Architecture of Abandonment


SOUND PRODUCTION, ESSAY & AI VISUALIZATION
JUNE 3, 2026













A while ago, I came across an Instagram reel that read something like: there was a moment in time where you logged off MSN and never returned.

That sentence made me feel somewhat sentimental, and it has stuck with me. It has made me think about the early 00’s and about all the online spaces we left behind without even noticing. Chatrooms, forums, websites and servers that, possibly, continued to exist long after we stopped visiting them. Their architecture remains intact, but the conversations and the life shaping it has disappeared and moved elsewhere. They’ve become abandoned architectures. 

And there is something strange and unsettling about these spaces – frozen in time. Unlike physical ruins, they don’t weather or decay, but remain preserved in an endless present – waiting for visitors who will never return. Looking back at these, they almost feel like memories or dreams that somehow have become actual places. 

I think this is partly why I’m drawn to the concept of liminal spaces – an emerging horror genre in games, films and internet culture. Empty corridors, waiting rooms, bathrooms, metro stations. All these are environments designed for movement, interaction and occupation, but when they suddenly are detached from their purpose and logical context they begin to feel like suspensions between reality and dream. 











This photo series begins with a public bathroom I photographed back in 2024. Illuminated by a surreal blue light, the room already carried something of this dreamlike atmosphere. Using the image of the bathroom as a point of departure, I began reimagining this particular room through a series of different environments, all typically defined within the idea of liminal spaces. I wanted to let the initial room transform into a waiting room, an office, a metro station, a wellness centre, and let each image become a variation on the same question: what exactly creates the feeling we associate with liminal space?

What fascinates me is that the answer actually seems to lie less in the architecture itself than in what is missing from it. These spaces and environments offer enough reality to orient us, but not enough to settle us. They remain incomplete which leaves space for questions and for the imagination to spiral. 

As such, I think these abandoned architectures stretches further in the mind than it does in the photograph as the images sort of exceed their own visual boundaries. Thespaces become psychologically larger than they actually are.