About 2 miles into the park... things start to get strange. A forbidding padlocked wrought-iron gate, surrounded by a low lying stone wall sits nestled on the edge of the trail.... Strange rusted debris starts to appear on the side of the paths. What looks like an old water filtration system, broken pieces of farm equipment, half buried sinks, strange concrete slabs with graffiti . A lovely little steam appears and makes delightful background noises, lizards and birds scatter about your feet. And then you see it. A burned-out overgrown concrete building completely covered with graffiti. Cartoon of Hitler? Check. Declaration of undying teenage love? Check.... The bunker of the building is exposed and filled with trash; a metal cage sits menacingly in the corner, and outside a series of stone steps wind up to what seems to have once been a sustenance garden. The steps then continue all the way to the top of the canyon (3,000 steps in all) and ghosts of America Nazis patrolling the wilds fill your head. Baby, we aren't at the Grove anymore... We are at the Los Angeles Nazi Compound! Well, it's actually
the ruins of a small community built by Nazi sympathizers, in
the hills outside of greater Los Angeles.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 19, 2012 -
50 comments
AFP photographer Juan Mabromata recently visited the
ruins of Villa Epecuén in Argentina, a small touristic village that started slowly re-surfacing after the rising waters of the nearby lake left it completely underwater nearly 26 years ago.
[more inside]
posted by palbo
on Jul 26, 2011 -
18 comments
Virtual hacking is cool but place hacking makes it core again, brachiating across scaffolding to get the shot on your Digital SLR that maximizes your flickr stats, raking in the google adsense cash and conforming to a zerowork ethos if we get pro at it. Sleep in ruins, sell your photos of disgusting shit to tourists. Rinse off in a petrol station sink and repeat. We are the nerds that finally walked away from their computers and we are behind that scaffolding covering the building you ignore everyday when you walk by it going to work, we just loved on that place like no one has in 20 years. We are psychotopological terrorists and we will shove that masterlock up your ass.
A "reformed archaeologist" talks about
exploration of urban ruins. Modern urban ruins.
posted by Rumple
on Jan 21, 2010 -
72 comments
Digital Karnak documents and digitally reconstructs "one of the largest temple complexes in the world." The site includes digital models, photographs, a "time map" (allowing you to see alterations to the site under different pharoahs), and video. For projects devoted to more specific areas of the temple complex, see the
Karnak Great Hypostyle Hall Project (University of Memphis) and the
Mut Precinct (Brooklyn Museum).
posted by thomas j wise
on Dec 16, 2009 -
6 comments
When thousands of people depart, leaving an entire city dead that’s a real tragedy. There are mainly two reasons why people leave the place where they used to live for years or even generations: danger, and economic factors.
Abandoned Places In The World. ( previously
1,
2)
posted by netbros
on Jun 21, 2009 -
29 comments
Delirious Moscow: a survey on stellar and interstellar Soviet constructivist architecture, or, buildings in the time before Stalin (with pictures).
posted by Falconetti
on Oct 11, 2007 -
6 comments
Hisaharu Motoda’s “
Neo-Ruins” series of lithographs depict the cityscape of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where familiar streets lie deserted, the buildings are crumbling and weeds grow from the broken pavement. More
here,
here &
here.
posted by jonson
on May 10, 2007 -
39 comments
Iraq is full of fabled
ancient ruins, many in
bad shape, but which still fire the imagination. Some highlights:
Ur,
birthplace of Abraham, still contained
many beautiful artifacts when it was last excavated in the 1920s. Then there is vanished
Cunaxa, near Baghdad's airport, where the Ten Thousand, a group of Greek mercenaries, fought their way back to Greece in a 1,000 mile, two-year-long retreat described by
Xenophon in the
Anabasis (and which served as the inspiration for
cult films/games and
bad science fiction alike). The ruins of the city of
Nineveh were discovered in the 19th century just across the river from Mosul,
containing art confirming elements of the Biblical account of the conquests of King Sennacherib. Most famously, the ruins of Babylon (
not much to look at, the
best bit being in Berlin) have seen much abuse, from
Saddam's awful rebuilding of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar to reports of
recent damage by coalition troops.
posted by blahblahblah
on Jan 11, 2006 -
15 comments
There have been a number of urban exploration or modern ruins photography posts here over the years, but I couldn't find any that linked to my new favorite modern ruin site,
opacity.us. With 85 galleries of subjects as gorgeous as
Bannerman's Arsenal and as haunting as the
Verden Psychiatric Hospital, it's a treasure trove of entropy on film.
posted by jonson
on Dec 26, 2005 -
18 comments
Modern Ruins are a window into human histories, they tell the stories of the past through the
stark presence of objects and
architectures. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of
ruins is the subject that is
missing in the photographs; the people who once worked, lived, walked, talked, slept and dreamed in these
spaces.
posted by papercake
on May 12, 2004 -
5 comments
Victorian Secrets of Washington, D.C.: haunting
photos and thoughtful
essays documenting one man's fight to draw attention to D.C.'s neglected architectural heritage: "This site won't be much of a beauty pagent because we 'll concentrate on buildings that are vacant, abandoned, deteriorated, distressed, or just plain at risk because they are standing in the path of development . . . if even one Victorian finds an angel because of our page, we'll consider it a thousand percent return on investment."
posted by ryanshepard
on Feb 14, 2003 -
13 comments
Frightening Archaeology: Dark Passage is scarier than
Infiltration; less cosy than
Lost America; and more disturbing than
Ruins of Detroit or any other ruination already investigated on Metafilter. In fact, it's probably the extreme incarnation of the thriving world of websites about
abandoned buildings, full of spooky mental asylums, echoes of depravity and twisted archaeology - like a spaced-out online version of Brad Anderson's
Session 9. Or
the real thing. To make matters worse, it also falls disconcertingly into the "What's this all about?" category. Brrrrr.... [
QT/WM required for the last link only - please disregard "Purchase" title and enjoy Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. Via Linkfilter.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo
on Nov 20, 2002 -
42 comments
Ho Hum, just the remains of another four thousand year old city discovered on the ocean floor. This one is
Harrapan of the Indus Valley which was home to the
largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The ruins extend for 9 kilometers and located around 40 metres below the water surface. "Due to geological processes and tectonic events, the entire [Gulf of] Cambay was faulted — taking down with it the then existing part of the river sections and the metropolis"
posted by lagado
on Jul 2, 2001 -
3 comments
Now I'm depressed. I'd seen
The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit site before, but never really looked around. It was well worth the hour I spent there. Then I wandered over to
Modern Ruins. We're a destructive species, aren't we? We don't even value the things we create...
posted by Aaaugh!
on Aug 16, 2000 -
6 comments
