Look What Moved In (8 Photos)

November 15, 2026

By Vidar

Unexpected occupants

The sand is real. So is the very narrow house standing inside a gallery. The lion, rooster and oversized faces are paint. These eight spaces have acquired some unexpected occupants.

🦁 Lion in an Abandoned Building — By SCAF

The lion’s paws seem to sit on the dusty floor while its body is painted on the wall behind. SCAF, a self-taught French artist, used the building’s surfaces to make a flat painting look like an animal blocking the passage. The person beside it supplies the scale.

More: SCAF’s lion

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🌿 “The Glasshouse” from TIME — By RONE in Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺

RONE built this glasshouse installation inside the long-unused third-floor wing of Flinders Street Station. A woman’s portrait fills the far wall, framed by glass panes and climbing plants. The glasshouse and its plants were built for TIME, not found there.

💡 Place Fact: The Glasshouse filled the station’s former ballroom, part of a third floor that for decades hosted dance classes and sporting clubs. More than 120 creatives and professionals worked on TIME.

More: The Glasshouse and The Clock Room

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🛏️ “HOME” — By La rouille

An exposed mattress lies amid fallen plaster and debris. Above it, a face painted by the French artist La rouille seems to emerge from the stains on the wall. He keeps the colors close to those of the room, so the portrait almost looks like something the building left behind.

More: Another view of HOME

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🐓 Giant Rooster — By Odeith

Odeith’s rooster occupies a corner of concrete-block walls. Its tail spreads across one wall while its chest pushes forward from the other. Even standing on a chair, the person beside it does not reach the red comb.

💡 Artist Fact: Odeith was born in 1976 in Damaia, Portugal, and first picked up a spray can in the mid-1980s. Since 2005 he has been internationally recognized for his anamorphic work, pieces painted to read correctly from one viewpoint.

📷 Photo: 1904manuel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped.

More: More illusions by Odeith

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🃏 “I Bet Only on One Card” — By JW17 in Prague, Czechia 🇨🇿

A woman raises the ace of spades inside a tall, damaged room. JW17, a muralist from Hradec Králové who lives in Prague and likes to paint in abandoned buildings, set her within the rough concrete frame below the upper window. The empty openings and pale walls leave the figure alone with her card.

More: Three views of I Bet Only on One Card

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⏳ Sand-Filled House — Kolmanskop, Namibia 🇳🇦

Sand slopes through one doorway and into the next in this house at Kolmanskop, a former diamond-mining town in Namibia. The blue paint and wooden doorframes are still there; the floor is gone under the dunes.

💡 History Fact: The town grew after railway worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond here in 1908. At its height Kolmanskop had an ice factory and a hospital with the first X-ray station in the southern hemisphere; it was finally abandoned in 1956.

📷 Photo: Xenia Ivanoff Erb / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), cropped.

📏 “Narrow House” — By Erwin Wurm in Dornbirn, Austria 🇦🇹

A house has moved inside another building. For his 2011 exhibition at Kunstraum Dornbirn, Erwin Wurm installed a version of his parents’ home reduced to 1.3 meters wide. The pitched roof and shuttered windows are all there; the hall around it makes the house look thinner still.

📷 Photo: Thomas Link / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

More: Houses in the Wrong Place

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🎭 “The Mask” — By DavidL in Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

A green grin and a broad yellow hat fill the wall beside the staircase. DavidL painted the Mask in an abandoned house, letting the face spread across the worn plaster. The small dog below has rather less to say.

More: The Mask by DavidL

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