Before it was abandoned in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Pripyat was a thriving Ukrainian city with a population of nearly 50,000. The relatively sudden exodus of its inhabitants left behind a physical snapshot of the times, preserved by the absence of humans intervention for fear of fallout.

Despite the dangers of returning, urban explorers have been visiting the place for years. Some photographers use cameras mounted on aerial drones to maintain a safer distance. Other in-person visitors less concerned about safety have gone in and looted old buildings. Most, though, go simply to observe, drawn to the deserted city by those mysterious forces that attract people to derelict places — embodied history, transgressive impulses and human curiosity among them.

Such dangerous or hard-to-reach abandoned places can particularly alluring, especially when their stories are compelling. Take Hashima, just one of many Japanese islands but unusually packed with old buildings. A thriving coal-mining city in times past, “Battleship Island” once had the highest population density on planet — until a drop in coal production led to its desertion. In recent years, more and more photos and videos of the place have proliferated thanks to the internet, in turn raising questions about how much to repair, restore or change it in order to make it more accessible for an increasing number of people visiting by boat.

While some architectural artifacts in remote locations like this have been left largely alone by visitors or modified simply to accommodate tourists, others have gone through generations of much more radical change. Off the coast of Great Britain, army and navy sea forts have been turned into everything from private retreats and luxury resorts to pirate radio stations and rogue micro-nations. Here, a combination of factors, including abandonment by the government and somewhat more accessible (yet still aquatic) locations have conspired to make these structures more appealing for different kinds of adaptive reuse.

Preservation, Restoration & Contention

In central locations with more people (and thus opinions) the fate of historical places has often been the subject of controversy. In many cities, preservation of a current state tends to win out. Even such a seemingly neutral position can be contentious, though, particularly when efforts to preserve are partial or seem superficial, as in the case of ‘ghost facades‘ where only thin surfaces are saved.

Rote historicism is a simplistic default that can lead to strange and unexpected results and extreme scenarios, like cities demolishing entire buildings to “preserve” the appearance of historical skylines.

In other cases, restorations are pursued, though choosing a target point of time or period can be fraught — some buildings have been changed substantially over centuries, making it challenging to decide what aspects to restore. Either way, renovations involve modifications, which can quickly divide people who crave a kind of physical authenticity from those who embrace the notion that architecture necessarily changes over time — the situation of Notre Dame after the fire illustrates the point. Supporters of extensions and additions that don’t match the original argue that visible differences will help people in the future understand what is truly old and new, while critics note that most famous old structures have already been damaged, rebuilt and changed for centuries. There is no single solution.

Ruination, Rediscovery & Reclamation

There are people, too, who think that historical ruins should simply be left alone to decay. Along those lines, many building infiltrators and urban explorers in the United States, Europe, Asia and other parts of the world where urbex is popular follow an unwritten code to leave no trace of their presence, allowing subsequent visitors to experience a disused space as they did. There is beauty in glimpsing snapshots of history and watching nature slowly reclaim a structure.

Some abandoned places endure through careful consideration and the avoidance of further damage, but many persist in their current form simply because they are less accessible in the first place — the latter status applies to many underwater towns and archaeological sites as well as underground tunnels, crypts and caverns.

Once rediscovered, though, the fates of such places depend on where they are located and current attitudes toward ruination, preservation and restoration, which continue to change over time, much like the locations in question will do … with or without further human intervention.

The Chee Guan Chiang House at 25 Grange Rd in Singapore occupies land worth millions yet stubborn owners and protective authorities ensure it remains abandoned.

Home On The Grange

The so-called Chee Guan Chiang House at 25 Grange Rd (corner of Grange and Devonshire) in central Singapore dates back to the late 1930s. It was commissioned by the eponymous Chee Guan Chiang, the first son of Malacca-based banking tycoon Chee Swee Cheng.

Rich Man, Singapore Man

After demolishing an earlier home occupying the plot, the younger Chee hired well-known Singapore architect Ho Kwong Yew to build him a distinctive mansion in the then-current Art Deco style. Ho, recognized today as a leader of the “Modern Movement” in Singapore, incorporated earlier architectural flourishes such as a Roaring Twenties-style grand staircase into the home’s otherwise cutting-edge design.

