The 5 Craziest Buildings Ever Proposed With a Straight Face
Sometimes, the line between a brilliant idea and a psychotically suicidal one is so fine that it practically doesn't exist. Other times, the line is so wide it would take a transcontinental railroad and an entire week to cross it.
Had they actually been built, these buildings could have probably gone either way.
#5.
The Palace of the Soviets
Picture the Empire State Building. Now, imagine someone glued the Statue of Liberty to the top. You've now imagined a much less crazy version of the Palace of the Soviets.
Joseph Stalin, during his "crazy stage" (1870-1953), had a big problem. After Vladimir Lenin's death, the peasantry went cuckoo for monuments to their fallen leader, and it was up to Joe to deliver. If displaying Lenin's corpse in a glass case wasn't good enough for these people, a cheesy statue in a park probably wouldn't be enough, either. The Soviets demanded something FABULOUS.
Via Dan Iggers
And something to keep King Kong away, too, we suspect.
So Stalin came up with a plan. First, he blew up the beautiful 70-year-old church that was clearly in prime monument real estate:
Via Wikipedia
Second, he held a contest allowing the best architects in the world to compete for the winning monument design. And if "the world's greatest memorial to hubris" was what Stalin wanted, the winning entry delivered in spades. What he chose was a 100-floor, 1,392-foot building towering over Moscow, which would have been a full 100 feet taller than the Empire State Building. Then, on top of that, was to be a 260-foot-tall statue of Lenin. So actually we understated it before -- it'd be like the Statue of Liberty on top of the Empire State Building, THEN ANOTHER SLIGHTLY SMALLER STATUE OF LIBERTY ON TOP OF THAT ONE. That's how tall the statue would have been.
Via northwestern.edu
If there's anything the Statue of Liberty has taught us, it's always to be in the best position to set fire to a communist's crotch.
After receiving widespread praise from architects worldwide, the Soviets started construction on their Lenin monster house in 1937, spending two years on the foundation alone.
Via northwestern.edu
Three people died by just constructing this plaster model.
Was Never Built Because ...
The Nazis. It's always the Nazis. Since the war was coming closer to Moscow, materials were needed and the steel was ripped up and used for railroads or military fortifications or commemorative WWII gravy boats or something. By 1945, the site for the Glorious Hall of the Soviets was nothing but a huge pile of rubble and concrete. Even after the war was over, the Cold War put strains on the same resources and the project never gained momentum again. Especially after Nikita Khruschev turned the site into the world's bitchinest and biggest outdoor pool.
Via Wikipedia
Have fun playing Marco Polo in the carcass of a failed dream, comrades!
Finally, once communism collapsed for good, the pool was replaced with a -- you guessed it -- replica of the church that was there in the first place.
Via Wikipedia
Is it just us, or could this church really use a giant statue of Vladimir Lenin on top of it?
#4.
Nazi Audacity -- Volkshalle and the German Stadium
Say whatever you want about Adolf Hitler, but you can't say he wasn't ambitious. All efforts at wiping out an entire race of people aside, this was a man who really believed he could conquer a continent while trying to pull off the stupidest mustache this side of John Waters. Which is why it should surprise nobody that he also believed he could pretty much tear down Berlin and start her over with a brand new town. A new town called Germania.
Via Wikipedia
What? Was Hitlerville already taken?
And at the heart of Hitlertopia would be a domed monument called Volkshalle. This building was going to be so big that it should have been called Hulk's Halle. At 950-feet tall, with a diameter of 820-feet, you could have actually fit St. Peter's Basilica inside the thing.
Via Wikipedia
Looks a bit too fancy for the Hulk.
It was so big, in fact, that the architect, Albert Speer, speculated that the acoustics would be literally deafening and that moisture collected by the people breathing inside could actually make artificial rain indoors. Yes, the building would be capable of literally spitting on everyone inside. Can your buildings do that, America?
Equally audacious was Hitler's plans for a super-stadium for all his Nazi rallying needs. The German Stadium in Nuremberg, coincidentally designed by the same guy who came up with Germania, would have been huuuuuge. Like, 400,000 seats huge. For context, that's eight Yankee Stadiums. For even more context, that's the city of Cleveland. For the most context of all, consider this: The largest stadium in the world today is in North Korea, and it only seats about 150,000. Hitler wanted to almost triple that, and do it using 1930s technology. Like we said, you can't say he wasn't ambitious.
Getty
Nazis: not big on procrastination.
And one more thing -- this particular stadium wasn't just going to be used for goose-stepping parties. It was also going to host the Olympics! All the Olympics. Hitler figured if he was going through the trouble of building the world's biggest stadium, it was only fair that the world use it for every single Olympic Games ever after. And that they change the name of the Olympics to the Aryan Games.
Was Never Built Because ...
Ambitious, yes. Possessing of engineering know-how and good old-fashioned common sense, no. Neither project got past the testing stage, primarily because they were so childishly conceived they were impossible to execute.
