quote:

New South China Mall (Chinese: 新华南MALL; pinyin: Xinhuánán MALL) in Dongguan, China is the largest mall in the world based on gross leasable area, and ranked second in total area to the Dubai Mall.[2] However, it is largely vacant. Unlike other "dead malls", which have been characterized by the departure of tenants, the New South China Mall has been 99% vacant since its 2005 opening as very few merchants have ever signed up.

International Log posted:

And an interior shot:

No, there is nothing wrong with the white balance of this photo.

FizFashizzle posted:

Richard Meier designed the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He won the Pritzker in 1984 for it.

I dunno, I don't really think it has aged well.



It's also remarkable for never having an exhibit worth a poo poo, but if you're a BoA member you can go for free so there's that.

Also they film Red Band Society there now.

FizFashizzle posted:

Yeah that's a prison though.

Atlanta is now building a football stadium inspired by goatse so we got that going for us.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10dKvoL4qbE

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

While we're covering dystopian public housing hell-holes:




Cabrini Green, Chicago. Basically synonymous with "terrible public housing ideas".


I can't be arsed to find it now, but some articles I've read show the old concept art for how great a place it was going to be, and you can pretty much go down the whole checklist of its innovative features and see how each one just became nightmarish.

For context, the horror film Candyman was shot in CG, which probably offered a huge savings in having to do almost nothing to make scary sets.

quote:

I've been shot at from Cabrini Green and I have shot at Cabrini Green. It was when Dr. King was murdered and the city went nuts. We were assembling within sight of the Green and shots came at us from somewhere in or near the place so of course we all fired back. The range was absurd for our .38's and .357's and I doubt if any of us had any idea what we were shooting at. That's why I kind of smile when I see that recent tape of the unarmed guy in the car out west where the cops fired hundreds of rounds at him and he lived. Once there are a few shots fired nobody wants to seem like a pussy so they all start shooting. As I recall the Green incident, nobody on either side was even hit.

QUEEN CAUCUS posted:

that's cool as poo poo and supremely evil
I wish the nazis had been able to build their doom fortress

quote:

The Beacon was a towering monument intended for the site in Chicago, Illinois of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Despradelle designed the Beacon to represent the founding of America, and so it consisted of thirteen obelisks which he said represented the original thirteen colonies. The group of obelisks merged to form a single spire soaring 1,500 feet (approximately 457 metres) above Chicago. This is similar to the height of the Sears Tower, built in the city in 1973.

The Beacon would also represent the future with its benefits to be drawn from "technological leaps forward" in the approaching century. At the apex was to be a brilliant beacon of light with a figurative sculpture called Spirit of Progress to embody what Despradelle called the upward-looking Christian in America. The figure would face Lake Michigan as a monument to the genius of the people and to the dominant feature of their life.

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The National American Indian Memorial was a proposed monument to American Indians to be erected on a bluff overlooking the Narrows, the main entrance to New York Harbor. The major part of the memorial was to be a 165-foot-tall (50 m) statue of a representative American Indian warrior atop a substantial foundation building housing a museum of native cultures, similar in scale to the Statue of Liberty several miles to the north. Ground was broken to begin construction in 1913 but the project was never completed and no physical trace remains today...


On George Washington’s Birthday (Feb. 22, 1913), President Taft attended the dedication ceremony, which was to be his last trip as President. Taft used a silver tipped spade to break ground which was followed by Wooden Leg, a Cheyenne Chief, who “hacked at the soil” with a stone ax which had been discovered on Stated Island some 30 years previously. According to the New York Times, the ax-head was thought to have “been in use before Caesar crossed the Rubicon.” Amongst the dignitaries and press there on that rainy day were over thirty Indian chiefs representing fifteen tribes, including Chief Two Moons, a Northern Cheyenne who fought at Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Dr. George Federick Kunz, the president of the American Scenic and Historical Preservation Society, had a special treat for those present at the ceremony. He had convinced Director Robert of the Mint to make the ground breaking the occasion for distributing the new nickel, which bore an Indian head on one side and a buffalo on the other. The first of these coins was given to President Taft and then to the remainder of the guests. It was said that the American Indian depicted on the coin could have been any of the 32 chiefs present at the ceremony.

Sadly, this grand monument was to be never more than a pipe dream. Wanamaker went from being the funder to the fundraiser, Daniel Chester French left to work on other projects, and the First World War turned people’s attentions away from such follies. Even the bronze tablet which had been erected during the ground breaking ceremony vanished decades ago.

