MetaFilter posts tagged with ruins

Detroit schools urban exploration & reclamation.

Item — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:49:39 -0800

Urban exploration has been featured here once or twice before, but Jim Griffioen's site photo-documenting his discoveries in and around Detroit deserves a look. Griffioen was recently interviewed [direct mp3 link] on the American Public Media radio program The Story. Jim is most interested in schools. He's taken photos of trees growing through books and other things left behind. Recently Jim has gone beyond documenting what he sees and is reclaiming what he finds. He collects abandoned library books and other school supplies and gives them to community centers. Previously - blog post by Griffioen on Detroit's abandoned Belle Isle Zoo

Leaving the Ghosts in Peace

netbros — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:11:33 -0800

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)

Ghost Train

Artw — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:31:06 -0800

Abandoned Amusement Parks in Asia - 1, 2, 3

Long Island's Gold Coast Ruins

445supermag — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:11:56 -0800

Ruins and Remnants of Long Island's Gold Coast Mansions. Some still standing are in private hands, others are public. A surprising number of castles and moats.

Detritus From a Dream

Toekneesan — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:37:38 -0800

Shaun O'Boyle recently returned from Cape Canaveral where he photographed the artifacts of the early space program. They are part of the Modern Ruins site (previously, previously, and previously) which is a great place to waste an afternoon.

Detroit Public Schools Book Depository

ottereroticist — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:54:09 -0800

"This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste...All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential." (Via Making Light.)

Urban Exploring

Soup — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:59:25 -0800

Urban Exploring. Recently: Sanatorio Popolare Cantonale di Piotta. Sinteranlage, Duisburg. Atomschutz Kurfürstendamm, Berlin (flash). (Previously.)

Bannerman's Arsenal Photoessay

jonson — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:17:43 -0800

Excellent post over at BLDBLOG on the history of Bannerman's Arsenal, a ruined island castle in the middle of the Hudson river, created by a war profiteer who was at one time the world's largest arms dealer. Bonus points for the amazing accompanying photos by Shaun O'Boyle, whose site Modern Ruins has been featured on the blue previously.

Ruinous America

dersins — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:13:31 -0800

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."

The Fever Dream of Comrade Koolhaas

Falconetti — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:18:11 -0800

Delirious Moscow: a survey on stellar and interstellar Soviet constructivist architecture, or, buildings in the time before Stalin (with pictures).

Abandoned but not forgotten.

dersins — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:00:27 -0800

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...)

Modern Military Ruins of San Francisco

otherwordlyglow — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:45:00 -0800

Modern Military Ruins in San Francisco. Really awesome Flickr set includes documentation of Hunters Point Shipyard, Treasure Island Naval Station, Alameda Naval Air Station, the SF-88 Nike Missile Site, Hamilton Field Air Force Base, and Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

Post Apocalyptic Tokyo in Lithograph

jonson — Thu, 10 May 2007 13:03:34 -0800

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.

Will The Last Person To Leave Detroit Please Turn Out The Lights?

fancypants — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:59:47 -0800

The city of Detroit is in a bad way. House are cheaper than cars. The city's neighborhoods are in decay. Families are leaving. Even "revived" areas are struggling. Entire portions of the city are starting to revert to prarie and ruins. Can the city be saved or is it time to give up on the Arsenal of Democracy?

The Places Los Angeles Forgot

jonson — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:14:03 -0800

Tourists coming to Los Angeles usually visit the standard few spots; but there are some amazing urban ruins that even the locals are rarely aware of. From the original site of the Los Angeles zoo (abandonded cages & rock facades now) to the remains of the Sunken City, to the inexorably rusting hull of the 44 year old shipwrecked Greek freighter Dominator, L.A.'s forgotten places are tourist destinations for the intrepid, local & visitor alike. A PDF guide to how to find many of the best (including the Echo Mountain House & The Bridge To Nowhere) can be found here. Many links & inspiration via

"Here stood their citadel, but now grown over with weeds..."

scrump — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:24:03 -0800

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.

Samarra, Iraq

grahamwell — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:04:46 -0800

Samarra is in the news. The modern city is small, but built on the colossal ruins of the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Google Earth reveals amazing details of the ancient city, one of the largest archaeological sites in the world.

La Bella Napoli

snsranch — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:33:09 -0800

Just wandering through the streets of Naples. (make sure to peruse each link as each has more to be seen!)

One Can Only Imagine What Kind of Development Took Place Here

Gator — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 07:12:56 -0800

Abandoned Memories is short on text but thick with photos. Even without captions for every picture, contextual clues can give us a disturbing idea of what life might have been like in the Wayne County Child Development Center (before it was abandoned, razed, and turned into a golf course). The rather-less-easy-to-navigate Northville-Tunnels.com also has photos and information.

Ruined Cities

Tullius — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 05:45:49 -0800

Here are some pictures of ruined cities and a few sanctuaries. (3rd link is to geocities)

Ancient cities of Iraq

blahblahblah — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:22:05 -0800

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.

Modern Ruins Photo Gallery

jonson — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 10:27:51 -0800

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.

Stone and Myself

kenko — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 00:51:13 -0800

Stones of the World. Photographed by Yoshida Tatsuya.

Best.. Urban... Exploration.. Site.. EVER.

keswick — Sat, 22 May 2004 21:23:29 -0800

You've probably seen Modern Ruins, Forgotten New York, and even Lost America... but have you seen the abandoned island of Gunkanjima? [via Boing Boing]

Modern Ruins

papercake — Wed, 12 May 2004 12:37:06 -0800

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.