Nature slowly reclaims the space occupied by an abandoned train station in the former Russian territory of Abkhazia.

The End of the Empire [English Russia]

Not everyone was blessed enough to have spent their childhood in a creaky old Victorian estate, rife with secrets and long forgotten storage as those types of places tend to be. I count myself among the lucky few, and a large portion of my childhood was whiled away adventuring through dusty, cobwebbed corridors and dark root cellars hidden from the untrained eye.

Thankfully, Creative Home Engineering, a contracting firm in Phoenix, is in the business of providing just such an experience without requiring a centuries old homestead in a tiny town on the Eastern seaboard. For a price these architectural esoterics will outfit your abode with all manner of secret passageways and hidden doors either for the delight of your curious kidlings or simply to provide a secret respite from the aforementioned spawn.

#11490 [NotCot : Creative Home Engineering]

Over at io9, the incredible Geoff Manaugh of BLDG Blog analyzes the sanity-breaking influences of Lovecraft’s Eldritch Architecture:

In another hallucination, for instance, the man stands on the “titanic flat roof” of a massive dream-structure, from which he sees “almost endless leagues of giant buildings, each in its garden, and ranged along paved roads fully two hundred feet wide… Many seemed so limitless that they must have had a frontage of several thousand feet, while some shot up to mountainous altitudes in the gray, steamy heavens.”

He even stumbles across “aberrant piles of square-cut masonry” and “dark cylindrical towers,” where “fungi of inconceivable size” grow amidst “great jungles of unknown tree ferns.”

It’s as if the surrealist montages of Max Ernst have been combined with Le Corbusier’s Ideal City.

Even if you don’t read the entire article, the gallery of images featuring R’lyehian towers hulking ominously over the squirming tentacle hummus of alien worlds out of time is worth the click through.

On The Trail of Grotesque Gods from Space [io9]

Due in no small part to my parents’ arguably accurate viewpoint that literature is the pinnacle of art, I have alway had a savage love for books. The fantastic fictional worlds I’m drawn to lose myself in are but a small part of my affinity; I love the smell of books, the way a book feels in my hands as I read it, the familiar thump of a paperback in a pocket, and the way a home adorned with countless shelves of books is truly made complete.

When I saw this home, constructed by Gianni Bartsford Architects for an unnamed writer, seemingly built for the express purpose of housing, enjoying, and creating books, I was immediately filled with an avaristic lust. Oh sure, it’s also located on a private, quiet, topical beach-front forest in Costa Rica and that sounds heavenly; but you could put a room such as the one above in the most foul armpit of the world and still I could be found reclined in my chair, lost to the world by dint of the book in my lap.

Gianni Botsford [FFFFound : ectochat] Thanks, Xiph!

The transformation of mankind’s idealized future over the last century is a fascinating thing. Our tendency to speculate wildly is our greatest trait, resulting in a rich history of lofty, unrealistic goals and incredible literature that only serves to drive us to speculate further; to hope for a future like nothing we’ve ever seen.

From a sky full of hot-air balloons, from which dapper gents doff their hats to ladies on pedal powered flying machines, to pill-food and brushed chrome flying cars, to now, where our idealized future includes skull-mounted USB jacks and HUD’s. However, our visions of the future have a distinct difference from those of our forebears. Namely in that we envision the possibility of a dystopian future, a blasted, rusted heath on which we eke out our misery filled days; which we dream of alongside the optimistic fantasy of a future of soft, off-white plastics, bio-integrated technology, and utopian ideals.

It’s almost as if in the last 50 years or so we’ve finally started to realize that the future might not be coming to save us, but that it might just be one more boot to humanity’s collective chin.

Hydro Net [Flickr] : Dezeen : Drawn!

No one is taking the future envisioned by 99% percent of anime a step closer to reality than Dubai, who recently revealed their selection for their newest “Look how much money we have, motherfuckers!” building project, the 6th Crossing:

FXFOWLE INTERNATIONAL’s proposal for the architectural design of a 1.7km (1 mile) and 205m (615 feet) bridge in Dubai was selected by the country’s Roads & Transport Authority in a major international design competition. The firm’s winning bridge design further advances the infrastructure and transportation initiatives in Dubai. FXFOWLE’s design makes the 6th Crossing the largest and tallest spanning arch bridge in the world.

The project is slated to cost upwards of eight hundred and seventeen million dollars. It will truly be a sight to behold, and will most assuredly be devoid of filthy foreigners and their legal, over the counter medication. Hooray!

FXFOWLE Architecture [FXFOWLE] : io9 : World Architecture News

These things always begin so innocuously:

A city councilman in Utah, Mark Easton, had a beautiful view of the east Mountains until a new neighbor purchased the lot below his house and built a new home. The home was 18 inches higher than the ordinances would allow, so Mark Easton, mad about his lost view, went to the city to make sure they enforced the lower roof line ordinance.

Which, of course, they did and his neighbor was forced, at a significant expense, to lower his roof. It was only recently that Mr. Easton noticed that his neighbor had installed some vents into the side of his house, now eighteen inches lower but still in the midst of the councilman’s mountain view.

Don’t get mad - there’s always another way - get even!! [Brainlessworld] : Blame It On The Voices

Bendito Machine stands as a lesson to us all. Do not anger the gods of pinata excretions, for their wrath is a terrible one. Hit the jump for another of these quirky sillhouetted animations from artist Jossie Malis that all seem to focus on the excrement of inanimate objects.

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Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is very much a film that could only have been made in 1920’s Berlin, where the decadence of the cosmopolitan elite rubbed against the struggles of the working man like salt against a razor wound. Where gentlemen clubs existed off of Unter der Linden based around the concept of gang sodomizing, then consuming geese; where helmet-haired starlets pranced naked in winter down Friedrichstrasse, clad only in mink and garters; where the saying went that cocaine replaced water from the flowing faucets of Charlottenberg’s penthouses; and where, beneath all this excess, the working class seethed, wanting some semblance of sanity restored to their lives as they did everything humanly possible to keep their families’ heads above water.

