A lone artist is on a mission to restore some of the 70,000 books from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad that were reduced to ash during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As chaos mounted, looters broke in set the library on fire, burning it to the ground.

Students at the school still lack replacements over a decade later, which led Wafaa Bilal (an Iraqi-born artist living in New York City) to propose Blank Books, a program designed to bring in book donations, in turn to be shipped in sets to the Iraqi capital.

This combination art, awareness and shelf-stocking project works essentially like this: blank books are created and put on shelves at the Art Gallery of Windsor. When someone donates a book, a white blank is removed and given to the donor as a symbol of the void they helped fill.

While the university shared a wishlist, they also welcome books from personal collections in any of the following categories: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Radio, TV, Film, Music, Art Education, Industrial Design, Printing, Textiles, Calligraphy, Ornamentation.

The effort raised over $50,000 from a crowdfunding campaign, more than 5 times its target amount. The campaign worked like the installation: “The blank books will transform into colored books. I see this as a visualization of the reversal of destruction,” explains Bilal

As the shelves fill up with real books, Kickstarter backers and other donors receive the blank books as rewards as a “small reminder of their contribution.” You can read a more detailed interview with the artist on Hyperallergic or watch him speak on CNN.

More historical context on this effort from its creator: “During the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was home to the largest library in the world—the Bayt al-Hikma, or House of Wisdom. A Mongol siege in the 13th century laid waste to all the libraries of Baghdad, along with the House of Wisdom.”

“According to legend, the library was thrown into the Tigris River to create a bridge of books for the Mongolian army to cross. The pages bled ink into the river for seven days, after which the books were drained of knowledge.”

An ambitious proposal for a country in turmoil, this 3,780-foot building would be not only the tallest in the world but also taller than all structures currently in planning or under construction.

Composed of four connected towers, The Bride by AMBS Architects aims to exceed the Kingdom Tower slated for construction in Saudi Arabia as well as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

The mixed-use commercial, housing and office project includes a sweep veil providing shade for outdoor public spaces, parks, gardens and smaller buildings below. A net-zero structure, it is designed to produce more renewable energy than it consumes.

Its designers boast that the 1.5 million square foot structure will break new ground in engineering and vertical transportation. They also emphasize that its horizontality makes an intentional statement about inclusivity – the building is meant to serve more than just those who occupy its heights.

“Super-tall towers are perceived as an object in the distance,” said AMBS. “An alien planted in the city, disconnected from the urban scale at ground level. The Bride, on the other hand, will be conceived as a city itself both vertically but also horizontally from the ground.”

“It will be enjoyed by thousands of people in endless ways, within it, on it or under it, from walking in the vast shaded parks and promenades at ground level, to having lunch or shopping in a sky-square hundreds of metres above sea level.”

Eerie ghost towns, villages abandoned after shocking massacres, the palaces of deposed dictators and mansions so well preserved they’re like 1950s time capsules are among the Middle East’s abandoned treasures. The Cradle of Civilization and the areas that lie just outside of it contain some of humanity’s oldest structures, and a great many ruins.

The Abandoned Palaces of Egypt

(images via: wikimedia commons, dalbera, eusuperfunhappytime)

In 1869, construction of the Suez Canal brought foreign money flooding into Egypt, and ambitious foreign businessmen got to work on ornate castles in Western European style, which stood as stark symbols of colonialism. But when Gamal Abdel Nasser became president in 1956, he put an end to that, kicking out the wealthy foreigners to reclaim the nation for the people. Unfortunately, economic instability hasn’t allowed for the palaces to be redeveloped, so today they range from shuttered time capsules of the 1950s to crumbling ruins.

The Baron Empain Palace  (top), built by Eduoard Louis Joseph of Belgium in the late nineteenth to early 20th centuries, is one such place. Modeled on Hindu and Cambodian temples, the palace sits in a dirt lot in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, surrounded by barbed wire. It’s closed to the public, but like many such places, it’s the subject of many rumors of ghost stories and Satanic rituals.

