The post The Ice House: Crazy Crystal-Covered, Fully-Frozen Home first appeared on Dornob.

Newsubstance and the Unboxed crew moved the retired oil rig from its former location in the North Sea to the Somerset coast and transformed it into a new public art installation and visitor experience this summer. It was transported by sea on a barge the size of a football field and then lifted over the seawall by crane and set onto prefabricated legs.

The four-story, 450-tonne rig is set within a shallow pool on the beach. Its top platform hosts the garden, while a 6,000-piece kinetic installation featuring the work of Ivan Black and Trevor Lee shimmers across the front. The vegetation was chosen to stand up to the Atlantic gales and corrosive saltwater sprays. The waterfall, dubbed the “SEE MONSTER’s roar,” recirculates via the pool at the base, and the kinetic art moves along with the wind.

Lee’s installation, WindNest, was designed in collaboration with Land Art Generator initiative and consists of two rotating airborne pods that generate clean energy through wind and solar technologies, powering the irrigation systems for the “Garden Lab” on the upper platform. Black’s installation features 6,000 aluminum tiles representing the “monster’s scales,” fluttering in response to weather conditions. Three drone shows by SKYMAGIC light up the skies above the shores of the town, drawing people in to see the installation after dark.

The creators hope SEE MONSTER will inspire conversations about how our industrial history has shaped our climate (mostly for the worse), and what we can do about it.

“SEE MONSTER is a celebration of how we can use our past to shape our future,” the creators say. “Harnessing renewable energy from the great British weather, this reimagined platform will feature experiments, performances, gardens, and even waterfalls — showcasing local innovation and showing how creativity can challenge and change the status quo.”

“SEE MONSTER is being brought to life on the site of Weston’s iconic Tropicana lido by Leeds-based studio Newsubstance with support from Weston-super-Mare Town Council and North Somerset Council. Throughout the UNBOXED summer, it will stand as a vivid reminder of our shared past — and a symbol of our united journey towards a more sustainable future.”

As for Unboxed’s connection to Brexit, The New York Times explains that the $132 million festival was meant to display the best of British creativity after the nation voted to leave the European Union. It’s now being investigated as a “waste of money” by the government’s spending watchdog. The festival has attracted 238,000 visitors since it opened in March; organizers had predicted it would draw up to 66 million people from then until its closure in November.

The post An Abandoned Oil Rig Became a Massive Art Installation in England This Summer first appeared on Dornob.

“From the very first moment we entered it, it was like an enchanted place that was left behind for decades, overgrown with vegetation,” says Almut Grüntuch-Ernst, one-half of the architect duo. “You enter and are struck by this forgotten feeling. You’re inside this romantic, castle-like structure erected at a time when there were no other buildings around it, and all you hear is birdsong.”

Converting the former Charlottenburg Women’s Prison to a hotel that’s more than just a gimmick was no small undertaking. The walls, as you might guess, are incredibly thick, and the architects had to cut through them to enlarge windows and create new doors. The guest rooms couldn’t be limited to the unworkably tiny prison cell size, either, so cells were merged to accommodate comfortable spaces with ensuite bathrooms. “It’s about inverting the building’s configuration and spatial concepts, from an antisocial place to a very social place,” Almut told Design Hotels.

Avoiding any sense of exploitation in the theme was a high priority. The architects carefully considered how to complete the adaptation in a sensitive way, determining which elements from the past should and shouldn’t be left visible. This prison’s history is particularly complex, as German resistance and anti-Nazi activists were held there during World War II. After the war, it was an administrative office for a while, then a juvenile detention center, which closed in 1985. Afterwards, the building was used as a storage facility and a set for several movie productions (including Academy Award-winning The Reader starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes) before finally being transformed into the Wilmina.

The architects used the facade-facing courthouse building for the hotel lobby and built a new extension for Wilmina’s restaurant, which connects the former courthouse to the prison’s U-shaped cell block. The restaurant consists of bricks reclaimed from the construction process. 44 guest rooms are spread across the five levels of the block, arranged on narrow galleries around an atrium. Each one still features bars on the windows and the original cell door, but is clad in minimalist, mostly-white furnishings for an airy feel that’s anything but claustrophobic.

