Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey’s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles

in Architecture, Travel | November 14th, 2024

Burj Al Babas might have been con­struct­ed express­ly to attract the atten­tion of the inter­net. “Sit­ting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-fin­ished, ful­ly aban­doned mini cas­tles — 587 of them to be exact,” write Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Kather­ine McLaugh­lin and Jes­si­ca Chern­er. Orig­i­nal­ly “planned as a lux­u­ri­ous, state­ly urban devel­op­ment offer­ing the look of roy­al liv­ing for any­one will­ing to shell out any­where from $370,000 to $500,000 for their own lit­tle palace,” it now stands as an unfin­ished ghost town. And though the project only broke ground a decade ago, it’s already set­tled into a ver­i­ta­bly eerie — and high­ly pho­tograph­able — state of decay.

This, of course, more than suits the sen­si­bil­i­ties of an adven­ture-ori­ent­ed YouTube chan­nel like Fear­less & Far. Its explo­ration of Burj Al Babas — one of sev­er­al such videos cur­rent­ly avail­able — offers on-the-ground views of what we can only call the town’s ruins. “This fan­ta­sy par­adise land did­n’t sell,” says its host. “Some blame the Turk­ish real estate cri­sis; some blame the kitsch­i­ness of it all. It’s all so strange. It’s all so fake.”

Indeed, write McLaugh­lin and Chern­er, “as build­ing the town got under­way, locals became enraged with both the aes­thet­ic of the homes and the busi­ness prac­tices of the devel­op­ers,” who sub­se­quent­ly declared bank­rupt­cy, leav­ing the devel­op­ment in lim­bo.

Those who know their Mid­dle East­ern lan­guages will rec­og­nize the very name Burj Al Babas as a “non­sen­si­cal mashup of Ara­bic and Turk­ish,” as Ruth Michael­son and Beril Eski put it in an in-depth Guardian piece last month. Though locat­ed in Turkey, with an intent to take advan­tage of local hot springs, it was financed with mon­ey from Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia and Bahrain. Since its con­struc­tion “abrupt­ly stopped in 2016, the project has become a bizarre white ele­phant,” caus­ing scan­dal, law­suits, an attempt­ed sui­cide, “and even a minor diplo­mat­ic inci­dent between Turkey and Kuwait.” Any­one who’s seen Burj Al Babas up-close will have their doubts about its prospects for com­ple­tion — but if they’ve got a YouTube chan­nel of their own, they’ll hard­ly want demo­li­tion to start before they can pay it a vis­it them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vis­it to Tian­ducheng, China’s Eeri­ly Emp­ty $1 Bil­lion Copy of Paris

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan – Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Explor­ing the Great­est of Italy’s 6,000 Ghost Towns: Take a Tour of Cra­co, Italy

Dis­cov­er the Dis­ap­pear­ing Turk­ish Lan­guage That is Whis­tled, Not Spo­ken

A Cul­tur­al Tour of Istan­bul, Where the Art and His­to­ry of Three Great Empires Come Togeth­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Lynch Releases on YouTube Interview Project: 121 Stories of Real America Recorded on a 20,000-Mile Road Trip

in Film, Travel | October 7th, 2024

Take a suf­fi­cient­ly long road trip across Amer­i­ca, and you’re bound to encounter some­thing or some­one Lynchi­an. Whether or not that idea lay behind Inter­view Project, the under­tak­ing had the endorse­ment of David Lynch him­self. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, it was con­ceived by his son Austin, who along with film­mak­er Jason S. (known for the doc­u­men­tary David Lynch: The Art Life), drove 20,000 miles through the U.S. in search of what it’s tempt­ing to call the real Amer­i­ca, a nation pop­u­lat­ed by col­or­ful, some­times des­per­ate, often uncon­ven­tion­al­ly elo­quent char­ac­ters, 121 of whom Inter­view Project finds pass­ing the day in bars, work­ing at stores, or just sit­ting on the road­side.