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In 1963, the Defense Department proposed a solution: the Deep Underground Command Center, or DUCC.

Studies of a DUCC had been percolating since at least 1962. But it was in 1963 that the proposal reached the president's desk, with the approval of both Secretary of Defense McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The DUCC would be a capsule buried 3,500 feet under the Pentagon. Two versions were proposed, a “Moderate” version offering space for 300 people, and an “Austere” version with space for 50, and which could be expanded to the Moderate version if necessary. Elevators would descend from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department to the facility depth, where horizontal tunnels would lead to the capsule.

Officials could descend to the DUCC without leaving their buildings, so there would be no external signs of evacuation – the president could take shelter without the political consequences of visibly leaving Washington, D. C. It was even suggested that officials on the presidential succession list might spend one day a week in the DUCC. That way, no matter what, at least one successor would survive, and be in a position to quickly reestablish control of the military.

It was claimed that the system could withstand multiple direct hits by 200 to 300 megaton nuclear weapons, or by 100 megaton weapons that penetrated to a 70 to 100 foot depth. For comparison's sake, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated had a yield of about 50 megaton, and the largest ever produced in numbers was about 25 megatons. But, in the early 60s, nuclear weapon yields had been steadily growing since their introduction, and 300 megatons seemed like a pessimistic but reasonable extrapolation of Soviet capabilities in the early 70s.

Few details are available on the capsule itself, but some extrapolation is possible based on Army engineering manuals and similar but less extreme facilities. We know the austere version would offer only 5,000 square feet of space, equivalent to a 10' x 10' square for each occupant. The moderate version would be slightly better at 50,000 square feet, or a 13' x 13' square per occupant. The occupied area would be contained within a larger chamber of double the area, and would probably be mounted on gigantic springs to ride out ground shock, which would be the main threat to the system.

It would be theoretically possible to blast out enough dirt to physically breach the DUCC. But a 300 megaton weapon digs only a 967 foot deep crater in granite, requiring four such bombs landing precisely on top of each other to dig out a breach. This sort of accuracy would be difficult even for modern ballistic missiles, although not impossible.

The main damaging mechanism would be the shock wave that is generated in the rock, which would act similarly to an earthquake. Ground shock could directly injure or kill the DUCC's occupants – hence the springs – or it could cause spalling, in which fragments of the chamber roof fall off. To prevent this, the tunnels would probably be lined with cast iron or even stronger materials.

Supplies would be stashed in the capsule for 30 days of “buttoned-up” occupancy, which would hopefully be enough time for surface radiation to cool to survivable levels. Although the main elevator access shafts would probably be collapsed by bombing, multiple tunnels would provide hardened exits outside the likely attack area. In addition, unspecified “hardened communications” would be provided.

In the event of a missile warning, the president and other key officials would reach the protected depths via elevator in only ten minutes, and the capsule in another five. This would be ten minutes less than the time to reach safe distance aboard NEACP. Nonetheless, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were, at best, unenthusiastic about the plan.

In the view of the JCS, the main failing of the DUCC was that it was simply too small. Even the moderate version did not have enough space for an adequate staff. While the president might survive, he would not have the personnel with him to properly analyze the situation and disseminate orders. The JCS estimated that, of the 300 people that could be crammed into the moderate DUCC, at least 175 slots would be filled with personnel for maintenance, communications, housekeeping, and otherwise just keeping the shelter running. The JCS themselves would require a staff of 50 to execute orders received from the president. That left only 75 slots for the president, his advisors, and civilian personnel from the Defense Department, State Department, and other key organizations.

thathonkey posted:

These are... not terrible? Especially the first one Maybe there is something architecture nerds will pick up on that I'm not seeing but these are both pretty nice imo.

quote:

Construction on the grandiose project began in the early 1980s, when food rationing and power cuts were common. Some 9,000 homes were demolished, residents were given just days to vacate their homes, churches and synagogues were razed or moved, and two mountains of marble were hacked down for the 84-meter (275-foot) high palace to be built.

quote:

Skopje 2014 (Macedonian: Скопје 2014) is a project financed by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, with the main ideology being based on that of the ruling party VMRO-DPMNE, with the purpose of giving the capital Skopje a more classical appeal by the year 2014. The project, officially announced in 2010, consists mainly of the construction of museums and government buildings, as well as the erection of monuments depicting historical figures from the region of Macedonia.

