I’m going through a phase where I love abandoned buildings. And there are a lot of them around. They’ve got some strange romance about them. A lost time. A building that says, ‘I was once great, and now look at me. I wasn’t always like this. I used to mean something.’ It’s pretty humbling. Your home or workplace could be next.
Have a look at these galleries.
One on Urban Exploration. I like the spirit of this, a concept in this age where we’ve explored everything, there’s another dimension to investigate. Asylums, hostels, hospitals—areas that once provided a service.
Endangered machinery, as pointed to from Boing Boing.
Abandoned stations of the London Underground.
And finally, Ghost Town, a motorcycle diary through Chernobyl. Amazing how the Soviet era is semi-preserved, untouched after all these years.
The 28 Days Later forum (http://www.28dayslater.co.uk) has some great explorations of old buildings, underground tunnels and just about everything you mention above. With a lot of the stuff it’s the only way you could see such a building preserved in any way – if the vandals don’t get it then the developers do.
In which case I sense a revolution coming on…! A Preservation of Abandoned Buildings Society or something. In fact, I heard something on Radio 4 recently, about the abandoned architecture in London being featured in a book to celebrate such decaying structures. I’ll see if I can track that down.
Eugh, Spambots.
Rectified!