Rabbit's Moon studio: THE ALTERNATE USE OF ABANDONED BUILDINGS

Thursday, August 1, 2013

THE ALTERNATE USE OF ABANDONED BUILDINGS

ABANDONED BUILDINGS ARE RIPE FOR THE PICKING!

Once a Beret Factory in France now a Multimedia Center

As a result of the worst recession ever in America and across the globe literally thousands of unused, abandoned buildings do the landscape.

An empty Walmart, or factory building, or gas station or restaurant: all ghost of what they once were sitting empty going to ruin. As a found object collage artist this appeals to me, to reclaim and reconstitute refuse, the thrown away, the unused. I love to see thing reclaimed, recycled and reused as the environmentalist among you would say. As I drive through Florida, which was hit so hard by the recession and has been one of the last states to climb out of economic troubles, I see abandoned businesses and homes sitting empty every where. I look at news of big cities in American going bankrupt or failing. Huge sections of cities where businesses and homes have gone to ruin. Detroit, one the center of bustling economy due to the car factories, now bust and declaring bankruptcy. The buildings that are deserted are almost to numerous to list and the architecture to beautiful and historic not to cry over the loss. It seemed impossible to me that there were so many homeless people and businesses in need that these building could not be reused. The banks just sitting on empty buildings, holding the mortgages, taken the losses for taxes seemed so wrong.
When I ran across this series of articles I realized there were other people who felt the same way and had come up with some creative ideas of how to use these buildings and put people back in them. Lets look at what has been done and what you might be able to do in your area!

ABANDONED WALMART BECOMES A LIBRARY!

Library fashioned from an abandoned Walmart from google image for educational purposes only

So many of these abandoned spaces are torn down, but sometimes they are reused either temporarily or permanently. In this article they look at 13 sites that have had a second chance at life. Military compounds, zoos, bath houses, factories and others are seen remade into libraries, galleries, offices, art centers and private homes. The use is only limited by your imagination. Below is an old Turkish Bath in Bulgaria that has been remade in to a small art library.

LIBRARY