The project has been criticized for constructing nationalistic historicist kitsch. Skopje 2014 has also generated controversy for its cost, for which estimates range from 80 to 500 million euros

Bluemillion posted:

This dude gets points for building an actual volcano lair.


That is a quarter of a billion tons of TNT.

Slaughterhouse-Ive posted:

The whole tearing down Penn Station thing was such a disaster that Grand Central got saved. Of course it doesn't make up for how terrible Penn is. Also, it's not architecture but some of Robert Moses's plans for expressways in Manhattan and building a Brooklyn-Battery bridge instead of a tunnel are pretty hilarious in how they would have messed up the city even more than stuff like the BQE and Cross Bronx Expressway did

smackfu posted:

That first church looks like a baseball stadium. Is that intentional?

quote:

It was New Year's Day, 1923. Since first light, throngs of Angelenos had been streaming into the once sleepy neighborhood of Echo Park. By noon they were several thousand strong, singing spontaneous hymns as they took over the intersection of Park Avenue and Glendale Boulevard. They spilled into the green expanse of Echo Park Lake. At 2:30, an excited hush fell over the crowd as a woman in white fell to her knees and read the prayer of Solomon. Behind her was a new, massive domed building that looked like a theater but was in fact a temple. Her temple. The temple that would completely change its neighborhood. As the glass doors were flung open to the public for the first time, a reporter managed to ask the woman how she was feeling. She replied, "Today is the happiest day of my entire life. I can hardly believe that this great temple has been built for me!"

That woman was Aimee Semple McPherson. Born in Ontario, Canada in 1890, the only daughter of James, a successful farmer, and Minnie, a Salvation Army officer, Aimee was steeped in religion from birth. She converted to the Pentecostal faith when she fell in love with her first husband, Robert, an itinerant Irish preacher. They went to China as missionaries, but he soon died, and after a second marriage to a conventional businessman, Aimee had a nervous breakdown. In 1915, she took her two young children and left the marriage, determined to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the next few years, Aimee, called "Sister" by her followers, traveled around the eastern United States by car, holding tent revival meetings. She quickly became known for her theatrical sermons, for her raucous services full of dancing and speaking in tongues, and, most importantly, for her alleged healing powers.


By 1918, Aimee was packing churches and meeting halls up and down the East Coast with the help of her mother, who was a shrewd business manager. But her daughter Roberta fell ill, and as she knelt by her daughter's bed to pray, Aimee had a vision of God promising her "a little home in Los Angeles, CA." The vision soon went further, encouraging her "to build a house unto the Lord" in the unknown city. She had her doubts, writing later that she asked God: "Who ever heard of a woman without earthly backing … undertaking the raising of funds and the erecting of such a building?" But she decided to follow God's commandment and arrived in the city with her children and Minnie. Los Angeles was the city of movie stars, but it was also home to many who were lost, lonely, and sickly. During the the first half of the Twentieth Century, many Americans with health problems flocked to Los Angeles, drawn by the promise of pure air and a temperate, healthful climate. The city fit this noted healer, and "Sister" was almost immediately packing the Temple Auditorium across from Pershing Square.

Three years after their arrival, Aimee and Minnie set out in earnest to find the perfect plot of land for their "house unto the Lord." Years later, Minnie remembered:

" One day Sister and I started out impressed that we would be guided to some suitable place and would know it when we saw it. After many hours we came to the now beautiful spot upon which Angelus Temple stands. It was then but a vacant, rough, debris-strewn lot. The moment Sister McPherson turned her car at the corner of Glendale Blvd., she drew her breath in quickly and sat silent for a moment or two. Knowing her as I did, I sat silently beside her, waiting. Then, without a word, she stepped from our automobile, walked over to the ground, lifted her hand and said: "This is the place God would have us build."

Aimee was drawn to the lot's location across from Echo Park Lake, believing it the perfect place for parishioners to relax before and after services. A few months later, a "For Sale" sign appeared on the lot. According to her biographer Daniel Mark Epstein: "With a lead pencil Aimee sketched her vision of the temple upon the sign board … She drew it exactly in the shape of a megaphone." Soon the lot was theirs, and over the next two years Aimee would hold some of the biggest revivals ever seen. She raised funds for the $250,000 temple from offering plate donations and wealthy followers. Aimee also had no qualms asking for what she needed, with one reporter writing that "she then reminded all that the carpet had not yet been provided, and everyone was asked to contribute a yard at $5 for sinners to walk over to the altar and be saved."