The top level features a penthouse suite, and on the roof is a terrace, library, bar, spa, and gym. Today, with warm amber lights glowing within large glazed openings and lush courtyard gardens, the former prison is surprisingly welcoming, beckoning guests to come inside with open minds.

“Wilmina is a place of discoveries, of surprising visual links, ambiguous layers of space, and traces of the past,” say the architects. “Wilmina is also a place of natural tranquillity, relaxation, and comfort — an oasis in the middle of the city.”

The post Former Prison Cells Turned into “Tranquil” Guest Rooms at Berlin’s Wilmina Hotel first appeared on Dornob.

Situated along a narrow street in the coastal town of Arenys de Mar, this three-story house has faced some significant challenges over the years. For starters, it had been forgotten by the municipal planning in the latest update, standing as a ghost of a former city plan. Then the owner’s tenant had to abandon the space to move to a nursing home, leaving it totally vacant for over a year. To top it off, leaks in the roof allowed water to filter through the three stories during this time until it all but destroyed the first floor’s wooden structure.

When the architects of Barcelona-based Twobo studio took on the refurbishment of the five-by-five meter home, they actually let these damages guide their design process.

“The water paved the way for us,” the team explains. “Sunlight filtered through the hole left by the collapse of the structure. Could it be that the solution for this small house was precisely to ‘lose’ more meters?”

The tall, skinny dwelling shares walls on three sides with other buildings, with the front facade opening onto a street less than 10 feet wide with almost no sidewalk. Adding a skylight on the third floor and expanding each stairwell allowed in more light, helping the roughly 256 square feet of each floor feel bigger than it really is. The ground floor also got boost of sunlight when the Twobo architects punched out a larger hole in the facade, lining the entire entry with oversize windows and creating a threshold that “transforms the street into part of the house.”

Next came the addition of other permanent features. A compact kitchen was installed on the lower level, with room for cooking essentials and a table with a room-wide tiled-bench that forms a banquette. The existing ceiling beams were left exposed in here to show off all their aged and well-worn glory. Patches of a former blue paint also retain their spot of honor on the ceiling as a nod to the home’s long history.

A sink was added on the second floor and the water closet was cleverly hidden in what looks like a large set of cupboards. The rest of the space on that level houses a full-size bed near a window overlooking the street. Above that, the third floor is reserved for storage, with two oversize wardrobes hung on the wall over the stairwell. The entire home was painted white, with the light, natural wood and tawny floor tiles providing accent color for a fresh and minimalist vibe.

The Twobo architecture studio was formed over a decade ago in Spain by family members Pablo and Alberto Twose and María Pancorbo. Their work has covered technical architecture, interior design services, and landscaping, as well as furniture and fixture design. Their ultimate goal is to find the “apparent simplicity” in each creative project.

The post “History of Abandonment” Guides the Restoration of This 5×5 Barcelona Home first appeared on Dornob.

Burton, who stumbles upon most of these places in his travels, can’t offer any answers, though he does circle back around to his subjects occasionally only to find that they’ve since perished without a trace, seemingly erasing their entire existence. One is a wooden farmhouse set beside two trees, surrounded on all sides by lush green crops. “The Substation Fire here in Oregon burnt this abandoned house and 70,000 acres of land just a month after I took this photo,” he tells Monster Children.

The Portland, Oregon-based photographer has been photographing abandoned places since 2011. For “Thin Places,” each property was shot with a drone to fully capture just how isolated they are. Burton says it’s the liminality of the spaces that draws him in. They exist somewhere between past and present, perhaps even somewhere between this realm and another.

“There is a Celtic concept regarding places that feel strangely magnetic,” Burton says. “It is said heaven and Earth are only three feet apart but in Thin Places that distance is even shorter. Abandoned houses are a perfect example of this phenomenon. These places are at the intersection of archeology and fantasy, and you can visit these sites but can never get the full story. So curiosity keeps bringing me back. What makes people leave, and what keeps things standing? How much of a life gets left along with it?”

