Old objects and overlooked spaces given surprising new lives.
9 stories · Latest first
Inside an old gas holder in Oberhausen, Germany, a steel disc that once rode up and down with the gas now divides an exhibition hall into two levels.
Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany · 26 September 2008. Photo: GuidoR · CC BY-SA 3.0. Original image unchanged; distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Buenos Aires turned a grand performance hall into a bookstore. Look past the shelves and the building’s earlier life is still waiting onstage.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires, Argentina · 12 February 2011. Photo: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo · CC BY 2.0. Original image unchanged; displayed proportionally.
At Duisburg’s former ironworks, a gas holder became a deep diving basin. Its industrial shell now surrounds a very different kind of activity.
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, Germany · 11 September 2017. Photo: dronepicr · CC BY 2.0. Original image unchanged; displayed proportionally.
The planes left Tempelhof, but the long strips of tarmac stayed. Their second life includes skating, community gardens and space for wildlife.
Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin · 5 May 2024. Photo: Leonhard Lenz · CC0 1.0. Wikimedia-provided 1280px proportional preview; no crop or other edits.
Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCAA did more than move art into an old silo. Its central hall cuts through the structure that once held grain.
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa · Capture date not confirmed; source published 2025-06-02. Photo: lumoplank · CC0 1.0. Source photograph retained without further edits; displayed proportionally.
The High Line’s narrow green corridor follows an elevated railway built for deliveries. Its long, awkward shape became the point of the transformation.
High Line, Manhattan, New York City, USA; viewed from the Whitney Museum · 2018-09-03. Photo: Ellywa · CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia-supplied 1280px proportional resize; no crop or further edits by us. Image remains CC BY-SA 4.0.
London’s Tate Modern inherited its chimney from a power station. The conversion kept more than a memorable outline.
Bankside, London, United Kingdom · 2018-03-22. Photo: Acabashi · CC BY-SA 4.0. Photographer’s supplied lens-corrected and optimized version, reproduced without further editing. Image remains available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Vienna kept the enormous brick shells. The surprising part of the conversion is how homes found daylight inside them.
Simmering, Vienna, Austria · 2015-08-15. Photo: C.Stadler/Bwag · CC BY-SA 4.0. Supplied image version reproduced without further editing.
A retired red kiosk became a place to borrow and swap books. In Wonersh, homemade shelves and a volunteer rota show what it takes to give a phone box a second life.
Whitwell, June 2017; a separate example from Wonersh. Photo: Mypix · CC BY-SA 4.0. Original image, unchanged.
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