Leonie Toons

The home was completed in 1938 but Chee Guan Chiang didn’t stay there long – following the end of WW2, the building was renamed the Leonie House and catered to mainly foreign boarders and tourists. New management took over the business in 1964, changing the name to the New Leonie Guest House.

The Other WH

If this isn’t confusing enough, in October of 2013 Yvonne Lee-Khoo (a grand-daughter of Chee Guan Chiang) posted an article at the Singapore URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority) online forum. Ms Lee-Khoo explained that the house was originally named “Wellington House”: the word “well” meaning “good” and sounding like “wealthy”. To this day, wrought iron balustrades both inside and outside of the house prominently feature the “WH” motif.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Grange Grunge Abandoned Art Deco Mansion In Singapore

In the Dutch city of Utrecht, 316 bus stops are now planted with flowering greenery, inviting pollinators like bees to stop by and take a blossom break. The Netherlands initiated the project after learning that more than half of its 358 bee species are endangered, but it comes with other benefits, too, like storing rainwater and improving Utrecht’s air quality by capturing fine dust.

Pollinators and other beneficial insects are currently being decimated around the world by habitat loss, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Even so-called “safe” pesticides could be accumulating to toxic levels in pollen. The University of Maryland reported that U.S. beekeepers lost 38 percent of their bee colonies last winter alone, and the current administration has upheld market use of weed-killing substances like glyphosate while also ceasing the collection of quarterly data on honeybee colonies.

Though honey bees get the most publicity, they’re just 1 of 4,000 native North American bee species, all of which are threatened. Bumblebees, carpenter bees and orchard bees are among the wild bee species that benefit from plentiful food sources in urban settings, along with other pollinators like monarch butterflies, leaf cutters, wasps, beetles and even bats, mosquitoes and flies (which are also disappearing at alarming rates.)

Their decline is a threat to human food sources everywhere. Pollination is needed for about three-quarters of global food crops, and bringing in domestic honeybee colonies or tiny pollinating drones can’t necessarily replace the benefits of wild insects lost as their habitats are destroyed.

Cities could play a key role in pollinator conservation, according to a recent study carried out by scientists at the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds and Reading in the U.K. Part of this is due to where they tend to be located: in coastal and riparian areas where biodiversity would naturally be high otherwise.

Residential and community gardens can play a major role in attracting pollinators with plants like lavender, dandelions, borage, thistles and buttercups. The study encourages the utilization of public parks, medians, sidewalk strips and other public green spaces for pollinator-attracting plants and mowing less often so they have a chance to flower frequently. It’s also recommended to provide water sources, avoid pesticides and allow for some undisturbed areas where the insects can nest.

There needn’t be such a stark division between even the most modern urban centers and the natural world. At Frontiers, a group of ecologists argue that nature needs urban territory in order to survive, and calls for the creation of more “green infrastructure” like native landscaping, urban farming, access to nature, gardens that reduce flooding in urban landscapes and, in particular, pollinator-focused efforts, using the monarch butterfly as a prime example. The researchers studied the ways in which focusing on preserving the monarch can benefit urban wildlife habitats as a whole.

“Powerful urbanization trends have understandably been accompanied by a sense that nature has been displaced in urban landscapes and can only be found where cities don’t exist. On the one hand, urban life has been characterized as ‘distanced from nature’ accompanied by an ‘extinction of experience’ as people move to urban settings. On the other hand, the conservation community has achieved huge victories in places far from the urban world, and a side effect has been to reify the notion of ‘wilderness’ in the American mind. Large protected areas have “increasingly become the means by which many people see, understand, experience, and use the parts of the world that are often called nature and the environment.”

“Our results add to a growing body of literature showing that metropolitan areas matter for wildlife conservation. Despite being developed, these landscapes have high potential to maintain functional habitat for a variety of species, including migratory and threatened endemic species. Habitat within and between US cities can help connect the dots for monarchs, other pollinators, and birds along migratory pathways from Mexico to Canada and back.”

