Eyesores & Architectural Blunders (ongoing thread)

[FangKC]

I'll have to take a drive down there sometime.

[PigWig]

1st Post, cut me some slack, but I think this is the worst I've ever seen.

May I present the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea.  This 105 story building dwarfs the skyline of the North Korean capital city and is a disgusting, concrete autrocity.  As if its looks aren't bad enough, get this:  The building is not finished, and no construction has taken place since 1992.  It was deemed unsafe structurally due to poor engineering and bad quality construction materials (DO NOT cut corners next time you build a 105 story hotel).

Esquire Magazine dubbed it "The Worst Building in the History of Mankind" and noted that the government of North Korea has airbrushed the building out of pictures.

Rumor has it construction may pick up again, but the costs to finish the project would exceed $300 million USD.

[FangKC]

The North Korean government should start a war with Al-Qaida and let them bring it down for free. 

Welcome to the forum PigWig.

[bbqboy]

It would make a great flea market.

[Highlander]

It would also make a great tomb for the Kim Jong Il family.  Afterall, it has that pyramidal look it.

[GRID]

North Korea is quite an interesting place because it's so hard to find any info on it.

But this is a very interesting link I ran across.  Vacation in Pyongyang!

http://www.newkoreatours.com/

[PigWig]

North Korea is quite an interesting place because it's so hard to find any info on it.

But this is a very interesting link I ran across.  Vacation in Pyongyang!

http://www.newkoreatours.com/

From the website:

New Korea Tours is the only US based travel agency specializing in group and independent tours to North Korea.  Please check out our prices - the lowest on the market.

Like low prices are the #1 concern of Americans considering visiting North Korea.

[IraGlacialis]

I am surprised for architechtural blunders that no one has mentioned what was done to Oak Tower in the 70s.
Taking out all that terra-cotta in the name of "progress".

As for eyesores, even though it is gone and isn't even in KC:
Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHKhk4oZMro

[FangKC]

The hotel in N. Korea looks like a big bird house.  Imagine giant vultures living in it, and swooping down on people in the streets. 

It also looks like the Holiday Inn in Mos Isley on the planet Tattooine (Star Wars reference).

[advocrat]

1st Post, cut me some slack, but I think this is the worst I've ever seen.

May I present the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea.  This 105 story building dwarfs the skyline of the North Korean capital city and is a disgusting, concrete autrocity.  As if its looks aren't bad enough, get this:  The building is not finished, and no construction has taken place since 1992.  It was deemed unsafe structurally due to poor engineering and bad quality construction materials (DO NOT cut corners next time you build a 105 story hotel).

Esquire Magazine dubbed it "The Worst Building in the History of Mankind" and noted that the government of North Korea has airbrushed the building out of pictures.

Rumor has it construction may pick up again, but the costs to finish the project would exceed $300 million USD.

It "rooks a rittle ronery."

[HalcyonKC]

It "rooks a rittle ronery."

It just looks strange because it's parked for maintenance by the North Koreans.  Here it is after launch.   

   

[FangKC]

Good one Halcyon. 

Reminds me of the Coneheads movie where they leave the Earth launching the Empire State Building as a spaceship.

[FangKC]

That hotel looks like the Fortress of Sauron, Barad-dûr, in Mordor.  The Dark Tower.

[FangKC]

As for eyesores, even though it is gone and isn't even in KC:
Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHKhk4oZMro

I wonder if those public housing projects would have ever gotten so bad if they had been named after prominent businessmen or wealthy families living in the community?

August Busch Houses
William T. Kemper Public Housing

I wonder if you have to get the person's/family's permission to name something after them publically?

They ought to name one of those FEMA/Katrina trailer camps in New Orleans and the states of Louisiana and Mississippi the George W. Bush Trailer Park. How about the Richard Cheney Sewage Treatment Plant?

[KCMax]

Hotels that Never Happened

They look like set pieces from "Star Wars"

Vienna's excellent Architekturzentrum will be hosting a new photography show, opening this Wednesday, April 24, called Sinai Hotels.
With images by Sabine Haubitz and Stefanie Zoche of Haubitz+Zoche, the show looks at "the concrete skeletons of five-star hotel complexes" abandoned on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
They are resorts that never quite happened, then, with names like Sultan's Palace and the Magic Life Imperial. This makes them "monuments to failed investment."

[LenexatoKCMO]

If only they had gotten those beauties built in time for Moses to lead all those travlers through. 

[schugg]

Where was wayne minor located?

[loftguy]

Where was wayne minor located?

Woodland to Brooklyn, 9th street to 12th.

The garden apartments that remain were built at the same time as the towers, which were imploded.

[schugg]

Woodland to Brooklyn, 9th street to 12th.

The garden apartments that remain were built at the same time as the towers, which were imploded.

Would you also happen to know when they were built and Imploded?

[loftguy]

Would you also happen to know when they were built and Imploded?

Built around 1963.  Per Harbinger911, they came down in 1987, which seems about right.  Either '87 or '88.


It was a cold and foggy morning, for sure.