It's 1881. You're real estate speculator James Lafferty, and you've just bought a large parcel of empty, scrubby shoreside land just south of Atlantic City. Problem is, it's cut off from the AC streetcar line by a deep tidal creek. How do you entice potential buyers to make the trek over the inlet and look at your property? Build a giant elephant, of course. Capitalizing on the celebrity of P. T. Barnum's famous Jumbo, Lafferty built 65-foot tall Lucy the Elephant, the first of three giant elephants Lafferty built (followed by Cape May's Light of Asia and Coney Island's Elephantine Colossus). He even took out a patent on the very idea of buildings shaped like animals. Though threatened by decades of neglect and rot, the Save Lucy Committee began preservation efforts in 1970, moving her to her present site and giving her a complete restoration.
posted on Jun 22, 2008 - View this thread

The [US] National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its 21st annual list of the nation's Most Endangered Historic Places. Among them: Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, (where Linda Brown tried to register for school, resulting in Brown vs. Board of Education); New York City's Lower East Side; California's State Parks; Philadelphia's Boyd Theatre, and several others. The previous 20 years of Most Endangered Historic Places can be found in the Archive.
posted on May 20, 2008 - View this thread

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Eikongraphia - Browsable architecture design theory thingy.
posted on Feb 26, 2008 - View this thread

The Nautilus House is pretty awesome.
posted on Feb 22, 2008 - View this thread

Tiny Buildings - "a collection of tiny buildings handcrafted from business cards, packaging and other nice papers."
posted on Dec 25, 2007 - View this thread

How to wash your hands and ride the elevators in the new New York Times Building.
posted on Dec 20, 2007 - View this thread

Apocalyptic Manhattan (in An Apartment). More pictures when you scroll down.
posted on Nov 14, 2007 - View this thread

American Ruins: a gallery of photgraphs by Chuck Hutchinson. "a gallery of houses, barns, automobiles and businesses that have become the ruins on the landscape of America."
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

Unusual Life Dot Com: Unusual Homes. Amazing Architecture. Strange Places. Fascinating People.
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

An interview with Lebbeus Woods -- designer and illustrator of speculative futuristic landscapes and buildings. Woods just set up his own website, which has an amazing quantity of drawings, photographs, and text focusing on his lesser known projects [for those willing to deal with a frustrating flash interface and sound. It's better in IE than Firefox.]
posted on Oct 6, 2007 - View this thread

A Paternoster lift [wiki] is a cyclic elevator with "an endless chain of cabins moving at a moderate speed; some passing downward past a line of entrances and other cages moving upward past another set of openings. Passengers may embark or alight at any floor whenever they please, without delay. " (As seen on TV!) They're still in use in the the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and the UK among other places. (Via this list of interesting elevators.)
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

Illicit Ohio has a wide range of photos and essays of abandoned places in Ohio, from the Cincinnati subway system (yes, there really is was one, and it's been discussed here before), to various and sundry prisons, government installations, hotels, hosiptals, houses and more. And don't miss the old vs. new galleries, either.
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

Buildings UI, good and bad
posted on Aug 13, 2007 - View this thread

Abandoned places: A satellite facility. A drag strip. A sports arena. A factory. A highway. A school. Another factory. An industrial park. A missile site. A church. A brewery. And much more at Abandoned But Not Forgotten. (Warning: Web 0.2 site with very large photos of variable quality...)
posted on Jul 26, 2007 - View this thread

Helix — a 1D skyscraper with a single corridor. The principle is a cylindrical building with a helical shape for the floor. The slope of the floor is 1.5% (it rises by 1.5 cm every meter), thus hardly noticeable. The height of each ’storey’ is 3 meters, so that when you walk 200 meters along the corridor, you have walked a full circle, but you end up one ’storey’ above or below your starting point.
posted on May 21, 2007 - View this thread

Americas Favorite Architecture - The American Institute of Architecture lists its 150 most favorite buildings as ranked by its members. Zoom-able photos and building information herein. You can also rate your top five.
posted on May 3, 2007 - View this thread

The AIA 150 The blue has been filled over the years with "greatest" posts We all have seen the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Movies. The 100 Greatest British Albums, the 50 Greatest Commercials of the 1980's, you name it, they've all appeared on MeFi. The American Institute of Architects has taken a different tack. Instead of relying on a "blue ribbon panel", like the AFI, and despite being the experts, the AIA took a public poll to find out what the people actually think are the Greatest American Buildings. The results are the AIA 150. The whole thing is being turned into a website and a museum exhibition which will tour the country.
posted on Feb 12, 2007 - View this thread