Eventually, this schism between working class and decadence would cause otherwise sensible people to think Hitler’s ultra-conservative (and ultra-crazy) Nazi party might have the right idea. The point is, the film — undeniably a masterpiece — is a sci-fi extrapolation of the times. It isn’t a vision of the future: it is the class warfare of 1920’s Berlin extrapolated to its logical — but not historically accurate — conclusion.

Even if you don’t buy all of that, Metropolis is a classic: a film perfect unto itself, that Hollywood shouldn’t touch. No one else could be Maria than Brigitte Helm. No CGI could be more spectacular than Eugen Schüfftan’s art deco modern cityscapes. And the Moloch Machine should never be touched: it is a mechanical industrialpunk god utterly nonsensical in a computerized age.

But Hollywood has never cited necessity as inspiration for its terrible ideas. So why be surprised that producer Thomas Schuehly (responsible for the execrable Alexander) is planning on remaking Metropolis. And no doubt ruining every single thing that has made the original so timeless. Maybe Hollywood itself is the modern-day Moloch Machine.

Thomas Schuehly Is Producing a Remake of Metropolis [Movieweb]

The city of the future was not always synonymous with shimmering pods set upon stilts: there was a time when architecture looked less to sci-fi to predict tomorrow’s cityscapes and more to the Tower of Babel. This is the look of Gotham: Biblical enormity, architecture that sets up the ideas of mankind — our dreams, our hopes, our designs — as the new gods, so much larger than our flesh that the individual is something smaller and less potent than an insect. A city of holy dread.

On the forefront of this very retro-futuristic city design was Hugh Fenriss, an architectural draftsman who made atmospheric chiaroscuros of the awesome cities he composed in his head. Clearly, his work was a major inspiration to the look of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Read more about him here or check out this Flickr gallery for over 300 of his designs. We all live, in small part, in his world.

Hugh Fenriss [Flickr] : Quiddity : Feuilleton

Near Madrid in a town called Mejorada del Campo the skeletal outlines of a cathedral rise into the air. It is being built by Justo Gallego Martínez, a farmer. He has no architectural experience, nor is he qualified to lay bricks, nor is he an engineer. He does not have the blessing of the Catholic Church. He doesn’t even have formal permission from local officials to erect the structure.

Bequeathed to him by the Bishopric of nearby Alcalá de Henares, Martinez has added to the structure sporadically in a way that immediately calls to mind the techniques of Middle Age engineers. Privately funded as the project is, he could not afford to rent a crane so he enlisted the help of family to raise massive steel girders with a system of pulleys. The cathedral rises some 120 feet into the air and is expected to require another 15 to 20 years to complete.

I am inspired by this humble man and his colossal cathedral . He gives me hope for also, some day, constructing my own house of worship. Regardless of whether or not the Esoteric Order of Dagon gives me their blessing.

Don Justo’s Self Built Cathedral [citynoise.org] : Kircher Society

For the lover of Mark E. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (after Lolita, entry number 2 on Ectomo’s must-read list), the sub-chtonic labyrinths of the world are delicious capillary systems that define a metaphysical horror of space. Most old cities — cancerously spreading in all directions — are full of them: dead cities buried by the crush of urbanization, but still explorable by the unclaustrophobic spelunker.

I’ve been to quite a few of the underground labyrinths and catacombs in Web Urbanist’s excellent list of 7 Underground Wonders, and each time, my wonder has been thrillingly compressed into a hard knot in my heart by the weight of the thousands of tons of earth pressing down above me.

7 Underground Wonders of the World [Web Urbanist] : Coudal

I think I speak for everyone at ectomo when I say that no house of any worth is complete without its own corpse hallway. Located in Sicily, the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo illustrate why. Built in the 16th century after the Capuchin monastery outgrew its cemetery, and housing its first corpse in 1599, that of the mummified Brother Silvestro of Gubbio, it soon became a burial place of note for anyone who was anyone in Palermo.

Relatives paid annual fees to keep their quondam loved ones in their proper places. However, if payment was not forthcoming, the body was stored in a considerably less dignified manner, such as a shelf. The catacombs are divided into seven different categories: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks, and Professionals. Corpses are propped up in niches, lie on shelves, and hang up on the walls. The bodies run the gamut from skeletons to the extremely well preserved; a prime example of this being that of Rosalia Lombardo, one of the last to be interred. Two years old when she died in the 1920s, her body is still remarkably intact. How this was accomplished is unknown as the embalmer, Professor Alfredo Salafia, took his method with him to his grave.

The catacombs have become a popular tourist attraction and I can see why. Seems like a good place to bring a book and just, you know, chill.

King’s Capuchins’ Catacombs of Palermo Italy [Kimberly King] : Kircher Society

Continuing my tour of domiciles better than mine we come to The House on the Rock which appears to have been designed by a schizophrenic and furnished by someone with an extreme case of ADHD. Located in the rolling, cheese-laden hills of Wisconsin, the brainchild of Alex Jordan, Jr (who, while eccentric was not a schizophrenic), construction was begun in 1940 and, in 1959, was opened to the public in order for Jordan to continue adding to the house.

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This is how I envision my future domicile. Do not ask me how I will ever be able to afford such a vast array of tomes (or the ornate room that houses them for that matter) but know that they will be displayed as seen in any one of these pictures of simply breathtaking libraries from throughout the world. Of note is the photo of books that are chained to the shelves which hold them. I must begin doing this to my collection immediately, I think.

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries [Curious Expeditions]