For over a decade, WebUrbanist has featured a wide range of innovative and inspiring urban art and design projects from around the world. The website has attracted more than 500,000 subscribers and been visited over 100,000,000 times since it was launched in 2007. And while WU will remain online, we are not currently planning to publish new pieces going forward. We greatly appreciate your readership and hope you will continue to explore the site and enjoy the thousands of articles in its archives.

The main page of WebUrbanist features a curated series of resource-rich articles covering some of the site’s most popular and timeless themes — these are intended to be a jumping-off point for diving deeper into topics of interest. Or seek out specific subjects like adaptive reuse, vertical farming, cargo container architecture and space-saving design using the search box.

Kurt Kohlstedt, the founder of WebUrbanist, is currently focused on his work as a writer, editor and digital director at 99% Invisible, a radio show and website about design. With over 500,000,000 downloads to date, 99pi is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. These media projects have a lot in common, so fans of WU are encouraged to check out more articles on 99pi and subscribe to the show.

Kurt was a big fan of 99pi long before joining the show in 2015 and has since become a regular voice on the podcast. He has gone on tour with the show, given talks and participated in panels on subjects ranging from how the invention of Kindergarten fundamentally shaped Modern art and design to the improbable rise of tree-covered skyscrapers.

In 2020, currently co-authored a National Bestselling book with 99pi host Roman Mars: The 99% Invisible City:A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design. You can also follow Kurt for semi-regular tweets about design, cities, urbanism and synanthropes.  From the start, WebUrbanist was about making urban architecture, art and design more accessible and engaging to all kinds of people. As you continue to explore the world around you: stay curious, fellow urbanists.

To visitors, architectural ruins are simply a modern reality, and their imagined reconstruction is left to descriptive plaques, statics images and the human imagination, but this series of renderings dynamically recreates each of seven different famous sites, brick by brick and column by column.

The collection includes the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, The Temple of Jupiter in Pompeii, Hadrian’s Wall in England, the Temple of Largo Argentina in Rome, Italy, the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, as well as the Pyramid of the Sun and the Nohoch Mul Pyramid in Mexico.

In some cases, there is barely anything left to extrapolate from, but by outlining, framing and filling in each structure, the relationship of what remains and what once was can be seen side-by-side.

Also highlighted is the order of decay, showing which materials and structural components were most durable and which ones were subjected to decay and destruction.

Of course, they could be physically restored as well, but questions of archeological ethics and historical truth make this a difficult proposition — and there is something to be said for the aesthetic of a ruin, particularly those that have shaped modern architecture.

Take the bleached-white columns of ancient Roman and Greek cathedrals — these informed an entire area of Neo-Classical and Greek Revival design, but it is based on the ruins having lost their color over time. In reality, the buildings on which these styles are based were once highly decorated, so it was the ruined versions, not the originals, that inspired places like American capital buildings of today.

Neomam created this series for Expedia.  The creative contractors behind the labor-intensive renderings are Maja Wroska and her husband Przemek Sobiecki, who works as This Is Render.

A great potential next-level application for this strategy would also be to add in an augmented reality component, allowing visitors to use their mobile devices to see these reconstructions overlaid on actual ruins in realtime.

Along those lines: a pane of glass overlaid with a simple line drawing brings crumbling ruins to life at one of Austria’s most famous historical sites, reanimating the partial building near the Open Air Museum Petronell. When a viewer lines up the illustration with the structure, known as Heidentor (Heathen’s Gate), the image completes itself in a compelling yet entirely low-tech fashion.

Everyone knows about the Statue of Liberty, the Easter Island Moai heads, Mount Rushmore and the Sphinxes of Ancient Egypt, but not all monstrous monuments were built in centuries past. Colossal statues of even larger proportions are still built all over the world in modern times, from the many massive Buddhas of Asia to mythological creatures like merlions and shapeshifting horses. Though some of them are among the world’s tallest statues, these 7 are relatively lesser known, built between 1994 and 2017. (Of course, the former Soviet Union boasts so many oversized monuments, they’re in a category of their own.)

