after gas

"after gas" is a personal photography project that aims to make abandoned gas stations visible to society and, hopefully, encourage communities to find new uses for the empty standing structures spread across the territory. Due to the strategic location of many of them in rural nodes, they could be perfect buildings to host new services that the population in neighbouring areas might be lacking nowadays.

The modern mobility solutions are behind the fact that there are more and more gas stations with no other option than to cease its activity. Not only improvements made to the road system during the last decades but also more efficient cars, and lately the electric car development, have left many of these business extremely isolated and underused. This means that the number of abandoned constructions of this typology is rapidly increasing all over the landscape in many countries.

The project aims to give a second chance to a typology that had a very important role introducing and developing the Modern Movement in the past century representing a research laboratory for architects. This doesn´t imply that all of them are architecturally interesting buildings, specially not the ones built after the 1970s, but in any case, they are now part of our built environment.

In the era of sustainability when the discussion is about using our resources more wisely, recycling and circular economy, the question is... Could the typology, after having lived for only one century, have a second life by providing new services?

By definition, gas stations are scattered all over the territory as they are placed both in strategical nodes in rural areas and close to bigger urban environments. At the same time, many are standing by themselves surrounded by nothing but nature and a thin line of asphalt.

The easiest would be to think that they could be rebranded into charging stations as ranges of electric cars are now very similar to those of the 40s and 50s combustion engine cars. But, as many of them are now far away from the main roads like wandering ghosts, the new uses must be others based on the necessities of each area, which leaves place for multiple possibilities.

Ongoing...