Burton’s own childhood on a farm in rural Oregon informs much of his subject matter. A thread of wistful Americana runs through his body of work, whether he’s photographing homes that look like archaeological studies in danger of collapse or portraits set in foggy forests. Most of his imagery starts with road trips through the sparsely populated countryside, where he and his friends often enter empty-looking buildings and sort through the belongings left behind by whoever last lived there. Burton likes to immerse himself in each setting before he shoots, taking in its emotional essence and using that feeling to set up the photos.

Burton’s parents put a disposable camera in his hands when he was just six years old, but he began taking photography seriously at the age of sixteen, when he acquired his first digital SLR camera. An early focus in conceptual photography has shifted over time to be more documentary in nature. “I guess my style lately has been a mix of Children of the Corn with vaguely “Post Nuclear Fallout Exploration,’” Burton told My Modern Met in 2017. “I’m so obsessed with adding ambiguity to my work now, if I can come up with more than one storyline behind the image, I’ve succeeded.”

Burton will soon travel to Appalachia for a new photo series. Keep up with his evocative work by following along on Instagram @burtoo.

The post Thin Places: Photo Series Captures the Poetry of Isolated Abandoned Homes first appeared on Dornob.

In their installation “The Wild Within,” Canadian-Dutch artist/photographer Ryan Koopmans and Swedish digital artist/photographer Alice Wexell take this type of creative reimagining to the next level by blending past and present through a combination of the digital and the physical, breathing exciting new life into abandoned Soviet-era architecture.

The project began when the creative duo visited the Georgian town of Tskaltubo, taking photographs over a period of several years of the many ruins that exist throughout the area. Inspired by the broken-down, shattered remains that now stand in place of luxury and splendor, the pair collaborated to create a new vision: “a surreal collision between past and future.”

The deserted buildings, left in various states of disrepair and decay, provided the perfect backdrop for the two artists. Using their combined experience in the digital art world, the pair juxtaposed the bright greens of nature with the stark yet austere remains of buildings that haven’t seen life since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The city of Tskaltubo was once a bustling destination known for its healing waters and luxurious health spas. The buildings now left to rot and corrode were once vast, glorious peons representing the larger wealth and influence of the Soviet Union at the height of its power. Abandoned since the 1980s, they have been left to decay and collapse — a somewhat apt, if not cruel, metaphor.

Thanks to Koopmans and Wexell, these spaces are being renewed through the magic of modern technology. By creating animated images of lush vegetation and bright flowers and cleverly integrating them into the existing architecture, the pair have made something new and beautiful. The photos literally come to life, transforming into videos that are haunting, surreal, and a stark reminder of how manmade structures can be abandoned yet given new life through their return to nature.

The project is ambitious but prescient, as some of the sites have since been demolished in real life. But the nostalgia-inducing video series will continue to exist as a testament of the beauty that can be found even in the ruins of former grandeur. Koopmans hopes the works will create “a sense of surreal tranquility while referencing the themes of urban exploration, architectural history, and the resurgence of nature.” This video series certainly does just that, as it poignantly reflects how nature reclaims what is hers long after man has abandoned it.

Seeing the breeze gently flow through the greenery and weave its way through the once splendid and magnificent architecture is a bittersweet experience. Yet it reminds us once again of the power of design and its ability to transform our surroundings, sometimes even recapturing what has been abandoned or lost.

The post The Wild Within: Digital Artists Help Nature Reclaim Abandoned Soviet Architecture first appeared on Dornob.

The posh hotel, owned by InterContinental Hotel Group, extends 88 meters, or nearly 300 feet, into the quarry. All but the top two of the 18 stories press against the sides of the quarry, diving into a campus of natural elements combined with extreme architecture. A striking glass waterfall-style elevator starts at the surface and cascades down the side of the rock face. Of course, you could always just skip the elevator and land in the middle of the resort grounds via the centralized helipad.