Mao Zedong’s Head, Changsha, China

The massive head of young Chinese dictator Mao Zedong gazes down at the city of Changsha, seemingly bursting from the rock in a grassy park. Built in 2007 by the Hunan People’s Government, it strays from the usual balding representations of Mao’s look later in life. It’s 105 feet tall and made of 8,000 pieces of granite, and here’s the kicker: it cost $300 million. Another giant statue of Chairman Mao, known as ‘Mega Mao,’ was built in Henan province in 2016 ridiculed so much for its excess that it was torn down soon after it went viral on the internet.

The Man Meets the Sea, Denmark

Four stark white figures stand 30 feet tall while seated, standing out when the sky is blue and virtually disappearing in cloudy weather. The ‘Man Meets the Sea’ sculpture is visible to ships arriving in or departing from Esbjerg Harbor on the southwest coast of Denmark. Created by Svend Wiig Hansen in celebration of the town of Esbjerg’s 100th anniversary as an independent municipality in 1994, the sculpture “portrays the meeting between pure, unspoilt mankind and nature. Man, innocent as from his mother’s womb. Man before rising up and beginning to act. That, according to Wiig Hansen, was where things started to go wrong – when man got ‘dirt’ on his hands.”

The Kelpies at Helix Park, Scotland

A pair of horse heads known as The Kelpies by sculptor Andy Scott emerged near the River Carron in the Falkirk Council Area of Scotland in October 2013 to celebrate a new extension of the Forth and Clyde Canal at Helix Park. Named for mythological Scottish shapeshifter that transform from horses into hooded humans, the statues pay tribute to the many horses that have helped Scotland become what it is today. Scott first created 9-foot-high versions in his studio, which were scanned by lasers and reproduced by steel fabricators. He envisions them as “water-borne, towering gateways into The Helix, the Forth and Clyde Canal and Scotland, translating the legacy of the area into proud equine guardians.”

Guan Yu God of War, Jingzhou, China

Quite stunning both for its proportions and its artistic merit, this enormous depiction of the Chinese god of war looks like he could start swinging his ‘Green Dragon Crescent Blade’ around at any second. Unveiled in 2017 in his namesake park in Jingshou, China, Guan Yu stands 190 feet tall, weighs over 1,320 tons and consists of over 4,000 bronze strips. He stands atop an 86,111-square-foot museum. Though he’s now been deified, Guan Yu was a real person, a general serving under warlord Liu Bei in the late Eastern Han dynasty. Known as a great warrior, he governed the Jing Province for seven years before he was captured and executed by a power-seeking betrayer in 220 C.E. His real-life exploits are rather overshadowed by myths that have sprung up around him, depicting him as the ultimate human embodiment of strength, loyalty and righteousness.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
The Modern Colossal 7 Lesser Known Monumental Wonders Of The World

Perhaps we’ll never know what it was like land on a Greek Island and gaze up at the long-lost Colossus of Rhodes, one of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but there are many other amazingly old monumental statues still standing. From the world’s oldest-known colossal sculpture in the sands of Egypt to a 500-year-old mountain god spewing water and smoke in Italy, these 7 wonders take the human figure (and sometimes, human/animal hybrids) to incredible heights.

Leshan Giant Buddha, China

Carved right out of a cliff face at the confluence of three rivers in the southern Sichuan province of China, the Leshan Giant Buddha stands 233 feet tall from its plinth to the top of its head, making it the largest stone Buddha in the world. Construction began in the year 713, led by a Chinese monk named Hai Tong, who dedicated it to calming the often-rough waters for shipping vessels. He was so dedicated to the project, he reportedly gauged his own eyes out when funding was threatened. But after his death, the money ran out, and construction was stalled for 70 years before his disciples breathed new life into the project. In the end, Hai Tong’s wishes were fulfilled: all the rock that was chipped away from the cliff face fell into the water below, altering the currents and making them safe for passing ships. Today, it’s part of the UNESCO-protected Mount Emei Scenic Area, which also includes 1,000-year-old trees and over 30 temples.

Moai of Easter Island

Carved by the Rapa Nui people between 1250 and 1500 C.E., the Moai monolithic human figures of Easter Island all feature massively oversized heads, with the largest measuring 33 feet in height. The heaviest one is shorter but squatter, weighing in at 86 tons. Exactly how the statues were made and transported is still somewhat of a mystery, as the tallest would have measured 69 feet in height if it had ever been completed. While many people erroneously call them the ‘Easter Island Heads,’ they’re actually full bodies, often partially buried beneath the soil with intentionally exaggerated proportions. More than 900 of them have been located on the island, and most of them are made from a compressed volcanic ash. Their empty eye sockets once held eyes made of coral with pupils made of black obsidian or red scoria.

