These closed and abandoned tanning salons, spas and studios made hay while the sun didn’t shine but sooner or later they (and their clients) felt the burn.

“Sun-Tan-Drews” may not have been the sunniest tanning salon in St Andrews, Scotland but it was by far the punniest. Note the “W” on the lettered sign had fallen off sometime in the past and was replaced by a slightly smaller version. Kudos to Flickr members Ian Macdonald (Ghiribizzo) and Jonathan Baldwin (artistry), and Panoramio member Richie W, all of whom captured the recently shuttered pun-tastic tanning salon in early 2007.

Smokeless

The sign on the door of this closed Bristol, England tanning salon states smoking inside is prohibited, assuring potential customers they won’t be burnt to a crisp for the sake of fashion. Another sign, hand-written this time, notes the business has moved to newer and more northerly digs. Shame they didn’t take the alluring window stickers with them when they moved. Flickr member Steve (Steve Lewis2009) snapped the abandoned Wells Road spa in May of 2010.

The Sun Isn’t There

This gloriously grainy photo of the late and unlamented “Sun Valley electric UV tanning salon” – in the words of photographer and Flickr member Boo (Lawrence Peregrine-Trousers) – was taken in early 2003 somewhere in Lancashire, northern England. Odd how many tanning studios there are in the UK, abandoned or not… then again, have you seen British people lately?

Hot Stuffed

The “Hot Staff” (yes, that’s its name) Tanning Salon in Naha, capital city of Okinawa, is a mass of contradictions. An information page states the salon is open year round but it’s “CLOSED” whenever you access the page. The salon’s website hasn’t been updated since 2011 but regardless… a tanning salon in Japan’s most southerly prefecture?? As for the spa’s curious name, well, typos are all in good fun until they create issues for employees.

One Lesstan

Founded in 2006, “Lextan” grew to become the biggest chain of luxury tanning salons in Wales with 16 locations. Erm, make that 15 – on the night of June 15th, 2016 the Lextan studio in Ebbw Vale (pop. 33,000) burnt to the ground and was totally destroyed in what local police have stated was an arson attack. Seems someone wasn’t happy with their tan lines or ended up looking like Tan Mom.

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Bar The Rays 15 Closed Abandoned Tanning Salons

Integrating the shadows cast by everything from stop signs to public benches into street art often requires the luck of seeing the piece in action at just the right time of day, when the shadow is in just the right spot for everything to line up as intended. Catching it in action feels like serendipity and adds a little bit of magic to ordinary urban settings. But in the case of this particular work of shadow art, you could literally stand in front of it all day and just watch it transform before your eyes. The lettering attached to the facade of a building in India’s Lodhi District changes its angle as the sun moves across the sky, acting like a sundial.

‘Time Changes Everything’ by Indian street artist Daku requires the sun’s harsh light in this location and the stark white facade of the building to even be visible to passersby, virtually disappearing on a cloudy day or at night. Get close to the wall and look up, however, and you’ll get a new perspective on the piece, viewing the words upside-down. The theme relates to the passage of time, with words including ‘age,’ ‘illusion,’ ‘season,’ aim’ and ‘memory.’ They start out in italics and then shift into prime legibility at noon before leaning in the other direction.

The installation is part of the first dedicated public art district in India, turning the neighborhood into a gallery that’s available to everyone. ST+ART India invited 25 local and international street artists to contribute to the project, which aims to make art accessible for wider audiences “while having a positive impact on society.” Check out more of Daku’s work on Instagram.

Designed to help citizens of Wroclaw, Poland, reclaim neglected parts of their city this site-specific “microinstallation” provides comfortable urban furniture for an otherwise hard-to-occupy staircase.

Developed by No Studio for DoFA (AKA the Lowersilesian Festival of Architecture), padded bed-chair combinations made for sitting and lounging were placed along public steps near an historic bridge.

The normal stairs are not only made of uncomfortable concrete, but they are spaced for walking, not sitting, making it uncomfortable to spend time in any position other than standing at and leaning against the riverside railing.

Visitors, who would normally pass by with few excuses to stop, were suddenly encouraged to have a seat in the sun, all thanks to rather simple but fit-for-function works of urban seating.

Part practical project, the endeavor also reflects an subtle thesis: small and low-cost moves can radically transform our experience of public open spaces.

No Studio aims to turn temporary changes into memorable experiences and lasting inspiration: “We create spaces, design for a while and a little longer. We have fun working on serious things. We try to solve problems rather than create monuments.”

The developers behind a new tower rising in downtown Warsaw, Poland, have added a sunny surprise to the side of the building, aiming to brighten the moods of citizens during dark and cold months of winter construction.

A temporary installation, set to stay in place until the floors are occupied, was made to “brighten up the lives of people during this depressing winter time, when the days are short and you miss the sun.” It was intentionally lit on Blue Monday, thought to be the most depressing day of the year.

The 42-story Q22 tower is a neomodern office building developed by Polish firm Echo Investment and designed by APA Kury?owicz & Associates with collaboration from Buro Happold Polska.

Intentionally or otherwise, the entire project evokes images of retro gaming graphics and vintage cyberpunk films like Bladerunner, in a way (perhaps depressingly) reminding residents of just how much winter they still have lying in wait.

Starting with a model planet Earth the size of a marble, a team of filmmakers set out to simulate our entire solar system in motion and capture the results in a compelling short movie.

In normal images and models of the planets in our solar neighborhood, nothing is too scale – at scale on a piece of paper, planets becoming vanishingly small and effectively impossible to see on the page. Textbooks and other graphics misrepresent sizes almost by necessity simply because it would be impossible to depict things otherwise in a small visual field.

The resulting visuals distort our sense of the distance between celestial bodies. In the scale model featured above, set in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet give the viewer a much greater intuitive understanding of the separation and size of these spatial objects.

“As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart.” said James Irwin, Apollo 15 astronaut. He is one of only 24 people in human history have seen the full circle of the Earth with their own eyes.

Using LED lights, GPS calculations, a dirt disrupter and ultimately cars driving in circles to simulate the orbits at night, the team created a 1:847,638,000 scale model in which blips of light represent the various bodies in space.

One of the participants climbed a nearby mountain to film it all from above, while post-production overlays create a key for the video. Process documentation was made in part with a drone flying overhead. According to its creators, this is the first scale model of the solar system ever constructed.