Brook Hawkins of the prominent Winter Construction Company—which had also built the iconic Culver City Hotel, Grauman's Metropolitan Theater, and the Pasadena Playhouse—was hired as architect and contractor. Aimee helped design much of the temple, including the stained glass windows, interior, and lobby. When it was completed, the concrete and steel "Angelus Temple" boasted perfect acoustics and seating for 5,300 non-denominational worshipers. Aimee insisted on 25 large doors so that traumatic mob scenes she had witnessed in her travels would not be repeated at her services. A 125-foot concrete dome, "the largest in North America," featured an exterior coated with ground abalone shells and an interior painted with a blue skyscape by the artist Anne Henneke. There was a "watchtower" where parishioners engaged in round-the-clock prayer, the "500 room" for Pentecostal members to speak in tongues without shame, and a room for those seeking miracle cures to be instructed on God's miraculous healing.

Los Angeles had found its new "it girl." The media and public were enraptured with this little woman and her big building. One reported: "Two hours before the services were scheduled to commence, people were pouring into Angelus Temple in a steady stream, filling up all the seats on the lower floor, then lining the balcony, row by row, and overflowing into the second balcony." Another, hoping to get an interview with her, marveled that surrounding streets were lined for blocks to catch a Tuesday night prayer meeting. Loudspeakers were installed outside the temple to deal with the inevitable overflow.



Those lucky enough to get inside were not disappointed. Aimee was a show-woman extraordinaire. Her services featured music, show choirs, talking birds, farm animals, healings, and her famed "theatrical sermons" which combined biblical teachings with pageantry. With her lilting voice, Aimee was the star of these productions, "radiating health, optimism and magnetism … she dances and claps her hands like a happy little girl in the pulpit and she starts the singing with all the carefree exuberance of a joyous child." She could play any part, dressing as a farm girl to tell the story of her life or as a policewoman for a sermon inspired by a recent speeding ticket. "In this show-devouring city," reported Harper's magazine in 1927, "no entertainment compares in popularity with that of Angelus Temple."

The church soon owned much of the land surrounding the temple. By the late '20s, the campus included the six-story LIFE Bible College, KFSG (a Gospel radio station and the city's third broadcast station), the family parsonage, a commissary, and dormitories and administrative buildings. The temple was credited with revitalizing the neighborhood of Echo Park. Within a year of its construction, the LA Times reported: "It is estimated that since the church was built more than 250 residence flats and apartments have been erected within a radius of a few blocks of the temple, and many of the hitherto vacant lots are now being improved with residential structures of various kinds." In a letter to the editor, a supporter exclaimed that, due to the temple's moral, spiritual, promotional, and commercial benefits, the city was simply "rowing better since the temple was built."

The church grew in spite of, and partially because of, a series of scandals that rocked it from the mid-'20s on. In May of 1926, Aimee disappeared while swimming off the coast of Venice Beach. She was presumed drowned, only to reappear in the Mexican desert weeks later, claiming to have been kidnapped. Thousands of faithful swarmed to Angelus Temple waiting for her first message after her return, posted on the temple bulletin board. It was soon alleged by the local press, and eventually the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, that she had actually been holed up with her radio station's married engineer in a bungalow in Carmel. The media circus that followed the revelation turned Angelus Temple into a tabloid sensation, with so many members of the press around that the courtyard behind the parsonage became known as "newspaper alley." The temple building itself was instantly recognizable across the country, with plates, miniatures, floats, and wedding cakes made in its shape. On a popular birthday card, a smiling Aimee wore a dress whose skirt became a version of the temple.


The national symbol also became a magnet for bomb threats from as far away as Virginia, suicides—including a woman who jumped off the roof—and abandoned babies, who were often left on the parsonage doorstep. In 1932, painter Barse Miller's painting "Apparition Over Los Angeles," which featured Aimee surrounded by cherubs carrying bags of money, floating in clouds over Angelus Temple, caused a furor when it was displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum and later at Barnsdall Art Park. But the faithful still believed, and extra trolley cars were still frequently routed to Echo Park to meet the public demand. In 1935, Aimee climbed the temple dome, trumpeters blaring, to unveil an 18-foot-high blue and red neon cross, which was said to be visible from 50 miles away.

