Looming above an industrial parcel near an abandoned railway terminal in Beirut, seven balconies jut out into the air like the hulls of stacked skeletal ships. ‘Plot #1282’ by DW5 Architects is one of the first major architectural projects to be erected in a depressed area beside military barracks, fallow agricultural land and a 100-foot-wide highway. It will add 95 industrial lofts to a local that’s currently non-residential, and since other buildings will likely spring up all around it in the coming years, those balconies are strategically focused on preservable views of the city.

A maximum of two apartments will be located on each floor, with the floor slabs arranged around nine exposed cores. Each living space features minimal interior partitioning and lots of glass.

“In its present state, the site enjoys unobstructed panoramic views on all orientations through the totality of the perimeter of the plot,” the architects explain. “As a result of that, all proposed loft spaces enjoy full transparency of their facades with openings that span from floor to ceiling on all exterior elevations. In an unforeseeable future, as the surrounding plots get built, and with the gradual densification of the immediate environment, the full apertures of our facades will face unpredictable situations that our project’s morphology responds to by its continuous setback on the totality of the perimeter of the site and the gradual recess of the floor plates.”

It’s a pretty clever way to make the building adaptable to changing conditions around it, and you have to admit, it has resulted in a kinda spooky but visually dynamic silhouette.

A ghostly ship sails through the Bay of Sapri in Southern Italy, just translucent enough for onlookers to doubt whether they’re imagining it, its silhouette obscured by a jumble of rectilinear columns. The latest wire mesh masterwork by artist Edoardo Tresoldi, ‘Locus’ is a collaboration with Italian musician IOSONOUNCANE, bringing sculpture and music together in a public performance enjoyed by a crowd gathered on the nearby shore.

The musician debuted his unreleased composition during the installation, presented as part of Sapri’s Derive Festival, an experimental art, music and poetry project curated by Antonio Oriente. The combination of the ship’s visuals, the lighting, the music and the setting truly made it a one-of-a-kind experience, with the sounds amplified by the water.

“Sapri Bay become sone of the characterizing elements of the event, acquiring a temporal and performative dimension,” states the Derive website (translated from Italian. “Collaboration blends different contemporary languages, redefining the relationship between audience and artist in a kind of hic et nunc [here and now] unrepeatable.”

Edoardo Tresoldi is known for his eerily beautiful wire compositions, which are typically architectural in nature, recreating entire classical and historic structures like echoes of churches that fell into ruins centuries ago and palatial interior installations augmented by flying birds.

Rusted and half-sunken yet still somehow afloat on the waters of Sydney’s Homebush Bay, the remains of a century-old ship have become fertile ground for a thriving forest. Located on the south bank of the Parramatta River on the inner west side of the city, the bay was a hub for industrial activity in the mid-20th century and became a dumping ground for unwanted materials of all kinds, from busted ships to toxic waste.

The bay was ultimately rehabilitated, but many of the ships remain, lurking among a tangle of mangrove trees. Among them is the SS Ayrfield, which the mangroves clearly found quite hospitable, transforming it into a sort of artificial floating island. In its former life, the Ayrfield was used to transport supplies to American troops stationed in the Pacific during World War II before operating as a collier. It was sent to Homebush for disposal in 1972 after sixty years of service.

Awash in brilliant hues of red and orange, the hull of the 1,140-ton SS Ayrfield pokes up from the surface of the water, the Sydney skyline looming in the distance. Other ghostly ships in the bay include the steam tugboat SS Heroic and the steel boom defense vessel HMAS Karangi, which helped defend Darwin Harbour from Japanese attack in 1942.

Photos: Jason Baker, gerryligon, rodney campbell / Flickr Creative Commons

Ranging from eerie, remote desert settlements in the hottest place on earth to perfectly pastel modern ghost towns, Africa’s standout abandonments are as diverse and fascinating as the continent itself. A Star Wars set is slowly swallowed by the sand in Tunisia, skeletons of ships serve as warnings to sailors on the coast of South Africa, and a vast Chinese-built housing development waits for half a million new residents in Angola.

Tattooine: Abandoned Star Wars Set, Tunisia

(images via: fastco)

Left to dry out in the blazing desert sun for over 35 years, the Lars Homestead set from Star Wars Episode IV was recently rediscovered by New York-based photographer Rä di Martino. An area of Tunisia near the oasis city of Tozeur has been used as a dramatic backdrop for many films, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and The English Patient. In addition to Luke Skywalker’s childhood home, di Martino found several other Star Wars sets, documented in a series she calls Every World’s a Stage.