The two lowest levels are underwater, so to speak, with a unique aquarium surrounding the restaurants and accommodations on both. Even better, each of the six underwater suites on these floors also have their own aquarium. In all, the hotel contains 337 standard to luxury rooms alongside everything else a premier resort might offer, from pampering to full-on adventure.

Dubbed “Shanghai Wonderland,” those who can afford to stay at the resort and spa will experience a unique location while enjoying posh amenities like expansive pools with lounging areas and a lake large enough for kayaking. Visitors can observe waterfalls from their room, leisurely walk the grounds, or head out for some rock climbing and bungee jumping within the compound walls. Private theater box balconies also allow guests to view a nightly water and light show. In truth, there’s no need to leave the resort with all it has to offer, but travelers to Shanghai can easily launch over to nearby attractions such as the Chenshan Botanical Garden and Guangfulin site, along with a bustling city full of activity.

Unlike most mega hotels, Shanghai Wonderland was built using a low-impact design that takes advantage of unused natural space. Exterior balconies house ample greenery, and the roof has also been covered with plants to better blend into the landscape above. The shade from the surrounding cliff walls helps to regulate the temperature and improve heating and cooling efficiency. The structure, designed by JADE+QA Architects, is also partially powered using renewable technologies like solar panels and geothermal systems.

Building 18 stories down is no easy engineering or construction feat. In fact, for more than a decade, over 5,000 architects, designers, planners, engineers, and construction workers contributed to the completion of this project. One of the largest challenges was figuring out how to pump concrete into the bottom of the quarry, a process that required significant revamping of typical protocols. An extensive use of technology and innovation were required to make this hotel, which cost a whopping $300 million to complete.

“It was a challenge,” says Martin Jochman, chief architect of the hotel. “This quarry was really a scar on the surface of the earth. It was overgrown and dangerous.” He adds that: “we took some big risks because it was totally unknown. The hotel comes out of nature.”

JADE+QA Architects, the award-winning UK firm credited with the project, specializes in architecture, urban planning, and product design, with a focus on “respecting nature through sensitive design.”

The post InterContinental Hotels Builds Luxury Resort Inside Abandoned Shanghai Quarry first appeared on Dornob.

Much of this area’s artifacts from the Ming (1368 – 1644) and Qing (1644 to 1912) dynasties have already been lost due to neglect, and as China’s burgeoning economy encourages more rural residents to move to cities, hundreds of thousands of villages are being abandoned and put at risk of demolition. Dafang is just one of 102 abandoned villages in Jiangxi Province alone.

“Many of these have dozens of generations of social, cultural, and monumental value but are currently lacking major future significance,” explain the architects. These days, continued relevance requires a consistent flow of both visitors and cash. So NEXT teamed up with the IVEM Dutch Institute for Heritage and Marketing, Smartland landscape design, Total Design graphic design, and a team of artists to create a new masterplan that would attract both to Dafang.

Observers may wonder — and rightfully so — why the Jiangxi government would “wish for Dutchness to revitalize Dafang,” especially if interest in the area is primarily rooted in its cultural significance. After all, colonization and its damaging effects on cultures parasitized by outsiders should be well known at this point.

In this case, the two cultures have been bridged since the 17th century, when the Dutch East India Company sailed to China to obtain Chinese porcelain. Chinese arts and traditions ultimately had a huge influence on Delftware, the ceramics Holland is famous for producing (the Dutch East India Company, by the way, is remembered today for being a precursor to modern corporate monopolies, and for its affinity for exploitation, violence, and slavery).

Dutch and Chinese architects alike worked on Holland Dafang Creative Village, which has been transformed into an interactive environment for artists from both countries to work, mingle, and exhibit.

A description of the project on Archello explains that “interventions are designed on three levels. Firstly, urban space, architecture, and landscape are restored where possible, with new materials creating a dialogue between old and new elements. For example: glass roof tiles are used to restore the roofs of the old houses, and the ancient irrigation system has been restored [by] adding elements such as a natural helophyte filter to clean the water. Secondly, a watchtower and public hall have been added: new building structures that take cues from on-site precedents.”

