydney architecture) and a treehouse, with branching supports holdings organic shapes. Its fenestration is designed to reflect views of the surrounding neighborhood – this, at least, is an intriguing idea that has a demonstrable and interactive effect.

 

frank gehry glass walls

dancing house image gehry

While Gehry states that this building will not be replicated elsewhere, it is quite recognizable as his work, and thus raises the question: is it sufficiently different from his other amorphous and sculptural buildings to be deemed truly unique in the first place? The resemblance to one half of The Dancing House (aka Fred and Ginger), a nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building in Prague (shown above), is hard to miss.

frank gehry classroom space

frank gehry abstract room

The complex and chaotic-seeming shapes percolate into the interior as well, showing via details and spatial configurations in the main atrium space, multiple lecture halls and multimedia rooms and a student center above. Ugly or lovely, a grand metallic entry staircase is also reminiscent of other Gehry projects.

frank gehry reflective forms

frank gehry main staircase

frank gehry paper bag

Ultimately, only time seems to tell whether an unusual building can become an icon, but one has to wonder whether something can become iconic if it is not sufficiently different from other work by the same creator. Perhaps one of his few works to still stand out (and stand the test of time) remains his original Santa Monica house remodel – a reconfiguration that shows a learning process that has arguably since stagnated. There is no doubting his influential roll in contemporary deconstructivist architecture, but he has had failures and rejections as well and his projects increasingly look like muddled remixes of one another.

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Scratched: Nine Nifty Closed & Abandoned Nail Salons

09 Feb

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned nail salon Upscale Nails 1
Once painted, polished and popular, these closed and abandoned nail salons won’t be doing any more filing unless it’s in bankruptcy court.

abandoned nail salon Upscale Nails 1a

abandoned nail salon Upscale Nails 1b

For a short time after its gala 1976 opening, the Randall Park Mall in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was hailed as the “world’s largest shopping center” boasting 2,000,000 square feet of retail space. Obviously it was all downhill from there. Competition, crime and changing lifestyles doomed the Randall Park Mall, which by April of 2009 was down to a mere two open stores – one of which was Upscale Nails. One might say they were hanging on by their fingernails. Kudos to Flickr user railynnelson for capturing the mall in its dying days, though it was destined to decay in abandoned silence for five more years before demolition put it out of its misery.

Best Nail Salon Bar None!

abandoned hair & nails

Flickr user m. (mirnanda) was out enjoying a June day in San Francisco’s Chinatown when what should appear but the world’s most passive/aggressive nail salon! “Hair & Nails” would appear to be on the menu yet the promise of personal cuticle care is cruelly dashed by a forbidding screen of rusty iron bars.

KP & Paste

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Flickr user and retail store documentarian extraordinaire Ryan (RetailByRyan95) might have had some inside info on KP Nails’ closure and re-opening at another strip mall in Grafton, VA. In the images above we see the store open and functioning on April 10th of 2008, followed by its abandoned status on March 16th of 2009, and lastly its rebirth at a new location. Just like cockroaches, you can’t keep a good nail salon down – they’re the Whack-a-Mole of the retail trade.

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Scratched Nine Nifty Closed Abandoned Nail Salons

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The Under Line: Derelict London Tube Tunnels as Public Paths

07 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

under line renderings concept

Tapping unused sections of the London Underground,  this bold proposal would create a network of subterranean paths for pedestrians and cyclists as well as spaces for pop-up shops, cafes and cultural events, all situated in stations and subway stretches of rail currently sitting idle and empty.

In the spirit of New York’s proposed Low Line, the plan involves main disused tunnels serving as primary areas for circulation and interaction. Simultaneously, putting existing but unused infrastructural voids to better use, the design calls for old reservoir chambers and exchanges to connect these larger and more open sections of the Tube.

london underline tunnel prospect

Architects at Gensler, the firm behind the idea, developed it to address a series of issues in the densely-populated capital of England, including bicyclist fatalities on surface streets, a lack of public space and ease of movement across the city.

under line subterranean path

As a bonus, special panels lining the interior of these underground spaces would be used to generate kinetic energy from people passing through and walking on surfaces, obviating the need for external power sources. Indeed, the technology for this system already exists, and this would be a great potential application for both cost and sustainability reasons.

under line tube reuse

The development process could also be incremental, moving in stages to make transition and restoration costs more manageable and to test usage patterns. The default plan is to start with voids between Green Park and Holborn, working stations that could provide access to unused portions of the Tube spanning them. In turn, tying these spaces into the existing Underground network would make them more accessible to visitors coming into the city and locals alike.

london underline park idea

Unlike other conceptual projects for London, like the SkyCycle,or serious proposals, like the Garden Bridge, very little would have to be added or displaced for this reprogramming approach to work. The Under Line may also borrow a bit of inspiration from this clever idea to transform Paris Metro stops into event spaces.

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Dead Drops: Hidden USB Sticks Offer Anonymous File Sharing

07 Feb

[ By Steph in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

usb dead drop

If you happened to notice a USB stick poking out of a brick wall in an urban space, would you be brave enough to connect your computer to it just to see what it might contain? Will it dump a bunch of malicious software onto your machine, or reveal something amazing? You just never know. The Dead Drops offline peer-to-peer file sharing project has been called “the nerd equivalent to glory holes,” bringing the sense of anonymity provided by the internet into the real world in a way that feels conspicuously sketchy.

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Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl took inspiration from the methods spies used to transfer information in a secret location. The process of accessing or distributing files on these networks is anonymous, you can share anything you want, and actually plugging your laptop or tablet into the drive sometimes requires bending at awkward angles or doing something that looks vaguely suspicious.

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Bartholl notes that the ‘danger’ of participating in the project is no different from that of sharing files on the internet. People typically share photographs, art, poetry and videos. The drives range from 64 megabytes to a whopping 120 gigabytes. To install one of your own, just find or create a hole in a wall or other urban surface, remove the thumb drive’s plastic case and wrap the memory board with waterproof tape, place it in the hole with just the port exposed and cement it in with fast-setting concrete.

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The project started in 2010 and has since grown to thousands of locations worldwide, according to a database that tracks where they’ve been installed. Some can be found in the busiest areas of cities like New York, while others are in abandoned buildings off the beaten track. You can find out whether there are any near you, or create one of your own using the Dead Drops site’s instructions.

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