Tunisia was used as a location for scenes in every Star Wars movie except Episode V, including Ben Kenobi’s hut, Grand Dune where R2-D2 and C-3PO crash in Episode IV, the Slave Quarters Row and the canyon where Luke meets Ben. Pictures taken by fans who make pilgrimages to the set have revealed that, in time, it will be swallowed up by the desert sands.

Abandoned Mining Town of Kolmanskop, Namibia

(images via: wikimedia commons, geoftheref, coda)

The sands have already claimed one abandoned village in Namibia. Kolmanskop was once a bustling mining village filled with German diamond miners who built mansions in the style of their home country. It had a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, theater, sport hall, casino, the first x-ray station in the Southern Hemisphere and the first tram in Africa. But after World War I, the diamonds were gone, and the miners began to leave. Kolmanskop was abandoned altogether by 1954, and since then, winds have swept knee-high drifts of sand into the open doors and windows of the architecture left behind. Some homes are almost entirely buried. The ghost town is now a popular tourist destination.

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Mansions To Mines 7 Abandoned Wonders Of Modern Africa

A lot of things can happen at sea – pirates, mutiny, murder and bad weather not to mention (if you’re so inclined) alien abductions, clashes with sea monsters and the mysterious workings of the Bermuda Triangle.  So perhaps it’s no wonder so many ships have turned up without their crew or passengers – but where’s the evidence of a struggle? From an unmanned ghost ship that’s been repeatedly spotted (and boarded) off the Alaskan coast to an apparent British crew kidnapping by a German submarine during World War I, these 10 abandoned vessels all share one thing: strange and seemingly unexplainable secrets.

Mary Celeste

(image via: wikimedia commons)

When it comes to describing the discovery of the apparently abandoned Mary Celeste in 1872, words like “spooky” and “unsettling” simply don’t cut it. This brigantine merchant ship was found in the Atlantic Ocean with its cargo and valuables completely untouched, packed with six months’ worth of food and water but not hide nor hair of a single passenger or crew member. Though its contents were wet and it was a bit worse for the wear, the ship was still seaworthy after being out for just a month. The fact that all reasonable explanations – from storms to piracy – seem to have been ruled out has spurred more outrageous theories of alien abduction or sea monster attacks. Today, the fate of the Mary Celeste remains one of history’s most famous and puzzling maritime mysteries – but this is far from the only story of its kind.

Carroll A. Deering

(image via: wikimedia commons)

Was it mutiny, piracy, Communists or a bizarre supernatural experience in the Bermuda Triangle that robbed the Carroll A. Deering of her crew? This five-masted commercial schooner was on its way back from delivering a load of coal from Virginia to Rio, and during a supply stop in Barbados, the first mate was arrested for making threats against the supposedly interfering and not-so-sharp-eyed captain but was released on bail and forgiven before the ship moved on toward its destination of Norfolk, Virginia.

The ship was spotted when it hailed the Cape Lookout Lightship in North Carolina and a man with a foreign accent onboard told the lightship’s keeper that the vessel had lost its anchors. But the next time it was seen was when it ran aground in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina – the crew, their belongings, and the lifeboats all missing. The crew was never located, and the U.S. government has never come up with an official explanation, though they did consider foul play by rum runners or Communist pirates set on capturing American ships. Today, conspiracy theorists often use the Deering as an example of the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle, despite the fact the ship was far away it by the time the crew disappeared.

Bel Amica

(image via: haunted america tours)

When a “classic style” schooner unlike any seen in Italy before was found off the coast of the island of Sardinia with no crew on board, it seemed like a repeat of the Mary Celeste – but this is no seemingly mythical tale from ages past. Spotted by the Italian Coast Guard in 2006, this ghost ship contained a half-eaten meal of Egyptian food, French maps of North African seas, a pile of clothes, a flag of Luxembourg and a wooden plaque bearing the name ‘Bel Amica’. Italian authorities found that the ship had never been registered in any country. Because the ship was misidentified as an antique in the press, a tsunami of public interest surrounded the case – but it was soon revealed to be a modern yacht belonging to a Luxembourg man who likely didn’t register it for tax evasion purposes.

