Should we be preserving large-scale, abandoned spaces like this cooling tower? | Photo: Aude Le Gallou

When faced with a structure like this, both futuristic and time-worn, one feels somewhat disoriented. A closer look reveals concrete, but as if upholstered with weeds and graffiti. Two tiny figures at the top, slightly to the right of the picture, indicate the scale of the building: it is wide and high. This cooling tower is part of an almost century-old fossil-fuel power plant in Charleroi, Belgium.

This view from above was submitted to the 2025 SNSF Scientific Images competition by the geographer Aude Le Gallou, who has been researching abandoned sites in Europe and the United States for nearly ten years, including their reappropriation by tourists of a different kind: urbex enthusiasts. Urbex, or UE, stands for the ‘urban exploration’ of abandoned and often forgotten areas. “When I interviewed urbexers for my work, I realised that these ruins offered them very powerful sensory and emotional experiences. Urbex has grown in popularity on social networks, leading the fascination behind it to give relics new visibility and to highlight spaces that are otherwise neglected and marginalised”.

Le Gallou is a teacher and researcher at the University of Geneva and has broadened her scientific field to look at the concept of the ghost. “These places show a tangle of times. There is a trace of a past that no longer exists except in fragmentary form, but which nevertheless continues to haunt present-day societies”, she says.

These decayed spaces, which have also become havens of biodiversity, raise difficult heritage issues. Should they be preserved untouched, like giant witnesses, for the pleasure of travellers and scientists? Or should they be transformed, or even simply razed to the ground to create a new layer of history or the next industrial adventure? “While there is no absolute answer, in some cases they are landmarks of collective memory that future projects must not ignore”.