Seamlessly connecting realistic facial features with organic architecture, these sculptural works bridge reality and fantasy, natural forms and built scenes blurring scales and dimensions.

Artist Yuanxing Liang, a graduate of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts,deftly connects heads and landscapes — the latter populated with ponds, trees and bridges — in wraparound works.

One of these, Peach Blossom Island (above), was created for the Wonder Festival in Shanghai. It was inspired by the fable of Peach Blossom Dragon Spring, a phantom-dreaming world equally surreal in legend as in the sculpture.

Many of the elements in these works transition with remarkable clarity from human to architectural forms, with windswept hair morphing into tree branches or vegetation-covered hillsides, or crumbling faces breaking into rocky facades. The effect brings the viewer inside the mind of the figure, making it easy to imagine they are lost in thought in the landscapes spilling out all around them.

A remarkable new building hovers over the surface of the Randselva River in Jevnaker, Norway, connecting two forested riverbanks as part of the Kistefos Museum, Northern Europe’s largest sculpture park. Appropriately called “The Twist,” the new gallery space by architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) achieves a beautiful curving form using nothing but straight lines.

This “art bridge” allows visitors to enjoy large outdoor works spread throughout the park on either side of the river as well as the historic Kistefos Wood Pulp Mill, a reclaimed factory onsite. The 1,400-square-meter building provides space for an information center, museum shop, triple-height gallery space, smaller gallery spaces and an outdoor terrace.

As visitors pass through the curving structure, the rotation of the glass changes the quality of light. The wide, naturally lit gallery on the north side offers panoramic views of the landscape, and the tall, dark gallery on the south end allows for more control with artificial lighting. A glass stairway leads down to the museum’s lower level on the north embankment.

“A simple twist in the building’s volume allows the bridge to lift from the lower, forested riverbank in the south up to the hillside area in the north. As a continuous path in the landscape, both sides of the building serve as the main entrance. from the south entry, visitors cross a 16m aluminum-clad steel bridge to reach the double-height space with a clear view to the north end, similarly linked with a 9m pedestrian bridge.”

“The double-curve geometry of the museum is comprised of straight 40cm wide aluminum panels arranged like a stack of books, shifted every so slightly in a fanning motion. The same principle is used inside with white painted 8cm wide fir slats cladding the floor, wall and ceiling as one uniform backdrop for Kistefos’ short-term Norwegian and international exhibitions. From either direction, visitors experience the twisted gallery as though walking through a camera shutter.”

Smokers gonna smoke, even if the decades-old War Against Cigarettes has exiled the persecuted puffers to outdoor shelters where no one wants to linger.

Forever A Logan

Someone oughta point out how disturbingly inappropriate it is to display a “SKYJACK” company logo at Boston’s Logan Airport… just don’t mention it when you’re lined up at Security. That said, this rather passive-aggressively designed “Designated Smoking Area” ironically demands users be considerate with their refuse, while the design reflects a bare minimum of consideration for smokers’ comfort and privacy. Flickr member Wil C. Fry snapped the bare-bones smoking shelter in late June of 2014.

Green Deal

Contrast Logan Airport’s glorified bus stop with the much more welcoming set-up above. You’d thing they WANT smokers to stick around… and you would be correct, because the Smoking Area above is an extension of a British pub. Comfort is a relative thing, however, and one wonders how these open-air nicotine nooks will fare over the average inclement English winter… and spring, summer and fall. Flickr member Gordon Joly took the photo above outside a pub in Westferry, London, in July of 2007.

Unfiltered

This abandoned, overgrown and partially-collapsed smoking shelter in Sunnyside, NY appears to have been erected on a roadside – if that’s indeed the end of a yellow guard rail we spy just outside the entrance. We’re not sure why anyone would use this shelter other than to take cover from a sudden storm, which may partly explain why it’s in such a neglected state… of repair, not of the Union. Flickr member Jason Eppink stopped by for a snapshot in June of 2013.

On Location

The long-running (since December of 1960) British TV soap Coronation Street has long-featured scenes shot in the smoking shelter above, proving that even the venerable Rovers Return Inn’s gotta follow the law of the land. When Flickr member Mikey visited the “Corrie” set in Manchester in late August of 2014, he made a point of sneaking ’round the back of the pub to check out – and likely test out – this most famous of smoking shelters.