Pro­fil­ing David Lynch in the nineties, David Fos­ter Wal­lace observed that “a good 65 per­cent of the peo­ple in met­ro­pol­i­tan bus ter­mi­nals between the hours of mid­night and 6 A.M. tend to qual­i­fy as Lynchi­an fig­ures — grotesque, enfee­bled, flam­boy­ant­ly unap­peal­ing, freight­ed with a woe out of all pro­por­tion to evi­dent cir­cum­stances.”

Inter­view Project sticks to small-town or rur­al set­tings — Camp Hill, Penn­syl­va­nia; Pigeon Forge, Ten­nessee; Tuba City, Ari­zona — but still encoun­ters peo­ple who may at first glance strike view­ers as dis­turb­ing, men­ac­ing, sad­den­ing, for­bid­ding, or some com­bi­na­tion there­of. But they all have com­pelling sto­ries to tell, and can do so with­in five min­utes.

Being the sub­ject of an Inter­view Project video requires a degree of forth­right open­ness that those who’ve spent their lives in the U.S. may not rec­og­nize as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can. Though often beset by a host of crises, ail­ments, and griev­ances (imposed from with­out or with­in), they don’t hes­i­tate to assert them­selves and their world­views. Though there’s obvi­ous curios­i­ty val­ue in all these eccen­tric con­vic­tions, region­al twangs, and some­times har­row­ing mis­for­tunes, what emerges above all from these inter­views is an impres­sive resilience. Young or old, coher­ent or oth­er­wise, with or with­out a place to live, these peo­ple all come off as sur­vivors.

When Inter­view Project first went online in 2009, it was­n’t view­able on Youtube. Now, for its fif­teenth anniver­sary, all of its videos have been uploaded to that plat­form, and in high def­i­n­i­tion at that. Seen in this new con­text, Inter­view Project looks like an antecedent to cer­tain Youtube chan­nels that have risen to pop­u­lar­i­ty in the decade and a half since: Soft White Under­bel­ly, for instance, which devotes itself to inter­vie­wees at the extreme mar­gins of soci­ety. Extrem­i­ty isn’t the sig­nal char­ac­ter­is­tic of Inter­view Project’s sub­jects, depart dra­mat­i­cal­ly though their expe­ri­ences may from the mod­ern mid­dle-class tem­plate. One could pity how short their lives fall of the “Amer­i­can Dream” — or one could con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they’re all liv­ing that dream in their own way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

The New Studs Terkel Radio Archive Will Let You Hear 5,000+ Record­ings Fea­tur­ing the Great Amer­i­can Broad­cast­er & Inter­view­er

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

in Maps, Travel | September 18th, 2024

No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through. I myself once took a more souther­ly route, road-trip­ping from Los Ange­les to Raleigh, North Car­oli­na over a week or two; these days, I dream of an east-coast jour­ney from Maine all the way down to Key West, a rel­a­tive­ly man­age­able 1,900 miles. But if you take your road-trip­ping seri­ous­ly, you’ve got to go to anoth­er con­ti­nent entire­ly.

Such is the con­clu­sion to be drawn from the Half as Inter­est­ing video above, which finds the longest dri­vable dis­tance on Earth. “The North Amer­i­can road sys­tem goes as far as Prud­hoe Bay in Canada’s Cana­da, Alas­ka, and as far south as Yav­iza in Pana­ma,” says the video’s cre­ator Sam Den­by, “but this only clocks in at 7,500 miles.”

That may require six straight days of dri­ving, but it does­n’t set any records. A route from south­ern Africa and east Asia may seem promis­ing, but they can’t be dri­ven with­out pass­ing through west­ern Europe. That requires pas­sage across the Mediter­ranean on a fer­ry, which — for the true road-trip­per — taints the puri­ty of the endeav­or.

