In the foothills of Southern California, an unusual castle grew out of materials that most people would have thrown away. Bottles, scrap metal, old machinery, car parts and fragments of Glendora’s past were collected and worked into a sprawling handmade complex that took decades to complete. Michael Clarke Rubel began the project when he was just 19, drawing on a childhood habit of building makeshift forts from discarded objects. Over the following 26 years, he mixed concrete almost every day, adding towers, walls and other structures to the site. The finished Rubel Castle is not a replica of a European fortress, but a distinctly Californian creation shaped by the town around it. Its towers rise from a former citrus-growing landscape, while a giant clock, bottle-filled buildings, tunnels and salvaged objects form part of the unusual site. Much of what Rubel used had once been destined for demolition, abandonment or the scrap yard.
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