Getty
Just like Hitler.
For one thing, Berlin's soil was famously marshy, so building the Volkshalle required a test building to make sure the ground could support so much weight. Speer commissioned a 12,000-ton chunk of concrete to be built to test the soil and if the structure sunk less than 2.5 inches, the Volkshalle would be deemed safe to build. It sank 7 inches, but Hitler simply said, "Eh, build it anyway."
Fortunately for the people who would have inevitably been crushed to death by its saliva-covered dome, the war effort required the materials needed to start the Volkshalle, and the building never get off the ground. The sinking test failure is still there, though:
Via Wikipedia
The war effort killed Hitler's gargantustadium as well. But not before Hitler and his numbnut cronies got some test seats up and running. Those are still there today, if you're interested in swinging by and imagining what might have been:
Via Wikipedia
If you listen carefully, you can hear crowds cheering on foraging squirrels
#3.
Mile High Illinois
Quick! Name your favorite architect! Or any architect!
Chances are only one name sprang to mind: Frank Lloyd Wright. And the reason you thought of him was not because you're in mega love with his work, but because for a good part of the 20th century, Wright was the only architect to capture our collective imagination.
Via Wikipedia
One of the reasons we remember him was that he wasn't afraid to go against the grain. While other architects were building Victorian gingerbread houses, Wright was building clean-lined, plainly-styled buildings that set the tone for 95 percent of the houses built in the 20th century.
Which is kind of ironic, because suburban sprawl was the exact problem that prompted Frank to design one of his last big buildings -- the Mile High Illinois. Also called Illinois-Sky City as well as Holy Shitsnacks This Building is a Mile Off the Ground (Illinois). The idea was to create a place where people could live and work without driving 20 miles out of town twice a day.
Via Wikipedia
Commuting is still a bitch if the elevators break down though.
Unlike some of the other buildings on this list, Frank's towering insane-o actually had a lot of expertise behind it. He knew, for example, that a building so tall would have swaying issues, especially in a town nicknamed "The Windy City," so he designed it like a tripod, sturdier at the bottom and tapering at the top.
Via architecture.about.com
Also he predicted the now-common use of flying saucer taxis.
According to Wright, the unique shape combined with a tensioned steel frame would counteract the best wind Chicago had to offer. He also knew that a building a mile tall wouldn't be the easiest to get out of, fire-wise, so he designed elevators that would function during a fire, somehow. We'd call shenanigans, but what do we know? He's Frank Lloyd Wright.
Was Never Built Because ...
Besides the fact that he wanted to construct a building that would have been four times taller than the Empire State Building? Yeah, that was pretty much the only one.
That and the fact that Frank died three years after he drew up the design. But as a testament to how good he was and how well he knew his stuff, Mile High Illinois was the inspiration for the world's tallest building to date, Burj Khalifa. See if you can spot the similarities:
Via Though the Burj only ended up half the height of Wright's dreamscaper, it used the same reinforced concrete Frank proposed for his building, as well as a central core that stabilizes the building from the bottom to the top.
Plus there's that whole issue of it looking exactly like the Mile High.
Tatlin's tower looks incredibly janky.
Reply"Quick! Name your favorite architect! Or any architect!"
ReplyMC Escher
Imhotep.
The Burj Khalifa looks nothing at all like FLR's proposed supertall . For one thing , the Burj has rounded massing . Secondly , the Burj has a double-glass curtain wall . Thirdly , the Burj has a rather monumental podium that is taller than the tallest thing in most cities most of the people reading this can stare up at . Then there's the fact that the Burj has setbacks .
ReplyIt only looks like FLR's building in the same way that your mother looks like a Chinese-Polish-African ... she's human right ? If the standard of sameness is predicated upon a general resemblance then sure ... your mom must use chopsticks when she's eating her sausages in the Congo .
Stalin and his crimes against architecture...
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI saw the Olympiastadion in Berlin (the stadium Hitler built for the olympic games there). My father's family suffered under the Nazis, and of course fascist art and architecture are only slightly less grotesque than Stalin's. But I have to confess that I was impressed by the exactness of it. That stadium is built in a PERFECT curve.
The Buckminster Fuller dome probably has a lot of questionable things about it, but the first came up for me when you mentioned "snow." What happens when there's a big dump some years? Would the thing collapse? Would the Sikorsky helicopters be pressed back into service, with space heaters attached to the rotors? Would buildings around the perimeter suffer mass casualties from the tsunami-like melt runoff, or would they just have a nice, fresh cleaning from it? Love Bucky's work, but man, sometimes even a genius has ideas we need to be saved from.*
*Total tangent, but one of the Beatles' engineers had a story that he had innovated by routing John Lennon's vocals through a rotating speaker, giving it a tremelo effect. John, he says, was so impressed by the idea that for years he tried coaxing everyone around him into creating a platform that would achieve the same effect--but by swinging JOHN around the microphone rapidly, in circles.
