What in the world could cause an entire city to be abandoned? Some become unlivable due to environmental disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis to nuclear meltdowns (as with Pripyat, shown below). Others become the center of military activity and remain contested and uninhabited as a result – or are simply left as memorials to the terrible events that took place in them. Still others are simply deserted when they outlive their usefulness as trade outposts or mining towns.

This Halloween, forget the plastic cape and cheesy costume. Why not find and explore the real relics and strange structures of an actual ghost town or abandoned city instead? From Azerbaijan to Japan, Italy to Siberia and Cyprus to China, here are twenty-four haunting real-life ghost villages, towns and cities from around the world. Click below to learn more:

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12 Abandoned Houses, Homes and Ghost Towns

Houses, neighborhoods, and entire towns are abandoned for a number of reasons. However they become abandoned, these areas can be peaceful and haunting to visit. 7 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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7 (More) Abandoned Wonders of the Former Soviet Union: From Mining Towns to Oil Rig Cities

The former Soviet Union has a complicated history that is told in part through some of its deserted infrastructure, from submarine bases to missile silos and more. 41 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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(Check out our complete collection of 100+ Works of Creative and Geeky Art and Graffiti.)

Light graffiti, also known as light painting, takes what you think you know about graffiti and turns it on its head. This ephemeral approach to art and expression uses the movement of light to create incredible images and is created on the streets, in nature, and in studios by artists whose creative impulses transcend traditional media. Unlike projection bombing, light graffiti is sometimes produced as performance art, and sometimes just to capture it with photography and video, but either way it makes for some incredible viewing. These ten artists producing light graffiti and light painting represent some of the most amazing talent in a growing (and increasingly strange) field of art.

Michael Bosanko

Michael Bosanko is a photographer who’s taken on light painting in a series called ‘We Come in Peace’, in which figures made of light seem to interact with their surroundings in a way that’s comical, fun and highly engaging. The series features giant spiders crawling down a highway, ‘alien’ rocks gathering around a central ‘spaceship’, a light figure skateboarding on a ramp and another hitchhiking on the side of a road.

Patrick Rochon

Patrick Rochon creates stunning images by moving light through various media and capturing the movement with photography and video. Patrick’s light painting is unique even among a field of very innovative artists, using lasers to illuminate his subjects in ways that create an eerie, otherwordly feel in the finished portraits. Patrick has also taken light painting to a whole new level by building costumes of lights and performing light painting on a giant screen to create a unique visual experience.

LICHTFAKTOR

The German group Lichtfaktor has produced some of the best-known light graffiti, transforming everyday objects like trash cans, phone booths and street signs into live creatures that wave their arms around and seem to spring forth from the street. Comprised of Marcel Panne, David Lüpschen and Tim Fehske, Lichtfaktor combines talents like graphic design, video mixing and photography to craft series of images and videos for companies like Absolut Vodka, Audi, Sprint and Playstation.

Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke

German duo Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke create stark imagery that brings a ghostly quality to the beauty of nature, turning striking natural settings into backdrops for glowing organic forms made of moving light. Their subtle use of light painting in deserts, canyons, forests and snow-covered fjords makes the illuminated forms seem to blend in with their backgrounds in a way that brings to mind alien landscapes on some far away planet.

Eric Staller

Eric Staller’s light drawings, created between 1976 and 1980 in New York City, give the viewer a whole new look at the Big Apple. These examples of light graffiti were created using a long exposure with a variety of light sources, sometimes in the form of 3-dimensional lit installations. His photographs seem to give the light itself a life of its own, as it travels through the city creating whimsical shapes down its streets and walkways.

Ryan Warnberg and Michelle McSwain (MRI)

Queens, NY light painters Ryan Warnberg and Michelle McSwain are collectively known as MRI, a group that creates light paintings for hire. MRI’s fun brand of light painting can be commissioned for parties, ad campaigns and special events, and they bring all of their own equipment. MRI creates ‘kaleidoscopic’ images that invoke old portraits of religious figures, but with a decidedly modern twist.

