The ghost town depicted in these images by photographer Tim Van de Velde is a replica that Belgian artist Gert Robijns built to recreate part of the village he grew up in (+ slideshow).

Constructed on a former military airfield just a few miles away, the fake buildings included a full-size copy of a church and neighbouring house, both entirely stripped of colour.

"I got the idea to make a parallel world for my dead grandfather," Gert Robijns told Dezeen, after explaining how he was approached by the Mayor of the nearby village to make a temporary public artwork.

"The idea was to create a mental archtitectural context, splitting the world into a concrete and a mental world," he added. "The idea was that the world was slightly changed while still repeating itself, since it stayed close to the original."

The artist built the structures using chunky chipboard and a metal framework, and each building has only part of a facade. This means that the scene can only be viewed from one angle before the skeletal framework is revealed to the eye.

Robijns described how the installation attracted both tourists and local residents. "People from the village came to look at 'themselves' from a certain distance and people from the art world came to visit both the replica village and the original place," he said.

The exhibition ended in December and the structures have since been dismantled.

Other recent architectural installations we've featured include a bridge held up by balloons and a set of star-shaped lights in the desert.

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See more photography by Tim Van de Velde on Dezeen, or on the photographer's website.