“Ancient villages in this area all had watchtowers for defense purposes. With the original tower long gone, a new watchtower has been designed in which two intertwining routes embrace each-other, loosely resembling a giant Chinese ‘dragon column.’ The watchtower provides alternating views over old and new in the village, as well as views as far as over the rural landscape towards the mountains at the horizon. Locally, the watchtower is embraced as the ‘Wandering Tower,’ reminiscing a poem of the famous Chinese poet Li Bai about people waiting for loved ones to return to their hometowns.”

“In the center of the village, a new public hall is realized. The hall is built on the former site of a courtyard building that was destroyed during the cultural revolution. The inspiration and shape for the unique roof comes from a century-old camphor tree outside the village, whose lofty canopy for decades provided a gathering space for the villagers. The camphor hall dissolves in the fabric of the village and provides a shaded collective space. The terracotta tiled facade provides places for birds to build nests.”

A new village museum, artist studios, and a library round out the attractions built around the existing town, and visiting artists are highly encouraged to participate in the ongoing transformation. Cultural ties are illustrated by features like the floor of the public hall, which was painted in a Mondrian-like pattern by a Chinese artist.

The result is undeniably beautiful, with the new additions augmenting and highlighting the older structures instead of dominating them. In particular, the spiral watchtower looking over the ancient village lends a futuristic effect to the overall scene, contributing to a narrative about the village’s continuing growth and history.

The post Dafang Creative Village Brings a Futuristic Look to this Rural Chinese Town first appeared on Dornob.

Reportedly making the top of the mesa their home for around 600 years, scientists can’t explain why the Pueblo abandoned the flat land in favor of the cliff dwellings, which were impressively built and nearly impossible to access. Of course, that could have been the entire point, with one theory suggesting that the tribe moved into the hillside as a defensive move, as it provided a good lookout from which to spot rival tribes. Another theory is that the cliff overhangs offered protection from the elements during what could have been an extremely hot or cold time period.

Considering today’s weather patterns in the area, snow likely accumulated heavily during the winter in the Mesa Verde of old. But regardless of the reasons why the moved, it’s clear the Pueblos migrated from the mesa to the cliff dwellings around the year 1190. From that point on, the tribe was broken into villages around a massive canyon, with houses and meeting areas meticulously sculpted into nearly inaccessible caverns. The dwellings ranged in size from small storage areas to massive complexes with up to 150 rooms.

Today, a visit to Mesa Verde National Park provides you with the remnants of around 600 ruins scattered throughout the region, many of which are remarkably preserved.

Discovered in 1888 by cowboys Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charlie Mason while out looking for errant cattle, Cliff Palace, the largest of the cliff dwellings, was still loaded with baskets, sandals, necklaces, spears, knives, mugs, and other artifacts. Although there is evidence that perhaps some of the dwellings had been previously discovered, the area was largely untouched, as if frozen in time from centuries before. A harvest of corn even sat preserved in a nearby storage area, indicating that the Pueblo may have left in a hurry.

Besides the artifacts themselves, the story of Pueblo design lives on in the sandstone. Wooden beams made from felled trees and lowered over the cliff hangings offered central support to many of the structures. Anchored with sandstone and mortar, walls and towers were erected to create rooms. Mortar was made using local soil, water, and ash. Chinking, a mixture made from small bits of stones, was also added to enhance the strength of the dwellings.

Large pits in the ground called kivas were contoured into the design and covered with criss-crossed timber roofing. The Pueblo used ladders to climb in and out of these pits, which were used as religious spaces and meeting areas during the long winter days. Most impressively, all of this construction took place with rudimentary tools, mostly sharp rocks collected from nearby riverbeds.

Outside of the dwellings, the tribe continued to grow and harvest crops on the mesa above, requiring individuals to scale up the rock face with little more than toe and finger holes carved out of the nearly-vertical surfaces. Tools equivalent to basic sticks left clues about how the people managed to till the soil and grow crops.