Sola

Sola is a UK photographer whose experiments with the flow, form and movement of light are captured in two series, ‘Embro’ and ‘Solid Trace’. Embro, defined by the artist as ‘Echoes of the organic world translated into a synthetic language’, seems to explore how light captured in a photograph can seem just as organic as anything else around us. ‘Solid Trace’, which the artist calls ‘An exploration of movement and form in contrastingly stark environments’ portrays vibrant swirls of colored light on urban backdrops.

Alan Jaras

Alan Jaras creates his stunning images by passing streams of light through molded and textured plastic, for a ‘refracted’ effect that is unlike any other light painter’s work. Colored dyes are added to the plastic shape, and the shape is placed in front of the camera in lieu of a lens to be directly captured on 35mm film for an incredibly unique and organic result.

Dean Chamberlain

Dean Chamberlain takes portraiture to new heights with his pioneering light painting technique, which he developed in 1977. Renowned for his ‘Psychedelic Pioneers’ series among other work, Chamberlain creates these images using extremely long exposures in sessions that can last as long as five hours. He uses a flashlight and colored gels to illuminate each individual element in a composition.

Toby Keller

Toby Keller of Burn Blue Photography in Design has created a series of light painting images in which the free-flowing forms of light seem to have no rhyme or reason – and they don’t have to. Keller takes what would already be beautiful nature photography and makes it seem to crackle with kinetic energy as ribbons of glowing light swirl around groups of rocks by the sea. For more great light art from skilled graffiti artists check out CultCase and DarkRoastedBlend

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20 Fabulous Light Graffiti Artists & Photographers

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Graffiti Without Vandalism: 5 Kinds of Amazing and Ephemeral Urban Light Art

Like traditional graffiti and street art, light art comes in many forms. Unlike most graffiti, however, there is no one to complain about being tagged! 19 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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(Check out our complete collection of 100+ Works of Creative and Geeky Art and Graffiti.)

3D graffiti, whether it’s in chalk or paint, on walls or the street, represents a new way of combining the mastery of Renaissance art techniques with the gritty, ephemeral qualities of amazing street art. These 3D street artists gives graffiti a whole new meaning – one that departs from the conventional interpretation of graffiti as vandalism in the form of images and letters scrawled on public property. Artists like Kurt Wenner, Eduardo Relero and Tracy Lee Stum create street art that is so incredible it is almost impossible to pass by without being sucked in to the worlds they create on asphalt and concrete surfaces.

Kurt Wenner

Kurt Wenner’s ability to transform Renaissance classicism into 3D street art is unparalleled and has made him the top anamorphic street painting artist of our time. Kurt aims to ‘reinvent classicism for a new age’, bringing his talent for realism to the streets, literally, having invented a pictorial geometry that corrects the specific distortion caused by viewing his street paintings at an oblique angle. A former NASA illustrator, Kurt has had his work featured in a lengthy list of articles, television features, ads, and documentaries.

Edgar Muller & Manfred Stader

Edgar Muller and Manfred Stader are a German team of street painters. Much of their work is in the 3D anamorphic style, but both of them often create traditional street paintings in a style that mimics the detail and realism of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Their background in realism gives them an incredible advantage as anamorphic street painters, as evidenced in their ‘River Street’ work and the paintings above. Stader and Mueller have won many street painting competitions, and have taught street painting at universities.

Julian Beever

Julian Beever’s world-renowned sidewalk chalk drawings have been a viral hit all over the internet, and it’s easy to see why: he’s a master of the anamorphic technique, which he’s been perfecting since the mid 1990s. Each of Julian’s creations typically take a full day to complete, and by the next day they’re just a memory, washed away by rain or walked upon by pedestrians. The English artist has been given the nickname ‘The Pavement Picasso’, and he continues to work all over the world.

Tracy Lee Stum

Tracy Lee Stum is widely considered to be one of today’s finest street painters. She has traveled the world to be a featured artist in many festivals and events, and she currently holds the Guinness World Record for the largest street painting by an individual, which she completed in 2006. Tracy’s work contains many themes, from Biblical to exotic to the mundane.

