Come up to the dental lab, and see what’s on the dental slab: these dental labs will definitely leave you shivering, tho’ NOT with antici… pation.

Looking for tomorrow’s dentures today? Then get your bleeding gums down to 2919 Mack Avenue in Detroit’s once-beautiful Poletown East neighborhood, where you’ll find Denture Work Of The Future!

Situated in an almost-windowless whitewashed concrete block building that would make an awesome anti-zombie fortress, this oddly-named “customized” dental lab featured equally odd exterior artwork highlighted by a truly frightening set of choppers – one would hope they didn’t represent examples of their work. Sometime before 2010 the building was repainted, possibly by the same “artist” though their illustrative skills show some improvement.

Motormouth City

While “Denture Work Of The Future” seems to be a going concern, the ink’s a whole lot redder over at the Detroit Dental Lab.

Kudos to City-Data.com and Andy from Hot Fudge Detroit for the photos above, the second of which is slightly more recent (judging from the blown-out second story windows), dating from February of 2008.

N-ter At Own Risk

Dental Laboratories – where crowns, bridges and other such dental prosthetics are crafted by dental technicians – enjoy a sort of regulatory limbo where certification is voluntary. Even the lowest level of certification (CDL, or Certified Dental Laboratory) is achieved merely by submitting photos of the facility for third-party review! Yeah, so, next time your dentist recommends you get a crown, ask him if the lab they use is certified and to what degree. Otherwise, your shiny new faux-molar might just hail from the dyslexic (if not dysfunctional) dental lab above, snapped by Flickr member Duncan in July of 2012.

Abbey Normal

The British have been knocked over the state of their teeth and we may have found the reason: the state of their dental laboratories. Take the slightly ominous establishment above, Abbey Dental, captured by Flickr member Johnny Wilson (johnnytakespictures) in August of 2013. Located in the  Warwickshire town of Nuneaton (perfect location for a dentist, amiright?), Abbey Dental boasts of having “over 40 years experience” though if one judges by appearances it’s more like 400 years.

Meat Me In Medellin

A dental lab occupying space above a butcher shop? Seems legit… and that’s just how they roll in Medellin, Colombia. Bonus points awarded for the nifty folk-art illustrations of toothy mouths above and tasty beasts below. It’s the South American version of “business up front, party in the back.”

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Tooth Or Consequences 15 Dodgy Dental Labs

Occupying an abandoned five-story apartment building in central Taipei, Ruin Academy is a living architectural laboratory where holes drilled in the walls let rain inside, plants grow from the floors and the bones of the structure serve as ‘compost’ for the future of the city. A collaboration between Finland-based Casagrande Laboratory and the Taiwanese JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture, this project aims to “re-think the industrial city and the modern man in a box.”

Ruin Academy serves as a setting for workshops and courses for various Taiwanese and international universities in subjects like architecture, urban design and environmental art. The lines between the city and the building have been blurred with the removal of windows and interior walls, so bamboo and vegetables can be grown indoors. Students and professors sleep in ad-hoc dormitories. The mahogany elements of the interiors, like walkways and steps, are made to be rearranged as the inhabitants’ needs change.

“The Ruin Academy is looking at the ruining processes of Taipei that keep the city alive,” says Marco Casagrande on the Ruin Academy blog. The idea is that static urban structures aren’t a natural way of life, and that the ‘Third Generation City’ would mix nature with human construction in an ever-changing symbiosis. Restoring nature within cities, growing food indoors, and living in structures that constantly adapt and change is seen as a more organic way for humans to interact with our environment.

The Ruin Academy is just one of the many illegal, unsanctioned ‘parasite’ structures that have popped up on top of and around Taipei’s conventional modern buildings. Organic and often transient structures made of materials like bamboo or plastic sheeting sprout on the roofs of concrete skyscrapers and in abandoned lots, used as artist housing, urban farms, night markets and other social gathering places.