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.

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Grange Grunge Abandoned Art Deco Mansion In Singapore

Architects around the world strive to incorporate regional design histories into contemporary work, but Bolivian designer Freddy Mamani Silvestre takes it a step further, blending pop culture inspirations into his fantastically bizarre buildings.

Mamani is an Aymara, part of a people who were historically conquered and displaced by Incan and Spanish populations.He trained as an engineer, then grew into fame designing mixed-use mansions for the rich (generally: stores on the ground floor, apartments above and a penthouse for owners).

“Mamani’s architecture incorporates circular motifs from Aymara weaving and ceramics and the neon colors of Aymara dress,” reports the New Yorker, “and it alludes to the staggered planes of Andean temples.” It also is inspired by cyberpunk visions and science fiction films like Transformers.

Creative, eccentric, joyful, imaginative are all words that have been used to describe his work, though some see it extreme, superficial, garish or gaudy as well. It can be polarizing, with fans praising his audacity and critics decrying the lack of formal method to the apparent madness.

Silvestre works in unusual ways as well, sketching ideas onto walls or simply describing what he wants to coworkers, leaving them to execute the details. He has completed a number of projects in this way in El Alto, the highest city in the world.

Imagine the state of it: the United States executive mansion after 150 years of continuous occupation. By this time, the already-aging White House had been retrofit with a maze of modern amenities like plumbing, electricity and heating – none of which this expansive estate was constructed to house.

Per reporter Brian Resnick, sagging ceilings, scaffolding and supports had rendered the structure an unsanitary fire hazard by the late 1940s – some suggested scrapping it entirely and starting from scratch, but President Truman lobbied to keep and rehabilitate it.

As these amazing photographs from the National Archives & Truman Library illustrate, the entire interior had to be ripped out. Historically valuable materials and decor were meticulously cataloged and stored, and temporary steel columns and beams erected to keep the exterior from collapsing.

To get equipment like bulldozers inside and clear debris required disassembling machines to avoid bursting holes in the sides of the structure – rebuilding would have been cheaper and faster, but this careful treatment preserved irreplaceable pieces of US history.

In all rooms and on all levels, lathe, plaster, brick and mortar were laid bare, giving a unique one-time view – fortunately captured in photographs – into the hidden structure and secret architecture of the most important residence in America.

Architectural renderings that are too realistic leave little to the imagination. At the opposite end of the spectrum, these folded-paper interiors are more like words than images on the page, encouraging the viewer to fill in the blanks and add depth using their mind.

Simon Schubert‘s haunting paper buildings are produced only by folding the paper – millimeter-scale differences catch and reflect light, creating the illusion of subtle line drawings via implied outlines.

The structures themselves are in some cases based on real buildings or destroyed structures – palaces, estates, institutions and more both past and present. Others, like the mansion in this video are fictional creations strung together, unfolding in a silent narrative.

Their author indeed cites literary over artistic or architectural influences, including Samuel Beckett and Edgar Allan Poe: “loneliness, isolation, loss and disappearance are the reoccurring issues in his paper works and sculptures. The mysterious and unsettling atmosphere his works radiate confronts the viewer with his own subconscious fears and anxieties.”