Unintelligent Design. The History Images of Sze Tsung Leong. "Then there's the other type of history that is recorded in the fabric of cities. This includes the houses that are being destroyed; it has to do with the history of quotidian things, really, the layers of history that have slowly accumulated. The loss of this fabric the spaces and histories particular to different cities means that the particular cultural value and artistic qualities they contain, are lost." also here and here.
posted on Feb 6, 2007 - View this thread

There are already some strange Soviet buildings. Gazprom intends to build these unusual skyscrapers in St. Petersburg. Maybe they will include caviar vending machines?
posted on Jan 18, 2007 - View this thread

The extraordinary Center For Land Use Interpretation is a tertiary reference for one of today's posts, and it's been mentioned in comments before. Don't miss the Land Use Database or the Newsletter.
posted on Jul 25, 2006 - View this thread

The Ryungyong Hotel is a nearly 1,000 foot tall abandoned pyramid in the heart of Pyongyang that North Korea has officially tried to forget. [discussed previously here] The architecture magazine Domus had over 200 entries to a contest to repurpose the Ryungong, a similar project is also underway elsewhere on the web, though some architects think the effort is a bad idea. [For Domus, use:mefier/mefite]
posted on Apr 27, 2006 - View this thread

Weird buildings.
posted on Feb 20, 2006 - View this thread

The Tokyo skyline [Windows or Real media] drawn from memory by savant Stephen Wiltshire.
posted on Feb 5, 2006 - View this thread

Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue - Cool photo essay about a beautiful building
posted on Jan 28, 2006 - View this thread

Kirkbride Buildings. Once state-of-the-art mental healthcare facilities, Kirkbride buildings have long been relics of an obsolete therapeutic method known as Moral Treatment. These massive structures were conceived as ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill in the latter half of the nineteenth century. AKA:The Kirkbride Plan. [more stuff inside]
posted on Dec 29, 2005 - View this thread

Huge "Do it with friends" Greenhouse, Medium DIY PVC Greenhouse[pdf], Small DIY PVC Greenhouse. Now make some money with that greenhouse.
posted on Nov 22, 2005 - View this thread

Action Squad – Urban Adventurers

"In a nutshell, Action Squad explores. This generally occurs late at night, to aid in avoiding other people, particularly those with badges and funny blue uniforms. We climb buildings, sneak into factories, crawl through all kinds of tunnels, spelunk old brewery caves, poke around abandoned buildings, and run across the rooftops."

Missions of the Action Squad are fully documented with descriptions, photographs (historical & intraoperative) and sometimes maps but always with a sense of wonder at the urban flotsam they enjoy exploring.
This is my particular favourite but poke around, there's a fair bit in this gem of a site worth exploring from the armchair. [via]
posted on May 24, 2005 - View this thread

looking at buildings A website letting you take a leisurely jaunt around some of the cities of England.
posted on Mar 23, 2005 - View this thread

Tall Buildings (Flash required)
posted on Jul 28, 2004 - View this thread

The Leo Masuda Architectonic Research Office Homepage.
posted on Jun 12, 2004 - View this thread

Kampung: 60 photographs of Singapore architecture.
posted on Apr 20, 2004 - View this thread

arcspace. Modern architecture, by name, for you.
posted on Feb 29, 2004 - View this thread

At least one person is dead when Toronto theatre The Uptown (a frequent haunt of my childhood) collapses. The 2000 seat Uptown was built in 1920 and closed in September of this year, right after the Toronto International Film Festival, which regularly used the theatre for its screenings. Ignoring a Cinema Treasures' petition, and heartfelt articles from local media, Famous Players, the theatre's owners, decided to sell the building to a condo developer after losing a two year battle with The Ontario Human Rights Commission, who were insisting that the venue be made wheelchair-friendly. Oddly, as I was walking past the site last night, I considered contacting the demolition company about what was being done with the theatre's sign when it finally came down.
posted on Dec 8, 2003 - View this thread

Forgotten Detroit ; the Book-Cadillac, an abandoned hotel in Detroit; Indiana Historic Architecture; the history of Hammond, Indiana; Marktown Historic District, East Chicago, Indiana. The American Midwest seems to be full of interesting, crumbly places.
posted on Oct 12, 2003 - View this thread

