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Tag: architecture

morning computer ruin value

Published March 27, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Mandy Barker’s cyanotypes of junk found in water.

Brutalist-style hilltop home intended to look like an ancient ruin.

(Which really just summons Albert Speer and “ruin value” to my mind, oops)

A team of Egyptian-American archaeologists has uncovered the tomb of an unknown king who reigned over the region of Abydos in southern Egypt 3,600 years ago.

Luxury real estate goes off-grid. Ruins in waiting.

I used to ride the train past the Olympic stadium in Stratford quite often, and would frequently imagine it repurposed as a post-apocalyptic ritual space, a giant radio dish for praying to the space gods and a complicated gallows for mass executions.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

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morning computer mirrored

Published March 4, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Boldizar Senteski.

Mirrored Daughters:

‘Mirror Ascend’ brings the record full circle. This time, however, the ominous drones have been replaced with a simple guitar melody and distant peals of saxophone. It’s a moment of unabashed beauty that feels like clouds parting after a storm. By the end of this evocatively autumnal album, Mirrored Daughters have wandered deep into the forest, but are finally out of the woods.

Mirrored atrium:

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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Polar Nuclear Lighthouses

Published July 10, 2024 by Warren Ellis

This is quite amazing to me. Never heard of these before. The great northern coast of Russia is inside the Arctic Circle, and the shoreline is hundreds of miles from civilisation almost the whole way along. Lighthouses were required for the coast, because it’s a handy passage but it spends a hundred days of the year in near-permanent night. The problems were that they’d be miles from anywhere, and couldn’t realistically be supplied or crewed.

So the Russians erected autonomous nuclear-powered lighthouses. Which worked great, until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, they probably would have been fine after that, if people hadn’t looted them for copper and anything else that looked like it wasn’t nailed down too hard. Including, apparently, reactor shielding.

So many of these great polar nuclear lighthouses are now radioactive deadzones. I would tend to doubt that the one in this fantastic series of pictures on EnglishRussia is one of them. But, honestly, you never know, abandoned-site explorers can be a little on the mental side. Anyway. 

(originally written January 2009)

CONNECTED:

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morning computer 12sep23

Published September 12, 2023 by Warren Ellis

More a note to self: Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU is about to go into test screenings. So details will leak. I’m interested in this, because NOSFERATU is a brave and crazy thing to attempt, and I like that.

I’ve seen trailers, and, I think, a clip or teaser, for Timm Kroger’s THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, and here’s a review, in which this caught my eye:

It’s like Carol Reed shooting the best Philip K. Dick/Agatha Christie collaboration.

Speaking of PKD, the prologue – the German TV interview – also seems indirectly inspired by an incident in the writer’s career. While attending a conference in which Dick was to receive the critical attention for which he had yearned for so many years, he blew it all by claiming his books were inspired by interstellar communications. Whether this was a sincerely held belief is open to interpretation, but it does show the danger of playing with reality (and amphetamines, in legendary doses).

I’m hoping that MUBI gets it.

The Norwegian series THE ARCHITECT sounds great, and here’s a piece on its design choices. This image gave me strong WORLD ON A WIRE vibes for some reason.

The trailer is terrific.

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