After nearly a century of development, the Pueblo people began to leave the region, electing to join other tribes in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. By the late 1200s, the region was totally abandoned.

At the very least, we can all be thankful that the ruins and evidence of their people’s innovative building techniques still stand today. 

All photos courtesy of the National Park Service

The post Pueblo Cliff Dwellers: The Original Architects first appeared on Dornob.

But every now and then, you’ll spot something odd: a line of fresh laundry hung out to dry. A clean newish car parked right in the hallway. A pair of shoes set carefully beside a rotting chair. The face you spy in a window won’t be that of a ghost, necessarily, but rather that of a resident. Decades after these buildings were offered as temporary shelters to Georgians fleeing the war in nearby Abkhazia, hundreds of families remain, even as their homes break down around them.

Once, these “sanatoriums” were pristine health destinations for travelers from all over the former USSR, who were obliged to visit them annually in order to “sustain a healthy and productive workforce,” according to Koopmans. Built in the 1920s, the facilities took advantage of the therapeutic radon-carbonate mineral spring water found in the town, which was said to heal a host of illnesses. Consisting of 22 different buildings, the ornate sanatoriums peaked in popularity between the 60s and 80s, drawing in hundreds of thousands of visitors including Joseph Stalin himself. He even had his own personal bath house at one of the spas, with a relief sculpture depicting his welcome by the masses.

But with the break-up of the Soviet Union came dramatic changes in the small nation of Georgia, which sits along the Black Sea with Russia on one side and Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan on the other. The buildings fell into disrepair, and the desperate residents of Tskaltubo tore up its floors for firewood and salvaged its metal as scrap. Georgians fleeing the conflict in Abhkazia took up residence in 1992 with the permission of the government, and most simply never left. While some of the buildings have since been sold for redevelopment, others appear frozen in time — but life goes on inside them nonetheless.

Setting out to capture the beauty of the ruins, Koopmans didn’t realize the buildings were inhabited until he saw the residents firsthand. Born in Amsterdam and raised in Vancouver, Canada, he takes interest in “surreal structures in our world’s megacities and urban landscapes,” focusing on their geometry, patterns, and saturation in his work.

This particular photography project took a fascinating turn when he met and profiled some of the sanatorium’s 800-odd residents with the help of a translator. For example, an 82-year-old man named Radisha moved in with twelve members of his family after walking over 100 kilometers by foot with a bullet wound in his leg.

Taking a full five years to complete, Koopmans’ in-depth documentation of the area and its residents includes hundreds of photographs, a short film, and a few tidbits that might have otherwise been lost to history as the tides of change creep ever closer to the Soviet-era spas.

“There are plans to redevelop the town and invest millions of dollars into the reconstruction and renovation of some spa buildings,” he explains. “The displaced people from Abkhazia have been told that they will be moved into new homes, however this transformation has been slow. Much of the original architecture in Tskaltubo will be removed, along with the artifacts, objects, and decorations which remain.”

The post The Forgotten Residents of Georgia’s Abandoned Soviet-Era Spas first appeared on Dornob.

The post Giant Concrete Feet Installed in Abandoned Berlin Bank first appeared on Dornob.

The post Abandoned Building to Garden Home: Fresh Renovation in Saigon first appeared on Dornob.

With its two street-facing gables, stained glass windows and quiet, tree-lined double lot in Chicago’s Little Italy, this church still looks like it has for over a century from the outside, albeit a bit spruced up. Built in 1901, the church closed its doors to congregants in 1920 and sat abandoned for many decades before the University of Chicago began using it to house various campus ministries. Today, it’s a gorgeous light-filled residence for a family of five, renovated for maximum comfort and minimalist beauty by the firm Linc Thelen.

The seven-bedroom, six-bath home still boasts the original sky-high ceiling height, as well as original details like the arched stained-glass windows within creamy brick walls and exposed beams. To make it feel cozy and comfortable as a family home, the architects brought the ceilings down in the bedrooms and children’s rooms.