Appennine Colossus, Italy

The youngest statue on this list is notable not just for its striking looks, but the fact that it contains several hidden rooms hiding the cool functions that bring it to life. Carved in the late 1500s by Italian sculptor Giambologna as a symbol of Italy’s Apennine Mountains, the ‘mountain god’ stands 35 feet tall over the grounds of the Villa di Pratolino in Tuscany. One of its interior rooms enables water to pass out of the monster in the god’s hand, which pours like a fountain into the body of water below, and another holds a fireplace so smoke can emerge from his nostrils.

Tirthankara Jain Sculptures of India

The Jain sculptures in Gwalior, an important city in Madhya Pradesh, India, are cut into the rock faces leading up to the 8th century Gwalior fort. Dating back to the 15th century, the statues depict Tirthankaras, or Teaching Gods, which are worshipped by followers of Jainism. 21 temples are cut into the rock on the southern side, with the tallest idol at 58 feet representing Rishabhanatha or Adinatha, the first Tirthankara.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Still Standing Tall 7 Monumental Statues Of The Ancient World

Nobody could ever accuse the Soviets of being too modest in the scale of their monuments and colossal sculptures, and they left no shortage of absolutely bonkers concrete and stone creations all over their former territories. In addition to their strange yet beautiful sculptural rural bus stops and all of abstract alien-like monuments they constructed in what was once Yugoslavia, the Soviets took pride in erecting colossal figurative statues that range from awe-inspiring to downright scary.

The Motherland Calls, Volgograd, Russia

The tallest statue of a woman in the world when pedestals aren’t counted in total height, The Motherland Calls stands 279 feet from the top of its plinth to the tip of its sword, positioned on a hill near Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd. In 1967, when it was dedicated, it was the tallest statue in the world, period. Built to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest clashes in human history, the statue is quite beautiful, but that elegant pose and the jaunty angle of the sword have proven to be a structural concern thanks to shifts in groundwater beneath it. Conservation work began in 2010 to ensure that the 7,900-ton creation remains upright despite not being fixed to its plinth.

Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, Turna Hill, Bulgaria

The blocky, cubist style of the figures on The Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship is certainly distinctive, shared by a number of other Bulgarian monuments built in the same era (including the strikingly beautiful and bizarrely Transformer-like Shumen Monument). Unsurprisingly, the Russian soldiers on the right half of the monument stand taller than those of Bulgaria. Erected on Turna Hill, a historic battleground and the mass grave of soldiers lost to the Russian-Ottoman War, the monument was once covered in bronze elements that were quickly stripped and scrapped when the Soviet Union disbanded, and it’s been abandoned ever since. It’s made of over 10,000 tons of concrete and 1,000 tons of armature wire and was intended to be the end of a grand Communist boulevard that was never built.

Colossal Courage, Belarus

A stern stone soldier seemingly pops his colossal head out of a mound of stone to frown down at passersby visiting the ruins of Brest Fortress in Belarus, where the Red Army stubbornly held for days against a surprise Nazi attack in 1941 despite being dramatically outnumbered. A writer at CNN called the statue ugly and said it looked constipated back in 2010, and the nation of Belarus responded with outrage, noting that ‘Courage’ is a memorial to those who died. While most monuments in former Soviet territories are disused and sometimes disowned at this point, ‘Courage’ and Brest Fortress are a major point of pride for Belarus and remain a significant tourist attraction.

Superhero-Style Astronaut Sculpture, Moscow, Russia

Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space, gets a superhero-style commemoration in the form of a 40-foot-tall titanium statue seemingly ready to shoot off into the sky. Erected on Moscow’s Leninsky Avenue in 1980, not far from Lenin’s own mausoleum, the statue features a 90-foot granite pedestal. Gagarin’s first-ever trip to outer space lasted only 108 minutes, and though he escaped death as a backup cosmonaut for the ill-fated Soyuz-1 in 1967, he ultimately died during a routine training flight in 1968. His ashes are embedded into the wall of the Kremlin of Red Square in Moscow.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Staggering Statues 7 Monumental Wonders Of The Former Soviet Union