Another is Prince Said Halim’s palace, also known as Champollion House, in Cairo. This palace was converted to a secondary school after its abandonment, but it has been empty since 2004.

Maasser el Chouf, Lebanon

(images via: samer noun)

Located in lush woods just outside the peaceful Al-Shouf Cedar Reserve of Lebanon’s Maasser Cedar Forest, this idyllic village was utterly devastated by the massacre of September 9th, 1983. The houses that remain empty belonged to those who perished or fled to safer places when 63 Catholics were killed by their Druze neighbors in a brutal daytime assault. Years later, in 1990, a son left orphaned by the attack returned and killed five Druze villagers and three soldiers in revenge. Some of the homes are still occupied by those who survived.

Photographer Samer Noun gained access to the abandoned homes in 2011, capturing these eerie images of the architectural remains.

Saddam Hussein’s Abandoned Palaces, Iraq

The Babylonian palaces of Saddam Hussein once stood as ostentatious symbols of the Iraqi dictator’s power, hastily constructed all over the country. Once he was forced from power, these ornate palaces full of treasures were either taken over by US Army forces or looted by locals. These photos by Richard Mosse document the period in which American soldiers stalked the marble halls, strung up American flags in what were once exclusive chambers and parked their massive military vehicles right in front of the faux-grand entrances. Many of the palaces are deteriorating, and not just because of war damage; they were so cheaply made that they simply haven’t stood up to the test of time.

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Cradle To Graveyard 7 Abandoned Wonders Of The Middle East

It’s a surreal, otherworldly scene: ornate palaces with the finest appointments being used as temporary shelter for American soldiers. The detritus of their everyday lives mingles with the ornate columns, shiny marble floors and war rubble in the palaces built by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. After the dictator was forced from power and his property seized, the US Army moved their command headquarters into Al-Faw Palace in Camp Victory.

Photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq to document this bizarre circumstance, this juxtaposition of supposed liberators dwelling in the very home of the dictator they vowed to depose. He called the resulting book Breach, a nod to the liberators stepping into the breach they created when Hussein was removed from power.

That’s not to say that Mosse’s work is sternly anti-war. He seeks to show extraordinary images of an unprecedented situation with a fair measure of neutrality. He didn’t resort to telling one side of the story or another; he simply made photographs that, regardless of how you feel about the war, are moving.

Al-Faw wasn’t the only palace occupied by US forces. Of the 81 palaces Hussein built for himself, Mosse was only able to visit three in his month in Iraq: Al-Faw in Baghdad, Al-Salam in Baghdad, and Saddam’s Birthday Palace in Tikrit.

Many of the palaces are falling apart, both because of war damage and because they were built in a time of harsh embargoes. The palaces were also constructed quickly, with Hussein desiring a palace in nearly every city. The dictator’s goal seems to have been to inform Iraqis that he was everywhere at all times.

In a fascinating interview with BLDGBLOG, Mosse describes the experience of visiting the palaces as surreal. The oddly decorative bits and pieces of American soldiers’ daily lives strewn about the self-indulgent chambers were part of another world just waiting to be explored.

Notable not only for the bizarre combination of Hussein-era opulence and American soldiers’ flotsam, Mosse’s photos are also incredible journeys through some very interesting architecture. Plywood cubicles resting precariously beneath ornate chandeliers. Company and squadron insignia taped to the heavy marble walls. Impossibly massive halls with impossibly garish features.

It seems that he tried to capture the feeling of the locations, rather than the experience of the people, in his journeys. There are no cheesy shots of a lone soldier with his head down, none of the typical sympathetic wartime human interest motivation. There’s only an exploration of the circumstance. And that makes every single image in the series that much more compelling.

Agree with the war or disagree, I think this is a powerful image that brings the impacts home. A shadow on the street, something profound behind a simple sign. It is graffiti, sure, but it is far more social commentary than it is anything else.