• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The 'Eternal' Brick & Other Anomalous Urban Objects

The colour does indicate some use for the emergency services, but I don't know if hydrants pop up overnight?
 
It could be a high security storage safe used by one of the emergency services, but I'd have thought it would be bolted down.
 
uair im thinking it is a safety cover over some exposed electrical work or similar ... perhaps with a piece of equipment or apparatus temporarily in place underneath ... there is a grey utilities box on the building pretty much behind and it looks like there could be some renovation work going on ...
 
also has the letters VGOI on the side so depending which country or area we are in this could be fathomed i feel
 
There seems to be a name for many of these phenomena:
Thomassons

theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/05/useless-and-defunct-city-objects-are-named-thomassons/2075/
Link is dead. Here is the introductory text from the MIA webpage:
Useless and Defunct City Objects Should Be Called... 'Thomassons'

In an architectural jungle as large as a city there are bound to be a few... mistakes.

We're talking about doors hovering on the exterior second floor of a building without staircases. If you were to use it, you'd sprain both ankles falling to the ground. Or a big brick pedestal for a statue that never got put up. Or a flight of stairs leading into a blank wall. ...

In this day and age, we might refer to these glitches in the city matrix as Urban FAILS. But Japanese artist Genpei Akasegawa has been thinking about such objects for more than 30 years, and has already given them a name. They're called "Thomassons," and you can find a delightful collection of them in Akasegawa's 1985 book, Hyperart: Thomasson, recently translated into English.

A Thomasson is any kind of "useless and defunct object attached to someone's property and aesthetically maintained," according to Akasegawa's definition. A publisher's blurb states that this includes the "doorknob in a wall without a door, that driveway leading into an unbroken fence, that strange concrete... thing sprouting out of your sidewalk with no discernible purpose." Learn more about what makes a Thomasson in the video below, which includes quixotic footage of real-life examples like a stairway ending in a window.

The artist, who's birth name is Katsuhiko Akasegawa, picked the word in tribute to Gary Thomasson, an American baseball player who whiffed on so many balls during his 1980s stint with the Yomiuri Giants that the Japanese media took to calling him the "Electric Fan" or "Giant Human Fan." Akasegawa was wowed by the innate conundrum of Gary Thomasson, who (according to the video) "had a fully formed body and yet served no purpose to the world." Interestingly enough, the term has been repurposed by author William Gibson in the sci-fi tome Virtual Light to denote a "useless and inexplicable monument."

Once you know about Thomassons, it's impossible not to think about them while strolling down the block. An observant spotter can catch one or two on the daily commute to work. ...
Click to expand...
SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012110...funct-city-objects-are-named-thomassons/2075/

I interpret thos as minor versions of the:
Grands Travaux Inutiles
or the: "monumentally failed works"

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grands_travaux_inutiles
 
Last edited by a moderator:
in this particular instance until we know what it does/did/doesnt do we cant know how useless it is
 
What a great thread, I was reading about a guy in my city who takes pictures of manhole covers. I had no idea how many there are, and just how much is going on under the street. Alot of our big city infrastructure is unknown to most people, as it becomes outdated very few people will even know its purpose.
On a semi related note i almost got electrocuted yesterday by pushing a poorly wired crosswalk button. Worst zap ever i could hear it and it hurt. Would have been Fortean death for sure. My friends would for sure tell media "we told him to get a car, thats what he gets for walking everywhere" I guess the moral of the story is to be careful of touching anything you dont know what its purpose is.
 
Highway engineers have removed the crash barrier and if I'm viewing the right lamp post remodeled the cycle lane and introduced kerbdrains. So the 'armour' could be to protect the lamp post against impact. But it does look excessive, if a car hit it I think it would be Lamp Post 1 Car 0.
 
A variation on the "shoe tree". Hope this becomes a trend too:

14069784590_092dc50e6a_z_d.jpg
 
Just guessing about that...but it's probably a water-butt set up to allow forest animals such as deer to have a drink.
 
Behind the Ajax stadium in Amsterdam there's a bicycle path going from nowhere to nowhere under a viaduct:
path.jpg
 
Nice story here:
https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-...aB5fvG6-xg4o-zf-cpOfCWds-H1txT1pKFKkCmNAGDOkU

The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge
Why is this bridge here?

This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport. It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It's not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn't connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built?
 
uair01 said:
Nice story here:
https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-...aB5fvG6-xg4o-zf-cpOfCWds-H1txT1pKFKkCmNAGDOkU

The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge
Why is this bridge here?

This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport. It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It's not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn't connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built?
Click to expand...
Like the article says, probably built in anticipation of future development that never happened.

(Good thread, despite what some of the early posters said about it/you!)
 
We have a bridge here that puzzles a lot of people.
(It was put in when the motorway was built, to hopefully, one day, carry a restored canal);
M6toll.png
 
Ha, you made me search for new information. This is nice:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperart_Thomasson

And many sites copy each other's pictures, but here I see some new ones:

https://www.messynessychic.com/2017/01/18/the-inexplicably-fascinating-secret-world-of-thomassons/

And there is Reddit of course - lots of fun there:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thomassons/?rdt=52136

1693677713290.png

1693677759993.png

The largest Thomasson? The Whitney Block Tower - a 16-storey tower in Toronto that is maintained, but abandoned in the 1960s.

1693677866768.png
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top