High Aim 6

(image via: simplyscenes)

Murder, mutiny and rotting fish – the story of the High Aim 6 is a strange one. This Taiwanese ship was found drifting in Australian waters without its crew in 2003, though plenty of fuel and provisions remained onboard, along with the crew’s personal belongings and a hold full of stinky seafood. A forensic examination could find no sign of a struggle, and a search of 7,300 nautical miles turned up no clues – but 10 days after the ship was discovered, calls were still being made from Indonesia on the cell phone of the ship’s missing engineer. The only crew member ever tracked down claimed that the captain and engineer were murdered and the crew headed back to their homes, but no reason was ever given.

Jian Seng

(image via: bymnews)

A lot of illegal activity goes on in the world’s oceans, from illegal fishing to human trafficking. So, when mysterious ships of unknown origin turn up, they’re automatically suspicious. The Jian Seng is just one such ship, spotted drifting into uncharted waters near Queensland, Australia in 2006, but once Australian Customs officials boarded the ship they couldn’t find evidence of recent human activity at all. In fact, the ship had been stripped, with its name and identifying features painted over, and contained nothing but a large amount of rice. Ultimately, since no owner could be found, the ship was intentionally sunken.

MV Joyita

(image via: fiji times)

The MV Joyita may have been an “unsinkable” ship, but she wasn’t immune to other problems. With 25 passengers and crew onboard, the Joyita disappeared in the South Pacific in 1955.  Five weeks after the ship was reported overdue, it was spotted off-course partially submerged and missing four tons of cargo including medical supplies, timber, food and empty oil drums. The radio was tuned to the international marine distress channel, the lifeboats were gone and blood-stained bandages were found. Some believe that the captain was injured or killed and that the passengers and crew felt they had no choice but to abandon the ship – but that still doesn’t explain the missing cargo.

Kaz II

(image via: wikimedia commons)

On April 15th, 2007, three men set out on a journey along the coast of Australia – and three days later, their ship turned up drifting toward the Great Barrier Reef with everything perfectly in place. Everything, that is, except for the men themselves, who were missing. Food was set out on the table, a laptop was open and still turned on, all of the boat’s emergency systems were fully functional and life jackets hung neatly on their hooks. Since the seas were choppy and none of the men were wearing a life jacket, it has been hypothesized that one of the men fell overboard and the others perished trying to save him.

Zebrina

(image via: wikimedia commons)

Yet another ship found without its crew was the Zebrina, a 3-masted sailing barge that left a port in Southern England in October 1917 with a cargo hold full of coal bound for Saint-Brieuc, France. When the ship was found in France aground and abandoned but in good shape two days later, it seemed that some kind of conflict related to World War I was to blame – like perhaps the threat of gunfire from a German submarine like the one pictured above. Did the U-boat that threatened the Zebrina force the crew onboard, and then retreat when it spotted an Allied ship nearby? Perhaps – some people believe that this hypothetical submarine was later sunken itself, hence the fact that Zebrina’s crew was never seen again.

Schooner Jenny

(image via: history cooperative)

“May 4, 1823. No food for 71 days. I am the only one left alive.” The captain who wrote this message was still sitting in a chair with a pen in his hand when this message was found in his logbook a full 17 years later. His body, and those of the other 6 people onboard the British schooner ‘Jenny‘, had been preserved by the frigid Antarctic weather which had ensnared the ship in ice and led to their deaths.The crew of the whaling ship that discovered Jenny so long after this disaster buried the passengers – including a dog – at sea.

Baychimo

(image via: wikimedia commons)

Used to trade pelts for provisions in Inuit settlements along the north coast of Canada, the SS Baychimo was no stranger to harsh conditions. This 230-foot cargo steamer had just been freed from pack ice a week earlier when it got stuck even worse on October 8th, 1931, leading over half of its crew to abandon it while 15 remained to wait out the winter nearby in a wooden shelter that they built. When a blizzard struck on November 24, the ship was later found to be missing and assumed sunken… but it turned up three days later, 45 miles away. The crew gathered up the cargo and abandoned the ship, believing it wouldn’t survive the winter, but once again it did not sink. Over the next several decades, sightings of the Baychimo were reported all over the coast, and some people even boarded the ship. It was last seen stuck in ice off the Alaskan Coast in 1969. Did it finally sink? Maybe – or maybe it will turn up once again.