Eduardo Relero

Eduardo Relero is a street artist working primarily in Spain. His fanciful illustrative style looks like storybook pages come to life, and indeed each of his anamorphic sidewalk chalk drawings seems to have a story behind it.

Rod Tryon

Rod Tryon has been adorning the streets of the world with his chalk drawings for more than 20 years, and was first inspired to try anamorphic designs in 1996. Of his paintings, Rod says “Entertaining the audience by creating an image that looks like it is coming up out of the street, or the impression of a hole opening up in the asphalt in front of you, is a special treat for the artist. Seeing crowds react to his 3-D pastel images, bring great joy to both the artist and onlookers.”

Greg Brown

The work of Greg Brown isn’t meant to be accessible. His huge murals seem to jump out at the viewer, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to interpret, and that’s how he likes it. Greg’s murals vary dramatically in style and content from one to another, due to the intense collaborative process he takes on with each client. They range from Dali-esque surrealism to classic trompe l’oeil, with subjects including everything from construction equipment to miniature ships.

Eric Grohe

Eric Grohe was a professional graphic designer and illustrator for decades before beginning work on his renowned trompe l’oeil murals. Eric’s murals appear to jump off of the surfaces that he paints on, and they grace walls all over the United States and the World, from Seattle Washington to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Eric’s work reflects a patriotic all-American theme, and his depictions of scenes such as football games and picturesque towns have turned blank walls into works of art.

Daim

Daim is a German graffiti artist who first started spraying in 1989 and hasn’t stopped since. Daim has become one of the most sought-after graffiti artists in the world, and has even appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for spraying the highest graffiti in the world. The only ‘traditional’ graffiti artist on our list, Daim creates 3D art on interior and exterior walls, canvas and vehicles and also works in animation and sculpture.

Previously: 3 Amazing 3D Artists

And: 3D Architectural Illusions

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3 Amazing 3D Graffiti Artists: Street Painting and Sidewalk Chalk Art

These street art images and biographies merely scratch the surface and begin to convey their amazing artistic talents though sample artworks and street chalk drawings. 204 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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3D Architectural Illusions: Amazing Paintings, Murals and Mosaics

Inside a home, on the outside of a building or even in a swimming pool, the illusion of 3D can transform a space, giving the appearance of depth, texture and place. 36 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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(Check out our complete collection of 70 Works of Recycled Art and Design.)

Adaptive reuse used to be a tactic of necessity – people didn’t have the time, energy or money to build something new so they made the best with what they had. Today it is a way to stand out, make a statement, go bold and try something completely different. From airplanes, chapels and garages turned into houses to airplane hangers turned into tropical rain forest resorts, the possibilities are essentially endless. Know of other recycled design or amazing architecture projects? Be sure to list them in the comments below!

This Dutch chapel-turned-apartment very clearly shows its origins as a stunning chapel, yet is somehow also compellingly sleek, modern and ultimately residential (if spacious). The Dutch team of ZECC Architecten split this structure into two stories and the stained glass windows, rough-hewn stonework around the entryway and even the gigantic old church organ (wood, pipes and all) were retained while more modern furniture and architectural interventions were added and spliced to create unique visual juxtapositions. The net effect? Something far more austere than the original construction but ultimately also more home-like and modern.

What could be better than an amazing house made out of an airplane? A cheap one. The plane itself cost just $2000, though moving it cost $4000 and renovating it for habitation took another $24000 – but that’s still just $30000 for a truly amazing and unique home. The original airplane fold-down stairs were kept and are operated by a garage door opener and one of the original airplane restrooms still works as it always did. And the cockpit suspended over the lake below? Her own personal jacuzzi of course.

The Tate Modern Museum is a strange site on the London skyline – a contemporary art museum housed in the shell of a former power station. Internationally known for their creative use of materials and other adaptive reuse projects, architects Herzog and de Meuron made a conscious choice only to hint at the ultra-modern interior from the outside of the building. The 5-story Turbine Hall that once house the generators of the station now features gigantic works of specially-commissioned contemporary art by premiere artists from around the world.