Create your own little cityscape, using the drag and drop feature offered, and enjoy a little Friday time-wasting fun. Add lots of little pixel people and create your own blackout block party.
posted on Aug 15, 2003 - View this thread

Stone inhabitants and extraordinary houses of Prague. More at the Praha experience.
If you like this, you might also like fifty doors of Paris and San Francisco.
posted on Jul 18, 2003 - View this thread

I So Want This House It Hurts. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is up for sale. If price was no object and location wasn't a problem, where would you choose to really live? What architect, living or dead; what building, available or not, would you choose? [NYT reg. required for main link..]
posted on May 31, 2003 - View this thread

Explore the abandoned - all things we build must pass into an inevitable and steady deterioration. Thanks to those who chronicle civilization's entropy and put it on the web, because it's mad fun to watch.
posted on Mar 18, 2003 - View this thread

Future of Sky Scrapers? Is this the future of sky scrapers, or are they now irrelevant with the current threats that are presented? Would you work in this building?
posted on Jan 29, 2003 - View this thread

The 300m (984ft) Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea isn't a hotel - it's a metaphor. (pictures, comparative diagram)
posted on Dec 5, 2002 - View this thread

All Fall Down: Remember the famous explosion sequence in Antonioni's Zabriskie Point? Fiona Villela says: "Flying toward the viewer, these many shards of shiny bits and pieces that once served a utilitarian purpose when part of a greater object here exist in and of themselves in a purely dazzling spectacle. This is the only way Antonioni can see the beauty of American capitalism, as a rainbow of shattered objects lost in space and time. ". What is the (undeniable) pleasure of watching big structures, that took years to build, destroyed in a few seconds? And has September 11 taken the fun out of implosion voyeurism? [Via memepool; original post by yoyology; Real required.]
posted on Nov 21, 2002 - View this thread

What do you do with an eyesore built by a madman? [Geocities site, caress lovingly before clicking] During WWII, Hitler built several Flakbunkers around the city of Hamburg, to act as self-contained civilian shelters and defensive posts. After the war, the British tried to blow them up. And failed, on two accounts. The buildings still stand today, squat and romanesque remnants of a horrible period in the city's history. So, in a show of Hanseatic League moxie, the citizens of Hamburg have converted one of them into a disco. [warning: Flash, and starts with music]. There are better pictures of the truly hideous exterior here and here. A timely reminder, this Tuesday morning, that poor decisions can have long-reaching and unintended consequences. What will your grandchildren have to turn into a disco?
posted on Nov 5, 2002 - View this thread

The New Yorker wonders whether the new Westin hotel at Times Square is the ugliest building in NYC. What do New Yorkers think? Is ugly architecture anything more than just poor business? What is the state of architecture in this country? (more)
posted on Oct 8, 2002 - View this thread

A Fruit Has Been Built. A unique architectural piece that pokes your senses in creative ways, is also good-humouredly called the "Durians" by local Singaporeans. Durians, or otherwise titled King of fruits, are beloved by millions of South East Asians. The spiky building, officially known as "Esplanade-theatres on the bay", started construction in 1996 and will open (flash) to the world on the 12th October 2002.
posted on Oct 6, 2002 - View this thread

A Tale of Two Cities: Chicago and New York This exhibition of more than 150 black-and-white photographs represents a cross-section of the thousands of significant buildings that are protected by local landmark designation in Chicago and New York City. The story of how this came to pass is both as similar and as different as the cities themselves.
posted on Sep 7, 2002 - View this thread

The World's Ugliest Buildings
posted on May 10, 2002 - View this thread

Sacred Commerce? Funny, I walked daily to work past the World Trade Center, and have been in the Middle East more than once, but it never occured to me to connect the WTC with Islamic architecture until I read this.
posted on Dec 31, 2001 - View this thread

WTC Replacement... This would be sweet, imagine a 2000ft version of this puppy
posted on Sep 17, 2001 - View this thread

Samuel Mockbee is my new hero. As the creator of Auburn University's Rural Studio and winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, he has his undergraduate students design and construct buildings. Not only are the structures they build attractive and functional, they are built in one of the poorest areas of the country, using discarded and recycled materials.
posted on Nov 29, 2000 - View this thread