Kirkbride Buildings
Documentation of the vast Victorian asylums built to one architectural theory of curing madness, most now empty or demolished.
Opens in a new tab. We do not control this site and it may have changed since we catalogued it.
How to get the most from it
Kirkbride Buildings sits in Liminal Spaces under Weird, filed as coffee break.
- Set aside five to fifteen minutes and give it your proper attention.
- It works on a phone or a desktop, so open it on whatever is nearest.
- It works with the sound off, so it is fine on a train or in a quiet office.
- No account needed — you can start without signing up.
- Go in expecting something unsettling, beautiful and brainy.
About this category: Photographs of places with nobody in them: dead malls, empty pools, corridors at 3am. An aesthetic that has no right to be this affecting.
Good for
- Filling a coffee break properly
- A little creeping unease
- Looking at something lovely
- Giving your brain a workout
- A quiet break at your desk
- Killing time on your phone
- Trying it with zero commitment
Kirkbride Buildings: quick answers
Is Kirkbride Buildings free?
Yes. Kirkbride Buildings is free to use and needs no account.
Do I need an account to use Kirkbride Buildings?
No. You can use Kirkbride Buildings without signing up for anything.
Does Kirkbride Buildings work on a phone?
Yes. Kirkbride Buildings works on phones as well as desktop browsers.
Is Kirkbride Buildings safe for work?
Yes, we file it as safe for work. It also works muted.
How long does Kirkbride Buildings take?
We file it as "Coffee break": Five to fifteen minutes of proper attention.
More in Liminal Spaces
All 13 in Liminal SpacesRetail history blog named after the ghost outline a shop sign leaves behind, mapping the slow decline of the American mall.
- 10 min
Vintage photographs of shopping centres in their fountains-and-ferns prime, scanned from postcards and other people's family albums.
- 10 min
Twenty years of large-format photography inside abandoned asylums, power stations and factories, catalogued site by site.
- 1 hr+
- Desktop
Photographs of corridors, swimming pools and hotel lobbies with nobody in them, which is far more affecting than that sounds.
- 10 min
Same mood: unsettling
All unsettling sitesEnter your birthday and watch a live tally of the heartbeats, blinks and steps you have got through so far.
- <1 min
Analogue horror shaped like a small-town TV station's broadcast archive, including the night it advised everyone to look up.
- 10 min
- Sound on
The looser, stranger sibling of the main lost media wiki, with more speculation and considerably more unresolved threads.
- 1 hr+
MIT's trolley problem for driverless cars: decide who the car kills, thirteen times over, then read your own bias summarised back.
- 10 min
Keep exploring
Category
Time and mood
Have a site of your own? Suggest it for Detour or browse the AltFTool backlinks hub.