Start­ing in Europe, then, you should begin in Sagres, Por­tu­gal, “the most extreme point on the con­tigu­ous road net­work.” From there, you can dri­ve as far east as “the banks of the Aldan Riv­er in Rus­sia,” a dis­tance of 8,437 miles. But wait, there’s longer: you could keep going to Khasan, “the only Russ­ian town to bor­der North Korea,” and bring the mileage up to 8,726, thus com­plet­ing “the longest direct dri­ving route in the world.” If you go ped­al-to-the-met­al (to the extent pos­si­ble while observ­ing local speed lim­its, any­way) it will take six days and 19 hours — book­end­ed, ide­al­ly, by one meal of cat­a­plana and anoth­er of Khasan oys­ters.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­en­tists Fig­ure Out What’s the Longest Dis­tance You Could Sail at Sea With­out Hit­ting Land

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ani­mat­ed Maps Reveal the True Size of Coun­tries (and Show How Tra­di­tion­al Maps Dis­tort Our World)

Why Route 66 Became America’s Most Famous Road

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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You Can Buy Historic Italian Houses for €1 — But What’s the Catch?

in Architecture, Business, Travel | July 12th, 2024

From Abruz­zo to Verge­moli, small Ital­ian towns and vil­lages have recent­ly been mak­ing their his­toric homes avail­able for pur­chase for as low as €1. Giv­en the pic­turesque nature of many of these places, such offers have proven prac­ti­cal­ly irre­sistible to for­eign buy­ers who’ve made their mon­ey and are look­ing to escape the big-city rat race, or even those sim­ply prone to Under the Tus­can Sun-type fan­tasies. But this is, of course, more than just a mat­ter of wiring a sin­gle Euro and jet­ting off to a life of rus­tic beau­ty and sim­plic­i­ty. As shown in these videos from Explained with Dom and Insid­er News, you’ve got to put much more mon­ey into the acqui­si­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of these hous­es, not to men­tion the sweat equi­ty involved.

“As young Ital­ians increas­ing­ly migrate to the city” — if not to oth­er coun­tries entire­ly — “and choose cos­mopoli­tan jobs over rur­al and com­mu­ni­ty voca­tions, many of Italy’s pret­ti­est remote vil­lages are becom­ing aban­doned, with tiny, age­ing pop­u­la­tions that are begin­ning to die off,” write the Inde­pen­dent’s Lucy Thack­ray.

“Some elder­ly Ital­ians have found them­selves with no one to leave their house to, bequeath­ing it instead to the local author­i­ties, who have to decide what to do with it, while some younger cit­i­zens have inher­it­ed prop­er­ties in areas they have no inten­tion of mov­ing to.” And so “around 25 Ital­ian munic­i­pal­i­ties are mak­ing prospec­tive home­own­ers an offer they can’t refuse,” though cer­tain con­di­tions do apply.

Old and less than immac­u­late­ly main­tained on the whole, these hous­es tend to require ren­o­va­tions “in the region of €20,000–50,000 depend­ing on the size of the prop­er­ty.” And the author­i­ties do make sure you’ll actu­al­ly per­form the work: “new own­ers are required to sub­mit details of a ren­o­va­tion project with­in two to 12 months of pur­chase (depend­ing on the loca­tion), start work with­in one year, and com­plete it with­in the next three.” Add on all the addi­tion­al (and often unex­pect­ed) fees, and even a best-case sce­nario starts to look pricey. Still, if you’re total­ly com­mit­ted to reha­bil­i­tat­ing a ven­er­a­ble Ital­ian home — and not just to rent it out to vaca­tion­ers, which some areas explic­it­ly pro­hib­it — it might sound like a fair enough deal.

One thing is cer­tain: any­one look­ing to buy into one of Italy’s cheap-house schemes (at a price of €1 or oth­er­wise) should go in with not just suf­fi­cient knowl­edge of domes­tic archi­tec­ture and remod­el­ing, but also a famil­iar­i­ty with Ital­ian ways of doing busi­ness — which have done their part to con­tribute to the so-called “Ital­ian dis­ease” that has sad­dled the coun­try with decades of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, but aren’t like­ly to change any time soon. And above all, it should go with­out say­ing that the first step of act­ing on a desire to play a part in bring­ing one of Italy’s “ghost towns” back to life is learn­ing the Ital­ian lan­guage — a task you can start right here on Open Cul­ture. Buona for­tu­na to you.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Explor­ing the Great­est of Italy’s 6,000 Ghost Towns: Take a Tour of Cra­co, Italy

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan — Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes–As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

