architectural | | Kenneth Benjamin Reed

Kubrick’s Breezeway

Stanley Kubrick was all about the single-point perspective.

This sort of framing really pulls you into his story… kind of like hearing a decommissioned (and likely insane) HAL9000 self-actualizing computer sing for you:

HAL: I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.

Dave Bowman: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.

HAL: It’s called “Daisy.”

[sings while slowing down]

HAL: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

This building, oh… this crazy old building.

It’s been (so very slowly) deconstructed, and so isn’t viewable at all any more. But for years after it was abandoned, the entire compound just slowly fell apart out in the woods.

For years it was visited by a few thrillseekers, transients, a number of really young children (I know, right?) and a few older folk that remember the compound’s original stories: as the Callahan Center, a branch of Dammasch State Hospital (1883-2012).

If I remember correctly, Dammasch hospital was built to be be available as an emergency nuclear decontamination facility/hospital if there ever was a localized nuclear attack. There were these tunnels that stretched from Dammasch hospital’s basement to the Living Enrichment Center. Supposedly, these tunnels even led to an underground “food cache”.

I’ve seen the entrance to this tunnel system, but it had been filled in/collapsed. Hey I’m a photographer, not a miner.

I think the original plan for the LEC’s remains was to just let nature do most of the deconstruction, as it sat adrift in the woods for almost a decade… but let’s face it, that Brutalist design doesn’t really come down on it’s own.

On quiet days it really had some beautiful, if not totally abandoned and somewhat creepy, moments. RIP, LEC.

Right Angles

Dirt Surfing

This old abandoned house looks like it’s surfing on the soft dirt swell beneath it.

Grain Elevator

One of the more recent grain elevators out in Eastern Oregon. When I say recent, I mean less than one hundred or so years old. The really old ones were made out of wood, and were absolute behemoths. These metal-sided containers are still pretty massive, but not nearly as cool. Hey, I’ll take a photo of it for the archives though.

The more the merrier; if you ever come across a wooden grain elevator, let me know!