Archinect - News

Managed decline: leaving architecture to rot

2020-02-05T15:30:00-05:00

Politicians, planners and policy-makers have frequently debated the benefits of allowing architecture to decay – neither demolishing nor preserving it, but letting entropy take hold. What makes this approach to ruins equally empowering and horrifying?

Writer and artist Owen Vince penned an excellent Failed Architecture essay on the intricate interplay between managed decline and indifferent decay, architectural reverence and conscious abandonment, preservation, erasure, and deliberate ruination.

"To allow a structure to degrade — refusing to affirm it through erasure or preservation — is to look into the eyes of a thing while it suffers through its death," Vince writes. "It is to say: you have no power over me, and I will give you nothing in return."

The Nonument Group: digitally preserving architectural treasures before they're lost

2019-08-01T16:25:00-04:00

Working with an international team of researchers and artists, Tomšič and Bricelj Baraga study, map and archive fading sites and Brutalist-style structures. They’re building a database of about 120 case studies across Europe and in former Soviet states and will be releasing a book this year.

"Using a surveying and data-collection process known as photogrammetry and a series of high-powered computer workstations, a team led by Georgios Artopoulos will create a digital model of the monument for use with virtual reality headsets or smartphones," writes the Guardian's Nate Berg about the efforts of the Nonument Group to map and document the rapidly deteriorating and severely vandalized Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party (also known as the Buzludzha Monument) — one of many "hidden, abandoned, unwanted or otherwise forgotten" contemporary heritage sites the group aims to digitally preserve before they're gone forever.

The badly damaged interior of the Buzludzha Monument Auditorium. Photo: Stanislav Traykov/Wikimedia Commons

Detroit's abandoned Michigan Central Station may soon be bought and redeveloped by Ford

2018-03-23T15:19:00-04:00

Ford Motor Co. is in discussions to purchase the dilapidated Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood just outside of downtown, Crain's has learned from multiple sources familiar with the negotiations.

"A redevelopment of the depot, which has been abandoned and blighted for three decades since Amtrak stopped service in 1988, would be one of the most expensive and complex local undertakings in recent history," Crain's reports.

Redevelopment of Detroit's Michigan Central Station slowly gaining momentum

2017-07-24T13:54:00-04:00

Talk about redeveloping the long-vacant Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown area heated up again Thursday during an announcement about this year's Detroit Homecoming, which will hold the first significant private event in the 104-year-old train station since the mid-1980s. [...] "(Redevelopment of) the depot is going to take a marathon, but we're not at the beginning of the race, we're a few miles into it," said Matthew Moroun, whose father, Matty, bought the building in 1995.

"I said, 'there's one thing: Every time I read a damn national story about Detroit, there's a picture of the train station with the holes in the windows as the international image of the city's decline,'" Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is quoted saying, recalling his conversation with billionaire businessman — and the building's owner — Matthew Moroun. "I said, 'I want you to put windows in the train station. And if you do that, everything else will be just fine.'"

Renovation costs for the 104-year-old train station — once the tallest rail station in the world and the city's pride but sitting vacant and in an increasingly derelict state since Amtrak service ceased in 1988 — are estimated to exceed $100 million.

St Peter's, Cardross: Birth, Death and Renewal

2017-02-13T14:13:00-05:00

St Peter's made a dramatic architectural statement when it was built, but its first incarnation as a seminary was short-lived. It is hoped this 21st Century rebirth by NVA, bringing the structure back into productive use, will prove more enduring.

Gorgeous photos of the past and current state of the Brutalist St Peter's Seminary, designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia.

Credit: Glasgow School of Art

For more about the history of the project/site check out the book by Diane M Watters.

Restricted Areas: abandoned Soviet structures photographed in all their eerie beauty

2016-07-25T20:24:00-04:00

Danila Tkachenko is a Russian photographer whose series Restricted Areas crystallises the tendencies of many artists working on themes of the post-Soviet space. As Calvert 22’s Power and Architecture season demonstrates, there is a healthy interest in the abandoned or neglected buildings that once served as landmarks of Soviet ambition: the rack and ruin of utopia. What sets Tkachenko apart is the unforgiving simplicity of his compositions.

All photos from Danila Tkachenko's series Restricted Areas. For far more of these beauties, head over to Calvert Journal.

Turkey says newly discovered Basilica in Lake İznik will become underwater museum

2015-04-10T13:38:00-04:00

The remains of a nearly 1,600-year-old basilica that was discovered at the beginning of last year under Lake İznik in the northwestern province of Bursa is now set to become an underwater museum. The underwater museum project, approved by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, will be carried out by the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality, the sponsor of the project. [...] The discovery of the basilica was named as one of top 10 discoveries of 2014 by the Ar-chaeological Institute of America.

This Guangzhou skyscraper still stands unfinished after 16 years

2015-04-07T15:12:00-04:00

An abandoned skyscraper still stands incomplete in the bustling capital of Guangdong Province after 16 years because no one is brave enough to ask for it to be torn down. The 46-story building looks strange as it towers over Guangzhou, a commercial hub in southern China with a population of more than 12 million. Its location just behind a golden high-rise building -- popular in China -- and luxury hotels makes the concrete shell look especially creepy and eerie.

Rescue Plan for a Marooned Miami Stadium

2014-11-26T13:49:00-05:00

In a young city predisposed to wrecking and rebuilding, impressive works of architecture can sometimes be discarded as effortlessly as last year’s runway accessories. But Miami Marine Stadium, a bold structure on Biscayne Bay that sought to jolt the city into the future back in 1963, may prove a rare, stubborn exception. Abandoned and shuttered more than two decades ago, the Modernist stadium is in the midst of a turbulent, nearly seven-year effort by a nonprofit group [...].

Mausoleum of Augustus stands derelict on anniversary of emperor's death

2014-08-19T14:54:00-04:00

Built in 28BC as a suitably glorious tomb for Augustus and his relatives, with pink granite obelisks, golden urns and a bronze statue of the emperor on top, it has suffered innumerable indignities ever since the sack of Rome. Now, fenced off and often used as a dumping site for litter, and even as an unofficial public lavatory, it goes almost unnoticed by the diners who crowd into the restaurants of the square around it.

Previously: Saudi royal family could pay for restoration of Roman monuments

Timothy Allen's photographic exploration of a Bulgarian ruin

2012-11-12T11:54:00-05:00

The argument for preserving old buildings is a very strong one that I wholeheartedly support myself. However. On the rare occasions that I get to visit a forgotten building as magnificent as this one, I can’t help day dreaming about some of the incredible monumental relics I know back home and quietly wishing that a few more of them had been left to grow old and perish naturally rather than being unceremoniously hooked up to the proverbial life support machine of modern tourism...

Photographer, Timothy Allen, explores the ruins at the Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria.

How Detroit Became the World Capital of Staring at Abandoned Old Buildings

2012-11-12T11:30:00-05:00

Ruins don’t encourage you to dwell on what they were like in their heyday,before they were ruins. The Colosseum in Rome or the amphitheater at Leptis Magna have never been anything but ruins. They’re eternal ruins. It’s the same here. This building could never have looked more magnificent than it does now, surrounded by its own silence. Ruins don’t make you think of the past, they direct you toward the future. The effect is almost prophetic. This is what the future will end up like...

Plans to restore crumbling Colosseum cause rumblings in Rome

2012-01-06T17:11:00-05:00

Restoration of the monument, which attracts up to two million visitors a year, is due to go ahead in March and will involve cleaning of the travertine exterior, the restoration of underground chambers, new gating, the moving of visitor service stations to an area outside of the building itself and increased video security.