Unsurprisingly, lots of secrets were discovered during demolition, like a host of nooks and crannies accessible via narrow crawl spaces and rickety wooden ladders. While some were opened to fit modern amenities like the washer and dryer, others were left intact as play spaces for the kids. The house also boasts a fun climbing wall, a Murphy bed in the nursery and multiple fireplaces.

The stained glass stands out more than ever now that it’s set against stark white walls and ceilings, and the original nave is now a spacious and wide-open living room, kitchen and dining area. While most of the surfaces have been modernized, the clock tower was left almost exactly as it was found, with the second-level floor taken out for views all the way to the top.

The post Church Conversion: Chicago Chapel Turned Into Holy Home first appeared on Dornob.

The designers at Italian design team Manoteca take their work seriously, with a side of whimsy. Their ultimate goal is to reuse and revamp abandoned materials, making old or discarded items into new and beautiful objects.

More than anything, the feeling behind their projects is to keep the materials alive and let them stay useful for longer than anyone could have predicted. Wood, metal, suitcases, and other treasures more than a century old are revamped into shapes and functions that most of us would never have dreamed of. Old tricycles become roving libraries, complete with little plug-in lamps and neat slots for books.

Carefully and lovingly restored suitcases become the removable top of a puzzle-like table. A dining table opens up to become a work table for an artist, complete with storage pockets for supplies. The wondrous surprises created by Manoteca should be a lesson to designers (and DIY enthusiasts) everywhere: reused materials, treated well, display even more personality and originality than the most modern of materials.

The tree-shaped piece is called Haiku: “The tree is an ancient and mystical archetype. One of its symbolic meanings is the relation between heaven and earth as well as between reality and dreams. This piece is a representation of a memory. We aimed to recreate what nature gives us. After all, the forest is like a comfortable, soft, bed, the tree, a magnificent roof.”

The table made of luggage is called Box Sir: “If you take it apart, Box Sir will continuously change shape and use. By taking away the boxes, you’re left with open surfaces you can put anything on. The boxes, originally designed to hold anything, can be put back onto the frame as you like, thanks to a strong magnetic underside which is carefully and adequately concealed and insulated.”

The post Abandoned Materials Get a New Lease on Life first appeared on Dornob.

An abandoned house purchased from a college is now a growing, adapting tribute to reclamation and renovation. ‘Fargo House’, a project by professor of architecture Dennis Maher, looks like a veritable museum of junk. But for Maher, it’s much more than that: it’s an example of how changes in an architectural structure can be interpreted as art.

Many of the flaws in the worn-down, abandoned house are still visible, like unfinished walls and deteriorating ceilings. But rather than rebuilding them to look new, Maher collected other items that are seen as past their prime and began to build them into the structure.

One piece on top of another, the bird cages, broken lamps, dollhouses, mirrors, globes and statues create complex walls of objects. New pieces are constantly tacked on, so the space continues to evolve around Maher. Within these seemingly chaotic groupings are hidden themes relating to the function of the room. For example, the Wardrobe Room is full of chests, screens and closet parts.

Maher sees this reclaimed abandoned building project – which is also his own residence – as a work of art that is never complete. No unwanted object is too random to be included as a small component of the ongoing renovation process. And while a house like this is undoubtedly difficult to dust, you’ll never run out of things to look at.

“Within the Fargo House, patterns of daily living contend with the instability of matter,” says Maher. “Operations of making and unmaking, doing and re-doing, erode the house’s solidity, exposing a world that is always on the brink of becoming.  The reality that is continuously remade within the house reflects the indeterminate, albeit coordinated exchanges of the surrounding city: circulations of matter, processes of reconstitution, and associated environmental affects.”

The Fargo House has its own website so you can watch it continue to unfold; check it out at TheFargoHouse.com.

The post House Grows like a Living Organism first appeared on Dornob.

The post Clever Carpet Photos Show Off Colors in Old Painted Homes first appeared on Dornob.