Asylum by Christopher Payne

Noah Webb has been photographing architecture and people's homes for Dwell for about ten years. We just commissioned him again for a project in our upcoming special Prefab issue.

If there's one thing that describes Buffalonians, it's pride. Whether it's in the form of tirelessly cheering on our Buffalo Bills or even boasting about the annual snowfall, we'll sing it loudly.

The Oregon State Insane Asylum, opened in 1883 on a hill just east of Salem and renamed the Oregon State Hospital in 1913, became in part a warehouse for the state’s anonymous unwanted. When residents died and went unclaimed by family, their bodies were cremated with the ashes remanded to copper canisters, which in turn themselves got warehoused.  Decades passed, the canisters blossomed forth with all manner of colorful corrosions, the hospital started getting shut down, well into the process of which, around 2005, with what remained of the hospital under new leadership, the canister depot itself came to light. The photographer David Maisel rushed to the scene to compile the remarkable record that has become the book and traveling exhibition, Library of Dust.

Fifteen writers, artists, photojournalists, historians, and cultural critics respond to David Maisel’s remarkable photographic excavation of a warehouse of ashes otherwise lost to time.

This week, the American Institute of Architects' Committe on the Environment (COTE) announced its Top Ten Green Projects.