Inhales In Wales

Smoking may be tightly regulated nowadays but smoking shelter design remains remarkably rule-free. Thus, for every miserable minimalist lean-to there’ll be a sumptuously furnished sanctuary like the hexagonal hut above. Flickr member Permacultural photographed this ornate refuge in March of 2012 while visiting the Artist’s Valley in Furnace, Wales. No doubt one might be tempted to take up smoking just to enjoy the rustic roost’s cloying creature comforts!

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Central High School in Painter, Virginia was abandoned in 2005 but the 88-year-old red brick building still exudes plenty of Art Deco style and class.

Hollowed Halls

The Eastern Shore of Virginia is made up of two counties – Accomack and Northampton – occupying the scenic Delmarva Peninsula. A little over 33,000 people live in Accomack County but just 229 (as of the 2010 census) make their homes in the tiny town of Painter, where the abandoned Central High School can be found just outside of town on Lankford Hwy., aka US-13.

Feelin’ Blue

Painter never was very large (the 1970 census recorded 363 residents) but its location in south-central Accomack County made it an ideal place for a school serving the county as a whole. As such, the two-story, T-shaped, red brick Central High School opened in 1932 and provided a brilliant glimmer of hope for residents in what is still one of Virginia’s poorest counties.

Burnout

The father & son architect team of J.W. Hudson and J.W. Hudson, Jr. imbued the Central High School building with cutting edge (for the time) Art Deco style, though most of the key architectural cues are featured on the exterior. The most prominent example is the carved stonework frieze above the northeastern entrance depicting twin Lamps of Knowledge separated by the spines of three textbooks.

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For well over a century the Fort Henry Club in Wheeling, West Virginia served as a home away from home for local wheeler-dealers of the male persuasion.

No Girls Allowed

The Fort Henry Club is located at 1324 Chapline St. (at the corner of Chapline and 14th Streets) in beautiful downtown Wheeling. Originally displaying then-fashionable Classical Revival architecture, the townhouse was built in 1850 for Mr. James Fitzsimmons. After it was purchased some years later by Mr. Allen Howell, the impressive building became known as the Howell Mansion.

Members Only

In August of 1890, the initial organizational meeting of the “Fort Henry Club” was held at the Howell Mansion. The first order of business was establishing and funding the club, a process involving 65 founding members who each bought three shares of stock for $100 per share. Additional funds were then gathered, resulting in a total of $19,500 to serve as the club’s financial nest egg. Within a week of the first meeting, the club was officially incorporated with the Howell Mansion being purchased outright by the Fort Henry Club on September 4th of 1890.

Coat Checks Canceled

Transforming a posh residence into an exclusive men’s club wasn’t as simple as one might think. Wheeling-based architect Edward Bates Franzheim was commissioned to conduct extensive renovations that included additions to enlarge the original structure. Stylistic modifications were made as well, leaving the building’s exterior to reflect a more Neo-Classical aesthetic. By December 23rd of 1890, the renovations were completed and the Fort Henry Club opened for business… and pleasure.

Chair Men of the Board

The business of America – or Wheeling, at least – runs on a steady diet of food and drink. As such, a full-time chef was appointed to serve three formal meals daily while remaining on-call for peckish members at any time of the day or night. The club soon gained a reputation as THE place to be when one was in Wheeling. Early twentieth century celebrities including Charles Lindbergh, Herbert Hoover, and Babe Ruth were known to patronize the Fort Henry Club, though not all at the same time.

A Club With A Peel

Times were good but they would not last… Wheeling’s population reached its peak of 61,659 in 1930 and the regional industrial base never fully recovered from the effects of The Great Depression. By the year 2010 only 28,496 people lived in the town – the membership of the Fort Henry Club saw a similar decline which proved to be financially unsustainable. Things reached their nadir in 2011 when the club declared bankruptcy and was closed to the public by management.

Answering the Call

At that point St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, located just across the street, stepped in to purchase the Fort Henry Club building and its associated property. Flickr member Jonathan Haeber (TunnelBug) paid a visit to the shuttered club in early June of 2013, by which time the once-luxurious interior décor was already showing signs of deterioration and decay. Dig that groovy Greek Revival telephone!

Clubbed to the Floor

Several months after Haeber snapped these (and more) evocative photographs, the building was purchased by McKinley & Associates with the aim of renovating the interior into individual office spaces. As was the case back in 1890, re-purposing a dedicated structure into something wholly different takes time and money – by mid-2017, several million dollars had already been spent on the project.

Big Fan of Pink

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, however, as the former men’s club‘s entire second story currently houses the offices and staff of the West Virginia Division of Rehabilitation Services. No doubt more than a few of those staff are female… it’s enough to drive a railroad tycoon to drink!