Photos may been viewed at the Permanent Tourist website (copyright Mark Howells-Mead): http://permanenttourist.ch/articles/2008/07/autofriedhof/
While watching the news in France, I heard about something that I thought might be of interest to the group: a carpark near Bern that has been put up for auction.
The car cemetery has existed since the 1930s and has accumulated, over 80 years, hundreds of cars. As you can see from the photos on the website above, the cars have been left completely untouched. They seem to have never been moved since their arrival. They have become part of nature: a forest of cars. Before the auction started, the owner invited scientists and industrial archaeologists to search for car parts which are now obsolete, and also to study the deteriorating process of the cars.
The peaceful afterlife of the cars has now been brought to an end. This cemetery serves as an example of what happens to objects once they are no longer used and when they are thrown away. The fact that the cemetery has been ordered to be cleared suggests that these kinds of places where old objects are stacked can no longer exist, as they might harm the environment. Nowadays, dead objects must be properly preserved for collection, or recycled, or destroyed.
Here’s an article on the cemetery (in French):
http://bit.ly/s3IAZ
Here’s a blog with pictures of the cemetery (there is a translation into English of a German article from the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger):
http://permanenttourist.ch/articles/2009/09/death-of-a-cemetery/
and the original German article:
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/leben/gesellschaft/Es-ist-ein-Scheissgefuehl-Genau/story/25438512
Here's an amateur video posted to Youtube with
a slideshow of photos taken a year ago at Kaufdorf:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ugamat#play/all/uploads-all/1/FvXAZAD3nBY
--Sheena Scott
While watching the news in France, I heard about something that I thought might be of interest to the group: a carpark near Bern that has been put up for auction.
The car cemetery has existed since the 1930s and has accumulated, over 80 years, hundreds of cars. As you can see from the photos on the website above, the cars have been left completely untouched. They seem to have never been moved since their arrival. They have become part of nature: a forest of cars. Before the auction started, the owner invited scientists and industrial archaeologists to search for car parts which are now obsolete, and also to study the deteriorating process of the cars.
The peaceful afterlife of the cars has now been brought to an end. This cemetery serves as an example of what happens to objects once they are no longer used and when they are thrown away. The fact that the cemetery has been ordered to be cleared suggests that these kinds of places where old objects are stacked can no longer exist, as they might harm the environment. Nowadays, dead objects must be properly preserved for collection, or recycled, or destroyed.
Here’s an article on the cemetery (in French):
http://bit.ly/s3IAZ
Here’s a blog with pictures of the cemetery (there is a translation into English of a German article from the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger):
http://permanenttourist.ch/articles/2009/09/death-of-a-cemetery/
and the original German article:
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/leben/gesellschaft/Es-ist-ein-Scheissgefuehl-Genau/story/25438512
Here's an amateur video posted to Youtube with
a slideshow of photos taken a year ago at Kaufdorf:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ugamat#play/all/uploads-all/1/FvXAZAD3nBY
--Sheena Scott