The Villa de Murph in Atlanta is perhaps the most homely and unlikely looking building to ever be converted into an architecture studio and residence by two ingenious designers. The result is both a stunningly attractive live/work space and an amazing portfolio piece to show potential clients what these architects can achieve with even the most unlikely of locations and structures. Property never comes cheap so when this couple saw this sad structure at $40,000 the price as about as right as it could be. Rather than tear it all down and start anew, however, the designers saw amazing adaptive reuse potential in a building that most people would have wrecked the moment they bought it.

The Hedmark Museum in Norway sits on a site with an amazing history of structures – pieces of each of which are still intact today. It has parts of a Romanesque cathedral that was later converted to the Gothic style with building elements dating back to the 1500s. Rather than simply leaving these uncovered ruins to weather or putting them in an inaccessible box, however, architect Sverre Fehn chose to expose and celebrate these aged architectural elements and bring visitors right up through them. He chose mostly light-weight materials like wood and glass to contrast with the aged stonework and create a clear visual separation of old and new in the process. The result is a compelling contrast of time and place.

A garage is probably the most ubiquitous building type you never thought to turn into a house. It might sound like a small project for an adventurous resident of Portland, Oregon, but the city was none-to-pleased with granting permission to for this industrious adaptive reuse design. Once permission was granted, however, the architect clearly had an interesting challenge to make an uninteresting building cozy, functional and somewhat unusual in its appearance. Clever devices like split stairs and an angled front entry make the small space work on a practical level as well as an aesthetic one.

The Tropical Islands Resort is the result of the creative adaptive reuse of an old airplane hanger into the world’s biggest indoor tropical pool complex and water park. The hanger, located near Berlin, is 1000 feet long, 600 feet wide and three hundred feet high and is completely unencumbered by interior structural elements – it is essentially one gigantic interior space. The place contains everything one would expect on a tropical island: artificial sun and rain forests, beaches and palm trees and (somewhat kitchy to be sure) even fake bird recording to simulate the experience of actually vacationing in the tropics.

Next: More Recycled Architecture

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7 (More) Amazing Adaptive Reuse Architecture Projects: From Ship Houses to Chapel Bookstores

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Adaptive Reuse: 20 Brilliant Recycled Buildings

From cargo container buildings to adaptively reused structures, these innovative architectural designers push the envelope in terms of aesthetics and sustainability. 18 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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(Check out our complete collection of 70 Works of Recycled Art and Design.)

With the green theme growing in popularity across every stretch of the world, more and more people are turning to cargo container homes for green alternatives for office, and even new home, construction. There are countless numbers of empty, unused shipping containers around the world just sitting on the shipping docks and taking up space. The reason for this is that it’s too expensive for a country to ship empty containers back to the their origin in most cases, it’s just cheaper to buy new containers from Asia. The result is an extremely high surplus of empty shipping containers that are just waiting to become someone’s home or office. Design, buy or build your shipping container home today!

There are plenty of benefits of to the so-called shipping container architecture model. A few of these advantages include: they are plentiful, they are easily transported, they’re stackable, relatively inexpensive (as little as $900 for a used container), they can be prefabricated, and they’re extremely durable. Residential applications are also becoming a popular topic of conversation among green supporters. The first official 2-story shipping container home in the US was designed by Southern California architect Peter DeMaria in 2006. The only big obstacle that he encountered during construction of his shipping container pad was making sure that the house passed all of the strict guidelines of the Uniform Building Code (UBC).

In other parts of the world, places like Odessa, Ukraine already have the the biggest shopping mall in all of Europe which uses stacked shipping containers to form alleys throughout the 170 acre site. In Asia, the Dordoy Bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan is almost entirely composed of empty shipping containers stacked two high and chock-full of inexpensive trinkets and toys. So, in other words, shipping container architecture is nothing new, but it is new when it comes to residential and office applications.