Individual cities around the world are taking initiative with projects like wildlife corridors, shoreline restoration, massive urban parks and integrated city planning that works with nature. And cities won’t do it themselves, perhaps a resurgence of guerrilla gardening is in order.

It seems like proposals to restore the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris came pouring in before the blaze that destroyed its spire and roof was even extinguished. Grappling with devastating damage to a historic and architectural icon, observers around the world immediately began to debate whether the cathedral should be recreated as faithfully as possible in its former image (a serious challenge, considering the contemporary lack of massive old-growth timber) or radically reimagined.

One notable proposal released by Studio NAB takes the latter approach with a visionary reconstruction symbolizing rebirth, new growth and hope for the future. The design recreates Notre Dame’s silhouette in a framework of gold-tone steel and glass, transforming the uppermost levels of the church into a lush greenhouse, an active community space and an educational facility. A new “arrow” spire would house apiaries, producing on a large scale “the honey of Notre Dame de Paris.” The rest of the cathedral beneath this new roof would remain as it has always looked and functioned.

It’s a direct rebuke of the idea that we can or should attempt to recapture the past, adapting instead and acknowledging the need to change along with the world around us.

“On this fire and in the period of crisis that the country and the world are currently going through, we have the chance to build a place of reference where conservation, enrichment of an exceptional heritage and taken into account the challenges of societies ecology and equal opportunities. Protecting the living being reintroducing biodiversity, educating consciences and being in solidarity, all are symbols, faithful to the values of France and those of the church, that we could defend and promote for this project.”

“This is the symbol of acceptance of the course of history and the metaphorical illustration that this ‘forest’ became burnt wood, can serve as a cradle to the new vegetation,” say the architects. “The design will feed the all-important conversation and add an element of reflection as to how the building could be transformed to focus on issues concerning today’s society. The greenhouse is imagined as a place to enable to professional reintegration of the poor by learning urban agriculture, horticulture and permaculture while connecting children to nature and educating them through workshops.”

It’s an interesting way to approach the problem of restoration, and one that will undoubtedly stir controversy. But Studio NAB’s proposal creates a ghostly yet optimistic memory of the lost parts of the cathedral, maintaining the silhouette to which Paris has grown so accustomed, without introducing any garishly contrasting contemporary elements. You can safely bet that proposals recalling Daniel Libeskind’s highly controversial Royal Ontario Museum Extension are forthcoming, along with calls to be far more conservative, using modern technology like engineered wood to replace the burned beams and reinforce damaged structural elements.

Though it comes early in the game, Studio NAB’s proposal will likely end up looking like a compromise between these two extremes by the time France’s competition to redesign Notre Dame selects its winner.

There’s something about the contrast of opulent ornamentation and expensive materials with rot and deterioration that makes luxury resorts and mansions some of the most fascinating abandonments. Someone once cared about these places so much, they invested untold sums of money and hours of labor into them, perhaps having their walls hand-painted with frescoes or calling in master craftspeople to apply the finishing touches.

But nothing lasts forever, and neglect has the same effect on high end structures as it does on those more humble. Different viewers may look at them with sadness or schadenfreude, thinking about the larger context of human impermanence or just the potential wasted, but either way, we can’t help but look.

For many people, those feelings came into play this week as photos emerged of an eerie abandoned complex of castle-like mansions in Turkey. About halfway complete, the $200 million complex of fake chateaus modeled after historic European architecture is in limbo after economic uncertainty led large numbers of buyers and investors to pull out of the project. The developers don’t have enough funds to keep going, and though they say they’ll find a way to move the Burj al Babas development forward by the end of the year, it’s unclear whether that will actually happen.

Mocking commenters across the internet note not only the Disney-like quality of the $400,000 houses but how closely spaced they are. Row after row of identical Cinderella McMansions swirl through the valley, all sitting empty, many with gaping maws where their doors and windows should be. But while this is a particularly eye-catching example of stalled luxury development, it’s never been occupied, leaving it empty in another sense. The ghostly echoes of the lives that were lived in abandoned places, the hopes and dreams that their remains represent, are what lend them emotional weight.

Echoes of Past Promise

French photographer Thomas Jorion captures this particular quality of abandoned mansions and palaces throughout Italy in his series “Veduta,” which is on display at Esther Woerdehoff Galerie in Paris through April 6, 2019.

