Combining the raw exterior remnants of source stones with the finely-tuned architectural details of sacred spaces, these marvelous fossil-like miniatures combine compelling elements of organic forms with heroic amounts of human effort.

Matthew Simmonds studied art history before becoming a stonemason, then turned his knowledge and skill toward a hybrid pursuit: sculpting spaces from sandstone, limestone and marble.

What he uncovers inside each chunk becomes part of a graceful juxtaposition with the rough and unaltered exterior shells that remain. His works also convey a sense of discovery, as if archeologists had dug down to find these marvelous wonders buried in history.

“Making a play of architectural spaces on a small scale, the solid stone is opened up to reveal internal worlds, often intricately carved, in which the changing viewpoint and light play a strong role in defining the sculptures.”

“Drawing on the formal language and philosophy of architecture the work explores themes of positive and negative form, the significance of light and darkness and the relationship between nature and human endeavour.”

Geoff Manaugh highlighted Simmonds work but also connected it to similar approach taken in a stellar piece of museum advertising set in wood, a promotional image of modern architecture hewn from a log, made for the Cité de l’Architecture.

The race for space has shifted gears in recent years with the rise of private programs, leaving a series of amazing space-related graveyards around the United States, which this photographer has spent 25 years exploring and documenting.

In his upcoming book, Abandoned in Place, Roland Miller takes readers on a “photographic exploration of the American space launch and research facilities that played a crucial role in the early period of space exploration. The goals of this project are to preserve and portray these abandoned, deactivated, and repurposed sites through photography that surpasses the official government approach to documentation and to lend historical and artistic insight to the subject.”

With special permission (and an escort every time), Roland has managed to visit locations including the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the Kennedy Space Center as well as Cape Canaveral in Florida. His book features 100 full-color photos – the best and brightest of his extension decade-spanning collection.

The photographs cover all kinds of incredible objects and details, from cranes and gantries to blast doors, flame deflector tracks, launch rings and even lunar modules. The book will be released by the University of New Mexico Press and contain poems and essays alongside its rich imagery.

This project is part guide book and part historical document – it “serves not only as a documentary body of work, but also as an artistic interpretation of these historic sites. The blockhouses, launch towers, tunnels, test stands, and control rooms featured in Abandoned In Place are rapidly giving way to the elements and demolition. By my estimates, fully half of the facilities I have photographed no longer exist. The costs involved in restoring, maintaining, and securing these sites are enormous. Most of these historic facilities are located on secure military or NASA facilities, which drastically limits access by the public. Therefore, photography is the only practical method to preserve and portray these historic locations.”

“The facilities photographed in AIP portray one of the most historic and technical adventures of the last century–from our first unmanned flights beyond the atmosphere to landing men on the moon. A sense of the urgency of the space race is evident in many of the images. Signs and labels in the images reflect the technology of the era. The structures depicted also recall the darker threat of nuclear war. Some of the images describe a future that could have been if the cold war had heated up. These launch complexes, engine test stands, and wind tunnels are the Bunker Hills and Gettysburgs of the cold war. References to the Great Pyramids, Chichen Itza, Stonehenge, and other major archeological sites foreshadow the future of these modern ruins.”

New Zealand artist, illusionist and urbanist Mark Hewson has a good many tricks up his sleeve involving spatial deception, convincing citizens there is less (or more) to their city than can ordinarily be seen.

His first trick in this series: disguising an ordinary street-crossing skyway from a series of key vantage points. But even from alternate angles where the lines do not sync up, the effect is dizzying. Our pattern-seeking brains keep looking for transparency or reflection where there is just a solid painting.

Other illusions in his repertoire involve mirroring or warping unseen elements behind solid surfaces or sheets of material. Again, this toying with voids and our structural expectations induces odd forms of visual vertigo.

In previous projects, like the Lost Space Installation, he has worked with gaps and openings, filling them in with imaginary scenes that range from plausible to impossible. While these may be more obviously fake on the surface, they create a nonetheless potent sense of spatial distortion and disorientation.

These interior photos by Kai Fagerström depict wild forest inhabitants who have made derelict human-owned dwellings their own – domestic portraits-at-home with a undomesticated twist.

An abandoned series of small shacks and quaint cottages in Finland, slowly reclaimed by nature, show hints of slowly-invading of plant life,  but the even faster introduction of woodland animals including squirrels, foxes, owls and more.

This surprising variety of crafty creatures have adopted and reshaped the existing spaces to suit their own needs, tunneling through vents and fireplaces, nesting and resting between walls and below floors.

Though this photography project started with a few quick shots in a set of cabins in the woods near the photographer’s summer home, the deserted spaces have turned out to be so rich in potential wildlife portraits that the results now populate an entire book of images (The House in the Woods).

Great patience is required to wait and take just the right desired shots, which are so well-composed you could almost imagine the animals posed to have their picture taken. “Deserted buildings are so full of contradictions [and] I am fascinated by the way nature reclaims spaces that were, essentially, only ever on loan to humans.”

Each image has a story, often elaborate, about how it was taken. About the last one above, for instance, from National Geographic: “On a summer night a family of badgers file into the kitchen from a tunnel they dug under the fireplace. It took four years before Fagerström finally caught the skittish, nocturnal weasels. For this shot he set his camera on a windowsill, then stood outside on a ladder for hours before pressing the shutter via remote control.”

When a free-standing building is razed there is often little left to tell its story, but in places where structures directly abut one another there are sometimes amazing traces of not just buildings but floor plans, wall placements, staircases and even room contents.

Like architectural section drawings, remnant spaces can be extrapolated from two-dimensional clues, like material transitions, degree of weathering, surface shapes and color shifts. Occasionally, there are even three-dimensional fixtures still hanging on, like the showers, sinks and toilets in one of the pictures above.

The Unconscious Art of Demolition is a Flickr photography group that focuses on these accidental works of ghost architecture – leftover structural voids and the spaces they imply.

In the process of observing and photographing, these passers by and onlookers are turned into amateur documentarians and de facto archaeologists, discerning and (at least subconsciously) projecting patterns into ambiguous urban decay.

Some take an abstract approach, zooming in on the rich materials where parts of walls were left and other pieces ripped away. Others take a broader focus, highlighting building outlines and implied interiors. Still others capture works of street art placed within the flat landscapes one can imagine inside of these non-buildings.

Images included here are by Steven Kunstler, Merrick Brown, Daniel Lobo, Thomas Hobbs, Dave Meyer and Xenmate, but many more can be found in the aforementioned Flickr group with over 500 images and members.