Free Ital­ian Lessons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Day in Tokyo: A 1968 Film Captures a City Reborn 23 Years After Its Destruction

in History, Travel | March 21st, 2024

Dur­ing World War II, Tokyo sus­tained heavy dam­age, espe­cial­ly with the bomb­ings con­duct­ed by the U.S. mil­i­tary in March 1945. Known as Oper­a­tion Meet­ing­house, US air raids destroyed 16 square miles in cen­tral Tokyo, leav­ing 100,000 civil­ians dead and one mil­lion home­less. Tokyo did­n’t recov­er quick­ly. It took until the 1950s for recon­struc­tion to real­ly gain momen­tum. But gain momen­tum it did. By 1964, Tokyo found itself large­ly rebuilt, mod­ern­ized, and ready to host the Olympics. That brings us to the 1968 film above, A Day in Tokyo, cre­at­ed by the Japan Nation­al Tourism Orga­ni­za­tion (JNTO) to pro­mote tourism in the rebuilt city.

The web­site Japan­ese Nos­tal­gic Car sets the scene:

The year 1968 was a spe­cial time for Japan. It was emerg­ing as a mod­ern coun­try. The Tokyo Olympics had just been held a few years pri­or. Bul­let trains, high-speed express­ways, and col­or tele­vi­sion broad­casts were spread­ing through­out the land. The year before saw the Toy­ota 2000GT and Maz­da Cos­mo Sport, Japan’s con­tem­po­rary sports cars, debut. It must have been incred­i­bly excit­ing.

In the 23-minute film above, you can revis­it this moment of trans­for­ma­tion and renew­al, when Tokyo—as the film’s nar­ra­tor put it—combined the best of new and old. Here, in the “con­stant meta­bol­ic cycle of destruc­tion and cre­ation, Tokyo pro­gress­es at a dizzy­ing pace.” And it’s a sight to behold. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

Behold the Unique Beau­ty of Japan’s Artis­tic Man­hole Cov­ers

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A Cultural Tour of Istanbul, Where the Art and History of Three Great Empires Come Together

in Art, History, Travel | February 7th, 2024

Imag­ine a grand tour of Euro­pean muse­ums, and a fair few des­ti­na­tions come right to mind: the Rijksmu­se­um, the Pra­do, the Uffizi Gallery, the Lou­vre. These insti­tu­tions alone could take years to expe­ri­ence ful­ly, but it would be an incom­plete jour­ney that did­n’t ven­ture far­ther east — much far­ther east, in the view of Great Art Explained cre­ator James Payne. In his lat­est Great Art Cities video, he makes the case for Istan­bul, adduc­ing such both artis­ti­cal­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly rich sites as the İst­anb­ul Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­um, the Basil­i­ca Cis­tern, the Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, Istan­bul Mod­ern, and of course — as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — the unig­nor­able Hagia Sophia.

Payne intro­duces Istan­bul as hav­ing been “the cap­i­tal of three great empires, Roman, Byzan­tine, and Ottoman.” In the con­ti­nent-strad­dling metrop­o­lis as it is today, “both ancient and mod­ern art blend ele­ments from Europe, Asia, and the Mid­dle East, reflect­ing its geo­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal posi­tion­ing as a bridge between the East and the West.”

The works on dis­play in the city con­sti­tute “a visu­al embod­i­ment of its com­plex his­to­ry,” from the Hel­lenis­tic to the Roman to the Islam­ic to the styles and media of the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies, with all of which “mod­ern-day Turkey is now cre­at­ing its own artis­tic lega­cy.”

That lega­cy is also deeply root­ed in the past. Vis­it the Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­um and you can see the Alexan­der Sar­coph­a­gus from the fourth cen­tu­ry BC, whose aston­ish­ing­ly detailed carv­ings include “the only exist­ing depic­tion of Alexan­der the Great cre­at­ed dur­ing his life­time.” The under­ground Basil­i­ca Cis­tern, built in the sixth cen­tu­ry, counts as much as a large-scale work of Byzan­tine art as it does a large-scale work of Byzan­tine engi­neer­ing. From there, it’s a short tram ride on the Gala­ta Bridge across the Gold­en Horn to the brand-new, Ren­zo Piano-designed Istan­bul Mod­ern, which has paint­ings by Cihat Burak, Fahrel­nis­sa Zeid, Bedri Baykam. You may not know those names now, but if you view their work in the unique cul­tur­al con­text of Istan­bul — in which so many eras and civ­i­liza­tions are man­i­fest — you’ll nev­er for­get them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ancient World Comes to Life in an Ani­ma­tion Fea­tur­ing Istanbul’s Islam­ic, Ottoman, Greek & Byzan­tine Art

