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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| The Worst Building in the History: Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea |
| 2008-02-01 |
| the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella's castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital -- the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it's open -- or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely. Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, the Hotel of Doom (also known as the Phantom Hotel and the Phantom Pyramid) isn't the just the worst designed building in the world -- it's the worst-built building, too. In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than twenty years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished. You gotta see it to believe it |
| Posted by:Spot |
| #19 Considering HOW TALL/HIGH + espec THIN some proposed skyscrapers in the ME + Asia are gonna be, MIGHT WANNA START [RE]LOVING THAT LOW + WIDE PYRAMID SHAPE. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-02-01 22:53 |
| #18 The Stata Center reminds me of the Hundertwasser apartment building in the village we lived in in Germany. link I was told there wasn't a proper right angle in the entire building, because the artist/architect finds such things stifling. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-02-01 21:47 |
| #17 I HAS A NON-EUCLIDIAN GEOMETRY. LET ME SHOW YOU IT. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-02-01 17:44 |
| #16 Well they are both Frank Gehry tossed pile of tinkertoy crap. I wonder just how long those buildings are supposed to last with all those lateral stresses. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-02-01 14:30 |
| #15 "It was considered ugly when it went up, but thanks to my vision the american dream it is now an icon of safe, effective, fermaLgahyde free emergency living for ALL INDIVIDUALS WANTING TO WORK!!!" -HRC |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2008-02-01 14:28 |
| #14 Not even close: check out the Experience Music Project building in Seattle; looks like a pile of metal dog poop . another Paul Allen toy. |
| Posted by: USN,Ret. 2008-02-01 14:23 |
| #13 MIT's Stata Center |
| Posted by: ed 2008-02-01 14:23 |
| #12 Steve Den Beste had an inteersting writeup on it a couple years back. Go here and scroll down, down, down to the entry marked "20060628.1455." See also this essay: "The Ryugyong Hotel looms over Pyongyang like some kind of slumbering bat. Something deep inside my brain tells me that the 75° angle of the hotel’s outer walls is exactly the wrong angle; it says sinister, it says creepy, it says get away." |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-02-01 14:20 |
| #11 Yes it is awful. The ugliest building I've ever actually been in is the Robert C Weaver HUD building in Washington DC. It is only about 10 stories high and designed by an 'award winning architect' but we all refer to the style as either "neoStalinist" or 'early-Speer'. http://www.hud.gov/about/hqbuilding.cfm |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-02-01 14:07 |
| #10 Would make one heck of a pharaoh's tomb, if the Norks get my drift. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-02-01 12:16 |
| #9 Looks quite fitting to me, given its surroundings |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-02-01 12:11 |
| #8 Is it done yet? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-02-01 11:58 |
| #7 Could be Spot but have you seen the Lloyds of London building? Ah! It's the Borg! |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-02-01 11:57 |
| #6 Icerigger---Lloyd's building looks like some kind of Bladerunner refinery..... tu3031---my bad. Haven't seen too many Godzilla videos since my college days in the sixties. If you remember the sixties, you weren't there, they tell me. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2008-02-01 11:55 |
| #5 Actually, AP, I think that's one of the videos. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-02-01 11:53 |
| #4 Put a sh*tload of solid rocket boosters on each wing base (buttress?) and send 'er into orbit. Take videos, photoshop in some Godzilla animation later and you have a sci-fi movie with Juiche! |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2008-02-01 11:51 |
| #3 Looking forward to the day when, after Kimmie's gone, some company gets to come in and blow it up. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-02-01 11:47 |
| #2 Be a helluva good place to brood in. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2008-02-01 11:46 |
| #1 Could be Spot but have you seen the Lloyds of London building? |
| Posted by: Icerigger 2008-02-01 11:33 |