Each photograph depicts a real mansion – not a facsimile of one – still decked out in traditional Italian finery despite its considerably lowered circumstances. There are no background stories given for what happened to these beautiful villas, why they’ve fallen into disrepair; it could be that the cost of restoration is too high for most buyers, or the locations are inconvenient, or any number of other things. These places feel frozen in time, records of an era that has passed or perhaps an empire in the midst of falling.

Belgium seems to be brimming with abandoned castles, perhaps due to the simple fact that the country is full of historic architecture that’s difficult and expensive to maintain. Château Miranda, also known as Château de Noisy, stood as a stunning example of ornate abandonments before its demolition in 2017.

The 19th-century neo-Gothic castle in Celles was occupied by German forces during World War II and later became an orphanage and a “holiday camp for sickly children” before it was abandoned in 1991. Mesen Castle in Lede has a similar story. Purchased by a Catholic institution after the noble family that commissioned it died out, it became a boarding school for girls before its abandonment in 1970. It was destroyed in 2011.

North America has some abandoned castle-like structures of its own, including a once-beautiful mansion that now looks like the perfect setting for Netflix’s next gothic horror series. The villa on Carleton Island in Cape Vincent, New York has been unoccupied for over 70 years, and it has deteriorated to the point of serious safety concerns.

Businessman William O. Wyckoff commissioned the mansion in 1890 and promptly died of a heart attack on his first night there; his wife had passed away a month prior. Though the house was passed on to his sons, the family seems to have lost its fortune during the Great Depression, and the property was abandoned. The current owners live in a nearby cottage, putting it on the market every few years with no luck. One potential buyer estimated that it would cost up to $12 million to rebuild.

Remains of Wasted Wealth

Built in 1963, Japan’s Hachijo Royal Hotel quickly became a popular destination for wealthy Japanese natives looking for a quick and easy weekend getaway. At the time, passports were hard to acquire, keeping a lot of travel limited to domestic destinations. Set on a volcanic island just a short ferry ride from the mainland, the hotel offered luxe accommodations in a beautiful hillside setting the Japanese government promoted as “The Hawaii of Japan.”

But as soon as international travel became more accessible, Japanese tourists began leaving the country for new adventures, and the hotel languished. It was abruptly abandoned in 2006, and the ensuing years have been brutal. Nearly everything remains exactly as it was then: towels draped over the edges of the tubs, toys in the play rooms, offices full of outdated electronics. Many of the rooms have been invaded by ferns and moss.

Known for its constant frenzy of construction, innovation and over-the-top spending, Dubai has its fair share of arrested developments. But one of the weirder displays of seemingly casual extravagance is the country’s high number of abandoned luxury vehicles. Some of the world’s most expensive cars are little more than street litter here, collecting dust curbside or in parking garages.

But this particular millionaire habit isn’t quite as it appears. Though some might truly be cast aside by owners too rich to care, many are abandoned by owners who bought them during a boom but can no longer afford them. In Dubai, bouncing a check or failing to pay back debt is a criminal offense, so it’s likely that formerly wealthy expats dumped the cars and then high-tailed it back home.

Back in Belgium, urban explorers hit the motherlode when they entered the grounds of the Kasteel van Heers a 13th century castle near Brussels that fell into decay when the descendants of its original owners couldn’t afford to maintain it.

The castle and all its contents were seized by the Flemish government in 2007, but somehow they missed a collection of six 1060s Alfa Romeo sports cars held within a dusty basement – including a rare and extra-valuable prototype. They were all sold at auction in 2015. Kind of makes you wonder what else dusty castles around the world might be hiding, doesn’t it?

If all of this waste makes you wish you could save an abandoned mansion, the governments of several countries would like to assist you with that venture. Italy is giving away over 100 historic castles and villas for free as long as the new owners can produce concrete plans for renovating the sites to help boost tourism to their local villages, and rural Japanese towns are so desperate for residents they’re giving away abandoned houses. In France, you can “adopt a chateau” without becoming solely responsible for its upkeep through a collective effort to preserve neglected structures with historic value.