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

Watch Dig­i­tal Dancers Elec­tri­fy the Streets of Istan­bul

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

How Lon­dini­um Became Lon­don, Lute­tia Became Paris, and Oth­er Roman Cities Got Their Mod­ern Names

Great Art Cities: Vis­it the Fas­ci­nat­ing, Less­er-Known Muse­ums of Lon­don & Paris

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Cardboard Bernini: An Artist Spends 4 Years Building a Giant Cardboard Fountain Inspired by the Baroque Sculptor Bernini, Only to Let It Dissolve in the Rain

in Art, Life, Museums, Travel | January 24th, 2024

From the Tri­ton Foun­tain in the Piaz­za Bar­beri­ni to the Foun­tain of the Four Rivers in Piaz­za Navona, sculp­tor Gian Loren­zo Berni­ni’s glo­ri­ous pub­lic foun­tains have impressed vis­i­tors to Rome for cen­turies.

Berni­ni angled for immoral­i­ty when carv­ing his Baroque mas­ter­pieces from mar­ble.

Image by Trdinfl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Eter­ni­ty occu­pied artist James Grashow’s mind, too, through­out four years of toil on his Cor­ru­gat­ed Foun­tain, a mas­ter­piece of planned obso­les­cence.

“All artists talk about process”, he rumi­nates in an out­take from Olympia Stone’s doc­u­men­tary, The Card­board Berni­ni, “but the process that they talk about is always from begin­ning to fin­ish:

Nobody real­ly talks about full term process to the end, to the destruc­tion, to the dis­so­lu­tion of a piece. Every­thing dis­solves in an eter­ni­ty. I’d like to speak to that.

He picked the right medi­um for such a med­i­ta­tion — cor­ru­gat­ed card­board, sourced from the Dan­bury Square Box Com­pa­ny. (The founders chose its name in 1906 to alert the local hat­ting indus­try that they did not traf­fic in round hat box­es.)

Grashow chal­lenged him­self to make some­thing with card­board and hot glue that would “out­shine” Berni­ni before it was sac­ri­ficed to the ele­ments:

Water and card­board can­not exist togeth­er.  The idea of a paper foun­tain is impos­si­ble, an oxy­moron that speaks to the human dilem­ma. I want­ed to make some­thing hero­ic in its con­cept and exe­cu­tion with full aware­ness of its poet­ic absur­di­ty. I want­ed to try to make some­thing eter­nal out of card­board… the Foun­tain was an irre­sistible project for me.

The doc­u­men­tary catch­es a mix of emo­tions as his metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed Baroque fig­ures — nymphs, hors­es, dol­phins, Posei­don — are posi­tioned for destruc­tion on the grounds of the Aldrich Con­tem­po­rary Art Muse­um.

A young boy at the exhibition’s open­ing is untrou­bled by the sculpture’s impend­ing fate:

I think it’s cool, coz it’s made out of trees and it’s return­ing to mush…or what­ev­er you want to call it.

His bud­dy finds it hard to share his enthu­si­asm, ges­tur­ing help­less­ly toward the mon­u­men­tal work, his voice trail­ing off as he remarks, “I don’t see why you would want that to…”

An adult vis­i­tor unashamed­ly reveals that she had been active­ly root­ing for rain.

When a storm does reduce the sculp­ture to an Ozy­man­di­an tableau a short while lat­er, Grashow sus­pects the project was ulti­mate­ly a self por­trait, “full of blus­ter and brava­do, hol­low and melan­choly at its core, doomed from the start, and search­ing for beau­ty in all of the sad­ness.”

Then he and a helper cart what’s left off to a wait­ing dump­ster.

