We’re all familiar with the plot of a movie that occurs in a city still standing in a post-apocalyptic era. The streets are empty, except for a few survivors who wander aimlessly, searching for signs of life. Buildings begin to crumble and rust away after years of neglect, public transportation sits idle, and overgrown weeds spring from the cracks in the unmanaged sidewalks and streets. The scene feels eerie because we can’t imagine letting our physical environment sit in decay. It seems impossible that our built environments where we live and work each day suddenly fall silent. It’s a city without a pulse.
Architectural Ruins: The Latest Architecture and News
Architecture After Civilization: Design in the Post-Apocalypse
Architecture Between a Glorious Past and a Questionable Present: Interview with Greek Architect Andreas Angelidakis
How might your persona or act differ if you were to put yourself before society’s expectations and limitations, embracing your queerness and preferences? Looking into the impact of individuality, we talked with Andreas Angelidakis, an architect to who refers to himself as “an architect who doesn’t build”, but views architecture as a site of social interaction, creating works that reflect on the urban culture by mixing ruins, digital media, and psychology to better understand the power of finding different design paths.
Fascination and Repulsion for the Aesthetics of Abandonment
The hands hold the weight of the entire body, feeling the rough texture of unplastered mortar on its thin membrane. Even with the whole body stretched out against the wall, it still was not possible to see what was behind it. Sweat, in a mixture of adrenaline and heat, ran down his temples, indicating the movement for a final effort, a last impulse before the imminent fall that, for a few seconds, allowed him to overcome the last row. The field of vision was then opened to a fragmented, disconnected and oddly free world. An urban power that allowed itself to be strangled by the breath of tropical vegetation while being consumed by abandonment amidst an active and dynamic city.
Rebuilding Somalia’s Ruined Cities
Rebuilding lives also means rebuilding living spaces, and this is where Italian-born architect, Omar Degan, comes in.
“I feel that architecture and design play a key role in developing countries, but in particular post-conflict countries,” says Degan.
The Øm Museum Juxtaposes Archaeological Ruins With A Modern Interpretation of Medieval Monastic Architecture
Denmark’s natural landscape along the shoreline of Mossø lake was once home to a vibrant monastic community. All that remains are ruins and unearthed artifacts - the reminisce of an active, self-sustaining monastic compound.
Galmstrup, a London-based architecture firm that specializes in community and cultural projects, has designed a gallery building to house the excavated archaeological objects and remains on site – maintaining the strong connection between the ruins and the growing collection of artifacts.
The Architecture of Chernobyl: Past, Present, and Future
April 26th saw the 32nd anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, with the explosion of the Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine causing the direct deaths of 31 people, the spreading of radioactive clouds across Europe, and the effective decommissioning of 19 miles of land in all directions from the plant. Thirty-two years later, a dual reading of the landscape is formed: one of engineering extremes, and one of eeriness and desolation.
As the anniversary of the disaster and its fallout passes, we have explored the past, present, and future of the architecture of Chernobyl, charting the journey of a landscape which has burned and smoldered, but may yet rise from the ashes.