Since 1986 a large strip of land was left with only the bones of what was to be the Lima, Peru’s railway for an electric train. The space remained unchanged, a ghostly construction site for the train that never happened, until the Spanish collective Basurama came up with a way to turn the abondoned concrete collumns and once forgotten urban space into an amenity for the people. And then earlier this year, the Ghost Train Amusement Park was born.

Basurama, from the word basura meaning trash, has been working with trash for over a decade throughout Latin America and describes themselves as “a forum for discussion and reflection on trash, waste and reuse in all its formats and possible meanings. Our aim is to study those phenomena inherent in the massive production of real and virtual trash in the consumer society, providing points of view on the subject that might generate new thoughts and attitudes. We find gaps in these processes of production and consume that not only raise questions about the way we manage our resources but also about the way we think, we work, we perceive reality.”

The bright and colorful park features recycled tires transformed into multi-person swinging contraptions and climbing structures along with lines of swings and a canopy line for kids to zip along from the unfinished structure through the color-wrapped concrete collumns.

images via basurama

How might you reuse a bus? Make a bus stop out of it! This stop in Athens, Georgia designed by Christopher Fennell actually utilized three buses. Hmm, is the “bus stop” sign really necessary?

images via christopher fennell

image via Héctor Serrano Studio

During the life of a vehicle, it goes through a few tire changes. With a lot of vehicles getting new tires, that’s a lot of of tires piling up. And now with the Cash for Clunkers program…that’s a lot more tires. So what to do with all this rubber? Well, there’s a few options, one of them of course being art.

This first set of pictures is of an installation that uses hundreds of inner tubes by Héctor Serrano Studio in honor of World Environment Day 2008 in Valencia, Spain, commissioned by the City Council. His website explains that the “installation transforms the tire into an architectural element, questioning the use and perception we have of garbage.”

image via NY Times

The image above is a sculpture made from shredded tires called “Gridlock” by Chakaia Booker, an artist who uses tires as her medium of choice in all of her art, often full of rich textures created entirely by cutting, molding, shaping and shredding this typically rigid material into something flexible.

image via Chakaia Booker

Above is an installation from The Whitney Museum of Art Biennial 2000 called “It’s So Hard To Be Green” featuring re-purposed tires on wood. Below is a piece called “No More Milk and Cookies” created in 2003, now resides in the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA and manages to take this otherwise rigid material and transform it into a fluid piece that almost seems as if it were trying to capture the effect of motion or rather, emotion. The name of this piece, according to DeCordova, is a “statement [that] carries a different meaning as an adult. Booker questions our commercially driven society, and what happens when consumption is prohibited. ‘No matter how old you are, you’re constantly being checked,’ says Booker, who closely observes the influence of marketing and the profusion of products in our daily lives. The artist believes that the inability to obtain all material desires does not stop us from believing that life would be better if there were just one more cookie on the plate.”

Another piece in the sculpture park by Booker, “The Conversationalist” features rubbery black collumns splaying and fanning out while at the same time weaving in on itself. From DeCordova, “Like an actual conversation, this piece physically represents a gradual building of elements that climax at a point of tension or harmony. The many angles of this sculpture create negative spaces that represent opposing arguments and varying opinions. Beginning with conflict and disagreement at its base, the form labors to break free of emotional constraints as it pushes towards the sky and comes to a realization. While independently complex, the two segments that define the overall layout of the sculpture arrive at a final point of accord at the apex.”

image via hanneorla

The details of the sculpture provide another layer of depth with the overlapping pieces of rubber revealing the movement of the old tire tread wrapping and weaving around the collumns. The metal screws holding the pieces in place give it an industrial feel.

images via Aero Racer E

With the growing amount of this malleable material, I can only imagine all the products and art that will continue to emerge. It’s not garbage, it’s potential.