His daugh­ter, Rab­bi Zoë Klein, likens the Cor­ru­gat­ed Fountain’s imper­ma­nence to the sand man­dalas Tibetan monks spend months cre­at­ing, then sweep away with lit­tle fan­fare:

…the art is about just the gift of cre­ation, that we have this abil­i­ty to cre­ate, that we cel­e­brate that, not that we can con­quer time, but rather we can make the most of the time we have by mak­ing it beau­ti­ful and mean­ing­ful, liv­ing up to our poten­tial..

Grashow speaks ten­der­ly of the ephemer­al mate­r­i­al he uses fre­quent­ly in his work:

It’s so grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to become some­thing, because it knows it’s going to be trash.

Watch The Card­board Berni­ni here.

See more of James Grashow’s card­board works here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Design­er Cre­ates Origa­mi Card­board Tents to Shel­ter the Home­less from the Win­ter Cold

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man 1st Graders in Cute Card­board Robot Cos­tumes

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ten Magnificent Historical Libraries (That You Can Still Visit Today)

in Architecture, Books, Travel | January 11th, 2024

When we first trav­el some­where, we see noth­ing quite so clear­ly as the usu­al cat­e­gories of tourist des­ti­na­tion: the mon­u­ments, the muse­ums, the restau­rants. Take one step deep­er, and we find our­selves in places like cafés and book­stores, the lat­ter espe­cial­ly hav­ing explod­ed in touris­tic appeal over the past few years. Take Por­to’s grand Livraria Lel­lo, which bills itself as “the most beau­ti­ful book­store in the world” — and has arguably done so too suc­cess­ful­ly, hav­ing drawn crowds large enough to neces­si­tate a cov­er charge. Per­haps we’d have a rich­er expe­ri­ence if we spent less time in the livrarias and more in the bib­liote­cas.

That, in any case, is the impres­sion giv­en by the Kings and Things video above, which presents “Ten Mag­nif­i­cent His­tor­i­cal Libraries,” two of them locat­ed in Por­tu­gal. Stand­ing on a hill­top over­look­ing Coim­bra, the Bib­liote­ca Joan­i­na “is sump­tu­ous­ly dec­o­rat­ed in Baroque fash­ion,” and “con­tains intri­cate­ly carved fur­ni­ture and book­shelves made of exot­ic woods as well as ivory, and is embell­ished with cold and chi­nois­erie motif.” As for the cen­turies-old vol­umes on those shelves, they remain in excel­lent con­di­tion thanks to the Bib­liote­ca Joan­i­na’s being one of only two libraries equipped with “a colony of bats to pro­tect the books from insects.”

The oth­er is in Lis­bon’s, Mafra Palace, which “con­tains what is arguably one of the world’s most beau­ti­ful libraries.” Com­plet­ed in 1755, it’s decked out with book­shelves “dec­o­rat­ed in the Roco­co style.” The stretch of the aes­thet­ic spec­trum between Baroque and Roco­co dom­i­nates this video, all of its libraries hav­ing been built in the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth cen­turies. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, most of them are in the Old World, from the Saint Gall Abbey in Switzer­land to the Library of Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin to the Nation­al Library of France (the Riche­lieu site in the thir­teenth arrondisse­ment, not the mod­ern François-Mit­ter­rand Site decried in W. G. Sebald’s Auster­litz).

Instra­gram­ma­ble though they may have become in this day and age, these ven­er­a­ble libraries all — unlike many tourist-spot book­stores, where you can’t hear your­self think for all the Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tions going on around you — encour­age the spend­ing of not mon­ey but time. They wel­come the trav­el­er look­ing not sim­ply to hit twen­ty cap­i­tals in a dozen days, but to build a long-term rela­tion­ship with a place. And not just the trav­el­er in Europe: the video also includes a des­ti­na­tion in the Unit­ed States, the “cathe­dral of books” that is Bal­ti­more’s George Peabody Library. The true con­nois­seur will, of course, fol­low a vis­it to that august insti­tu­tion by tak­ing the Sil­ver Line north to hit up Nor­mals Books & Records.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

What Was Actu­al­ly Lost When the Library of Alexan­dria Burned?

The Last Book­store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Per­se­ver­ance & the Love of Books

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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