Well, while National Socialists had a thing for classical art, Fascists rather liked the Avant-Garde, While I like Futurism, when it comes to architecture I much prefer National Socialist buildings.
I wish Russia would build Lennin's tower. Sure, he was a villain, but the stories of our countries are not just about heroes (plus, it's simply badass).
Hm--I was using "Fascists" to refer generically to the Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco regimes (though I am aware that the derivation of the word was specifically Italian/Roman).
"Fascists liked the Avant-Garde," though... but Mussolini's buildings harked back to the Classical era too, from what I've seen? I haven't seen works by him that evoke the Avant-Garde, can you elaborate?
(e.g., for the Classical period, the Palazzo della Civilta in EUR/Rome, the arches of which were meant to evoke the Colosseum, and other Piacentini works...)
Sorry to DP, but most notably Il Duce did not like Gramsci.
That's okay, go ahead and direct photography, dual-purpose, double-penetrate, or whichever of the dozens of other things DP might stand for that you please :)
Aside from that, though, I'm afraid your argument is not clear. So Mussolini did not like Gramsci, who is a Marxist.
But I was saying that Mussolini preferred to evoke the Classical period in his architecture, just as much as (or even more than, I'd say, given the Palazzo della Civilta's plain homage to the Colosseum) Hitler. Your post about Gramsci seems to be changing the subject from that, or?
My firstborn son shall be named Buckminster.
ReplyHoly Shitsnacks lol
ReplyThe dome over NY would be bad for another reason. Greenhouse effect! Everyone under the dome would slowly be cooked... If you've read Stephen King's Under the Dome you will know why putting a city under one is a horrible idea.
ReplyI'd like to see #1 be built. It's quite cool looking.
ReplyJoseph Stalin: batshit crazy eight years before he was even born.
ReplyI am downrigt amazed the North Koreans didn't make it on this list. Obviously they've got several lists of their own, but still.
ReplyBurj Khalifa. That doesn't happen to be any relation to Wiz Khalifa, does it?
ReplyNo.
You're kidding me, right?
The foundation pressure test was more for the Germania triumphal arch, as was the 2.5 inch maximum. Though 7 inches probably wasn't good news for the Volkshalle.
ReplyUm yeah, one could say that any building sinking 7" is a bad thing.
Here in Milwaukee WI, we have a gas company building that has an illuminated glass flame on the top that lights up with specific colors for the forecast. " When the flame is red, it's warm weather ahead!
ReplyWhen the flame is gold, watch out for cold!
When the flame is blue, there's no change in view!
When there's a flickering flame, expect snow or rain!"
I think someone should make a building in the shape of a giant penis that shows temperature by the "angle of the dangle". Sure it would be useless for most anything, but you know that there is some billionaire out there that wants to have the biggest c**k in the world
"Can your buildings do that, America?"
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesActually, the spacecraft assembly hangars that NASA has *are* large enough that indoor clouds are an issue.
checkmate, atheists!
... What?
I... think that was a misplaced comment, but now I want to know what the comment was supposed to be a reply to.
It was supposed to be a funny "IF man can create clouds what is God for type of joke", but really it was just stupid and annoying.
Yes we get it PGies, you can make anything about religion, but that doesnt mean you should or that its funny. God you're annoying.
"If there's anything the Statue of Liberty has taught us, it's always to be in the best position to set fire to a communist's crotch." - f**kin' brilliant. I lmao-ed so hard. :D
ReplyUh... Not to get all nerdy and s**t, but Tatlin looks a lot like the guy that plays Ronald Weasley from Harry Potter. Or rather that guy looks a lot like Tatlin.
ReplyRupert Grint. He's a real person, and his name is Rupert Grint.
...Bloody 'ell!
Wait, what?
What cruel and horrible state allowed the huge pool to be turned into a church? That is just all kinds of wrong.
ReplyYeah, now it's smaller and only accessible to babies. Hey, at least going in there blesses you or something.
Agreed. Pity that the plan for the world's largest indoor swimming pool in the basement didn't go anywhere though.
In the end, New York gave a polite "Thanks but no thanks" to Fuller.
ReplyAs far as I know, New York has never given a polite anything to anybody. It was probably more like, "Yo, Bucky-boy, I got yer dome over here!"
You do know that saliva and condensation are different things, right?
ReplyNo one is actually saying that rain and spit are the same thing, genius.
« Die Kunst ist tot. Es lebe die neue Maschinenkunst Tatlins. »
ReplySee: The Germans even like (or hate)... something... probably Tatlins.
Ok I did German for 5 years, let's give this a go.. The art is dead. It loves the new machine art Tatlins. Umm.. Let's see what google says.. "Art is dead, long live the new machine art of Tatlin" Well that's just kind of creepy, I like mine better.