This great example of shipping container architecture was created by architects Pieter Peelings and Silvia Mertens of Sculp(IT). They live and work in these shipping containers which are stacked four high. The entire space is 2.4 meters wide by 5.5 meters deep by 12 meters high. The bottom floor is used for work, dining room is located on the second floor, relaxation room on the third, and spectacular rooftop views from the fourth – including a relaxing spa.

This award-winning office design by Clive Wilkinson is made out of stacked shipping containers is the home office of Palotta TeamWorks, a US charity event company. The 47,000 square foot warehouse is filled with shipping containers that have been transformed into modern office spaces. This design layout saved the company a ton of money on construction costs, and it allowed the entire space to be more open and airy.

The world’s first hotel built from recycled shipping containers has popped-up in Uxbridge, West London. Each prefabricated container comes fully-equipped with fixtures, furniture, and windows from a factory in China. The company, called Travelodge, says that constructing a hotel this way is 25% faster and 10% cheaper than the more traditional construction methods. Also, construction is much quicker, because all that has to be done is to fit each container together like it was a giant Lego set. Rooms at this London hotel start at about ï¿¡19 per night. The London area may see more these ‘portable hotels’ pop-up around the city as the 2012 Olympics approaches.

Opened in 1998, the Simon’s Town High School Hostel is constructed almost entirely of used shipping containers. This amazing place is constructed out of 40 large shipping containers to be exact, and it’s big enough to accommodate up to 120 boarders. The hostel manager gets his own 2 bedroom flat, while the other staff share 2 separate flatlets. Area residents were concerned that the project would prove to be an eyesore to the community since it was made from grungy old shipping containers, but the final result proved otherwise with a modern-looking structure that is incredibly durable and aesthetically pleasing at the same time.

This shipping container home from the so-called Zigloo Domestique project in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is a residential home created by Keith Dewey. The home is built out of old shipping containers, and the owner chose to paint them with an industrial strength minty-green enamel, commonly found on shipping containers today, in order to maintain the container’s roots in the shipping business. While the exterior of the home may look a little rugged, due to the protruding containers, the 2,000 square foot interior of the house is quite comfortable and modern. The project cost about $150 per square foot, compared to a similar quality traditional construction project that can cost about $250 per square foot.

This stunning home is almost like a piece of art that you can live in. Constructed using 12 recycled shipping containers, the 12 container home home has all of the modern conveniences of a traditionally built home but with a unique element of style as well. A modern kitchen, huge wide-open floor plan, and gigantic windows that bring in tons of natural lighting are just a few of the great features of this home – plus, construction costs were relatively inexpensive when compared to traditional construction.

This 2,000 square foot home, built in 2001, is actually built around a smaller cottage-style house that has stood in that location for decades. The cottage house almost looks like a gigantic version of a dollhouse inside of the huge storage shed that forms the exterior of this innovative house. The 3 bedroom 2.5 bath home is also made from 5 large shipping containers – 3 on the bottom, and 2 stacked on top of those. This place also contains all of the modern features of a ‘normal’ home, but it’s supposedly built to last much longer. The creator of this innovative home is Adam Kalkin, and he’s actually selling these homes for as little as $76,000, or less than $100 per square foot – not a bad deal considering traditional construction of a new home averages about double that amount.

This 3,000 square foot L.A. home features multiple storage containers in its design – each with its own purpose. There’s a storage container for the entertainment area, library, dining room/office space, master bedroom, and bathroom/laundry room. This place has plenty of large windows which provide plenty of natural lighting as well as awesome views of the garden and koi pond outside. Aside from using recycled storage containers, this home also uses recycled steel scraps in its construction which further adds to the green vibe that this home resonates – not to mention saved a ton of money on construction costs.

Next: More Awesome Shipping Container Homes

And: Design or Buy Shipping Container Homes

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Working It: 30 Cargo Container Offices, Stores and Businesses

Shipping containers are ideal for commercial buildings. Stores, offices, shopping malls, and more are using recycled cargo containers for low-cost construction. 2 Comments - Click Here to Read More »»

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