Some of the most fascinating parts of certain deserted buildings in Philadelphia cannot even be seen from below, making this drone footage shot by Matt Satell of Philly by Air all the more revealing.

Take the Spring Garden Public School, for instance, the roof of which is enclosed in a an arched grid of fencing that wraps an outdoor gym and recreation area for students. “This abandoned public school was built in 1931 and designed by the Philadelphia School District” explains drone pilot and urban photographer Matt Satell. “There have been proposals discussed to convert the structure into a residential building, but nothing has been finalized yet.”

The PECO Delaware Station is situated adjacent to the Penn Treaty Park in Fishtown, its outcroppings of both natural overgrowth and artificial stacks far more visible by air. “This coal-fired power plant first opened its doors in 1920. It was originally designed by John T. Windram, who also designed the Franklin Institute. The plant was owned by Exelon Generation until 2015 when it was sold to Bart Blatstein and Joseph Volpe who have plans to build boutique hotels.”

Other buildings featured are on historical registers, or the subject of redevelopment plans or (as in the case of the Richmond Power Station) are already famous for being featured in films such as 12 Monkeys, Transformers 2 and The Last Airbender. The Quaker Storage Building, Dreuding Brothers Building and Willow Steam Plant (each shown in the embedded video above) all have elements best captured – and are perhaps only truly comprehensible as a whole – when viewed from above as well as below.

Meanwhile, if you enjoyed your brief tour of Philadelphia’s most prominent abandonments, you can take a further aerial flight around the city with the video above, likewise documented via Philly by Air.

Traveling 23,000 miles over 4 years, photographer Marc Wilson has amassed an amazing collection of images spanning bunkers, gun emplacements, observation posts, command centres and other wartime infrastructure around Europe.

In his book, The Last Stand, 88 of the resulting images are arrayed to tell a complex story of different times and places. More than merely photographing these haunting remnants of war, however, Wilson also provides highly articulate reflections on everything from their site-specific purposes and aesthetics to their broader places in military and architectural histories.

“Composed of copious quantities of poured concrete,” many of these structures “defy and eschew any established aesthetic sensibilities: no hint of the classical, the gothic or the baroque here. Their geometries, purely contingent, were designed to resist the effects of the latest developments in projectile technology, their profiles shaped to deflect such missiles and avoid any direct percussive explosions on their structures.”

His shots are carefully composed and timed, often taking place in the early hours of the morning when eerie mists and dim lights grant the subjects a surrealistic atmosphere. There is a dreaminess and dreariness to his work that manages to make the objects captured seem both ordinary and otherworldly. Prints of many of the pieces featured in the book can be purchased as well.

Unlike even the most pragmatic warehouse of the time, “there was nothing speculative or arbitrary about the bulwarks of their sometimes bizarre and often ungainly forms: they were purely functional. While far from being graceful or classically proportioned, there is something visually appealing about the alien (and sometimes sinister) forms of those bunkers. Novelty does not quite describe this appeal: more surprise perhaps – a surprise that courts the sublime.”

In the trash-ridden outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, precariously lofted structures rise up on stilts, home to birds that, come sunset, are set loose as the strange race begins to reroute and capture the free-flying flocks of one’s neighbors. The goal: to use flags and whistles to navigate your own birds and bring them back to their roost, all while hopefully entrapping your neighbors’ pets in the process.

Photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro (via CityLab) flew in from London to document this bizarre phenomenon. Dating as far back as 4,000 years ago in various forms, this sport-like activity involves breeding, raising, releasing and recapturing huge collections of pigeons.

Garbage City, the informal name of the trash-collecting suburbs surrounding Cairo, plays host to many of participants, its lack of building code regular contributing to the unsteady-looking structures used to house the birds.

Not made to support heavy loads, many of these informal roosts are cobbled together from scraps and assembled like scaffolding from wood and whatever else is available.

PigeonNews gives a great deal of detail on everything from the types and ratings to behaviors of the birds and their masters, including stories of training, endurance and skill as well as sickness, predators and other mishaps.

Notably, pigeon is also eaten in the region, so while many treat it as a hobby or sport, some participants may also have other incentives for breeding (or catching) these birds.

There are as many as 2,000,000 people actively raising these birds in Egypt today, with some people spending hundreds of dollars a month on the upkeep of hundreds of birds.

Like that iconic scene in the original Planet of the Apes film, these artists have displaced great works of architecture in time and space to see what each museum might look like after the end of days, relocated in ominous environments and recast in black and white.

Ukrainian photographers Vitaliy and Elena Vasilieva use surrealistic landscapes as the backdrop for these imaginative transformations, picturing structures like the Guggenheim in a sand-strewn context that looks like anything but modern-day Manhattan as we know it.

The New Museum is seen rising up from post-armageddon floodwaters, presumably after rising sees wash away the rest of New York City.

The Niteroi Museum is perched precariously on a mound of snow, everything else perhaps buried in the frozen wastes around it.

The Pompidou Center is set in a swirling dust storm, Paris long vanished and its inside-out appearance making it look all the more like a remnant than a finished structure.

When the dust settles, the smoke clears and the world freezes over, what if only our artistic institutions were left? From the creators of the series: “It is difficult to escape the feeling that ‘Apocalypse in Art’ really shows the world, standing on the edge, barren, falling in decay like a story line of a picture that is breaking into fragments.”

Imagine life inside a ring of cells around a central watchtower, where you can never be sure whether you are being observed. This surreal setup became an extreme reality under dictator Gerardo Machado on the Cuban Isla de la Juventud.

One of the creepiest concepts in the history of architecture, the Panopticon model of incarceration design proposes keeping prisoners forever on edge, fearing their watchers.

Both Fidel and Raul Castro spent time within the walls of this Presidio Modelo (Model Prison) complex, which, at its peak, held over 8,000 political prisoners. Apparently they found the approach sufficiently effective, since the Castro regime kept them open as well.

Originally the vision of Jeremy Bentham (and later nightmare of philosopher Michel Foucault), this 18th-Century idea was never realized in its creator’s lifetime but found expression in many structures after his death.  It was originally conceived of as an allegory for the surveillance state and something its critics never expected to be actually built – indeed, they would have been horrified to learn it had been physically realized.

While there are other Panopticon-inspired prisons around the world, this complex in Cuba may be the most literal and direction realization of the original diagrams. It features circular structures and guardhouses in the center of a vast open spaces, all to keep residents in a perpetual state of uncertainty (images via Jason Florio and Wikipedia).