An updated church

I try to avoid reposting a feature I saw on another blog, I'd prefer to just pin an inspiring photo onto Pinterest. But sometimes nothing will do but repost because everyone must see it.

This is the church from a convent in Spain that had been sacked in 1835 (the poor nuns!) and left to fall into decay. The city decided to contract the architect David Closes to transform the romantic ruins into a cultural arts center. Instead of reconstructing the original, the architects chose to highlight the intersection between original and contemporary.

Ruins are history, the United States has so few domiciles deshabillé like this, except ghost towns which are so far in nowhere. I want crumbling stone around me, with high plaster ceilings and look at how the cords of the lights disappear into the plaster... like piercings


All images courtesy David Closes, found via The Fox Is Black