We went back the next year and everything was still in place, the TV powered on, but everything covered with dust.
I assume someone (a lazy employee?) was using this place to relax, but wanted to check if someone was coming up. Maybe that employee was fired without anyone ever discovering his hidden refuge.
Townsend (the artist) was ultimately caught, but I figure there must be thousand of these hidden spaces scattered in every big buildings, and we will never hear about them.
Most likely. This story reminds me that as a kid in the 90's we figured out that the walls under the bottom floor of every building in the neighborhood led to a hollow space big enough to be called a small room.
It didn't take long for most blocks to have a hole in them with a sheet of plywood to hide the easy access.
I was lucky that the one in my friend's block was mostly occupied by other kids and had pastel drawings on all the walls. Rumor had it that some of the other blocks were used for less reputable reasons.
I always wondered what happened to those spaces. I tried to go there once, but the buildings now have locked doors.
Had we been adults, it would have been very easy to add furniture and perhaps even electricity.
Look up the term "phrogging". There's a whole culture of people dedicated to living undetected in places where they're not supposed to.
I'll be stuff like that is all over the place.
But now I keep reading about secret servants' passages in stately homes, hotels, and the like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Adventures_of_Kava...
This sort of thing happens more often than most people relize. The maintenance staff at 311 South Wacker in Chicago set up a makeshift basketball court in the empty mechanical space on the 69th floor.
> It is important to me that you know that I have a great deal of respect for the work you do and I am very sorry that I wasted some of your valuable time today. This project is in no way a critique on security or what defines safety in contemporary society.
Though I think there's also an undercurrent of fellow-feeling for the actual in-the-flesh human beings who do that job, who don't exactly bear the blame for 'what defines safety in contemporary society' or anything like that. (In that, you know, the policeman is playing a part precisely as much as the prisoner is.)
I get the sense he may be a bit mentally unsure of the line he's drawing between respecting the workers and disrespecting their work.
I don't think it's sarcastic exactly, or feigned, I think he genuinely respected the working people on the security staff, and didn't mean them or the mall any harm. (I'm not sure I believe he genuinely respected the mall and its owners in an unfeigned way). But, yeah, the choice to emphasize that in his narrative seems probably affected by his hope to avoid going to jail.
(I don't know how I feel about all that, really. I don't regard myself as a capitalist drone who thinks that someone like Elon Musk deserves to be richer than a heart surgeon. Jeff Bezos maybe, but, well, suffice it to say I understand the market is not perfect. But I also can't bring myself to think that it's more entitled - in the character-trait sense - to claim ownership to something I built myself, than to claim ownership to the fruit of other people's work, which latter claim is pretty much what the r/antiwork crowd are making. It's a messy argument to say the least...)
When the apartment was discovered the police considered it a legitimate public safety threat, but in the following days Michael Townsend's statements around his intentions transformed the narrative. People were fascinated with the secret apartment, and Townsend spared no detail to quench their curiosity. He faced serious criminal trespassing charges, but I think his apologetic transparency, and the artsy culture of Providence, were influential in the lenient consequences he ultimately received.
Townsend is still an active artist in Providence[1], with his secret apartment now Providence folklore. He is still banned from entering the mall to this day.
99% Invisible did a great episode on it[2].
[1] https://tapeart.com/ [2] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/
if anyone was wondering what punishment he got
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_in_the_Middle
@vgeek If you have more information about the episode I would appreciate that.
> The Apartment in the Mall was never intended to be specifically an ‘art’ piece, it was a home, an escape and an oasis away from a significant task that was consuming my life at the time.
>The 500 portraits, and their corresponding web pages took over five years to finish. It involved over 30,000 hours of computer time making the website and was completely unfunded.
I can’t imagine going through all that and doing all that work for an unfunded project. Combined with the story of the mall apartment, it makes me think this person is unwell, but who am I to judge? I am truly fascinated.
It seems that he and you just have dramatically different sets of values and perceptions of the world. A person who intentionally seeks to find the edge cases in their culture might behave like someone with a mental illness. And historically cultures do have a tendency to define such people as "ill". But the similarity is on the surface; the intentions and motivations are completely different.
who really is unwell here ? humans are the only creatures on earth who accept to pay for drinking water.
So what happened after that? Was everything thrown out again? Did anyone find a use for that space? And how did you think you were going to get plumbing in there?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-11/photos-a-...
One guy had disguised his hives as an AC condenser on the roof. He even went so far as to wear workman's clothing when he went up to work on it, so any neighbors who were only passingly curious would see a tradesman and ignore what he was actually doing.
Shows a little bit more of the space, but not much. This came up a few days ago IIRC - a floorplan would be so so useful to get an idea of the layout and location!
I believe the mall in Natic MA has apartments at the mall. If you are into mall shopping and browsing it could be a real plus.
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-transit-workers-mta...
On the topic of living places you're not supposed to: In the mid-2000's, a homeless guy built a basic apartment inside the Lake Shore Drive bridge in Chicago. He even tapped into the bridge's electrical system and had a TV to watch baseball games on. The most interesting part is that the LSD bridge is a draw bridge, and opens and closes several times a day in the summer.
There's a little bit preserved in internet archvie, but it isn't very complete, and I still don't have a very good idea of what it actually was. I wonder why it's not up anymore.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160902145942/http://www.tapear...
Basically, some guy had built a tiny apartment inside a sculpture in a city. I want to say it was in NYC, but I’m not sure. The biggest thing I recall is that it wasn’t big enough to stand in, and there was a guitar hanging from the “ceiling” that he played in a video at one point.
TV coverage (1/2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTMK14w2u88
