11 Forgotten Industrial Ruins That Are Now Unique Art Installations

10. Chemnitz Industrial Museum Courtyard, Germany: Machines as Sculpture

Rather than hiding its past, the courtyard of this museum, housed in a former foundry, displays massive historical industrial machines – steam engines, turbines, presses – like intentional sculptures. Cleaned and contextually lit, these functional objects are presented for their aesthetic form, celebrating the design and engineering inherent in industrial history. The ingenuity is simple curation: treating the powerful forms of obsolete technology as found art, allowing visitors to appreciate the sculptural beauty and imposing presence of the machines that once drove the region's economy, displayed in their original context.