aimeeportrait.jpgOne of the reasons for the temple's continuing success was the remarkable amount of good it did. During the Depression, first on the Echo Park campus and then also in an old cab company Downtown, the temple fed more people than any other organization in Los Angeles. The parsonage was almost always unlocked and Aimee had an ingeniously designed secret compartment built into the right-hand volute of the staircase rail in the foyer. A weary congregant could lift the volute's knob and retrieve hidden coins for the trolley, no questions asked. During World War II, Aimee became a master at selling war bonds from the pulpit and was recognized as the number one seller in the country. She was active in every part of city life, and spoke for many Angelenos when she advocated for a reliable metropolitan subway system:

"Los Angeles has ever been a city of beauty, a place of refuge where tired men and women from all over the world have come seeking rest. They left the noise, dirt, unsightliness, gloom and danger of the elevateds to come to our fair city where there is peace, quiet and comfort …. let us have subways, the safe sane and practical solution to this great problem. They are out of view and take care of congested traffic in a smooth efficient way."

By September 27, 1944, Aimee was tired and weary. She died in Oakland, CA, of a mysterious overdose of prescription pills as she was preparing to lead a series of revivals. Her followers flocked to Angelus Temple, and it was said that the wailing could be heard all the way to Echo Park Lake. Thousands stood in line to glimpse her body as it lay in state near the altar she had electrified for twenty-one years.

The Angelus Temple continued to grow under Aimee's son Rolf. In 1972, the temple underwent a $500,000 renovation that included new glass doors, carpeting, and a new organ console. In 2001, the temple became the home of LA's wildly influential and service-oriented Dream Center. The interior is now virtually unrecognizable when compared to its original design. The present sanctuary resembles any large, tech-savvy megachurch, though Aimee's impressive stained glass windows still draw the eye. It is again the site of enthusiastic, glitzy, musical services filled with true believers and a charismatic preacher. Aimee would be wonderfully pleased.

ReidRansom posted:

Still better than the Scottish parliament building.

Abugadu posted:

Our current governor runs the main beverage distribution business here, and is nicknamed 'Pepsi'.

Also, that's our stand-in legislature building, the main one is a shell of a concrete structure wiped out by a typhoon almost 20 years ago, which has been surrounded by fencing in the center of the downtown area and is occupied largely by rats or boonie dogs. Who would probably be better legislators than our current bunch.

Darth123123 posted:

Can someone post the ideal government federal building? Tia

quote:

In May 1908, Edward T. Carlton, an American hotelier, and William Gibbs McAdoo, the president of the New York and New Jersey Railroad Company, traveled to Spain to meet with the renowned Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) studied architecture in Barcelona, where he was surrounded by neo-classical and romantic designs. Gaudi became famous by reinterpreting these designs and working in the Art Nouveau and Art Moderne styles, and Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is considered to be his greatest work. Carlton and McAdoo sought to add a building based on Gaudi’s unique vision to the New York City skyline. He was asked to design a hotel that would be situated in Lower Manhattan. Gaudi designed multiple sketches of an 980 to 1,100 foot high hotel called the Hotel Atraccion (Hotel Attraction). It contained an exhibition hall, conference rooms, a theater, and five dining rooms, symbolizing the five continents. Had the hotel been built, it would have been the tallest building in New York City, and therefore in the United States. Sadly, this building would never be built (except in an alternative version of New York depicted in the television show fringe). Carlton wanted the hotel to serve the City’s wealthiest and most elite clientele. Gaudi’s remained true to his communist ideals, and he abandoned the project. According to another version of the story, Gaudi fell ill in 1909 and that brought about the end of the project. All that survive are conceptual sketches by Juan Matemala.

quote:

In 1923, the Reverend Christian Reisner of the Methodist Church in Washington Heights conceived of a grand church complex to be located at Broadway and West 173rd Street. Reverend Reisner developed a 40-story church which would have contained a 2,000-seat nave, a five-story basement, a swimming pool, a bowling alley, and would have been topped off with a 75-foot-high rotating cross. John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated $100,000 for the church’s construction. Like the other buildings, the Depression stopped Reverend Reisner from realizing his dreams.

quote:

John D. Rockefeller Jr. proposed this new civic center which included a space for the Metropolitan Opera. When the stock market crashed the Metropolitan Opera was unable to secure funding for a new building. As a result, Rockefeller redesigned his civic center into the Rockefeller Center we know today

quote:

This design by Emery Roth for the National Penn Colosseum was never built:

quote:

The Coney Island Globe Tower was conceived of in 1906 as the largest steel structure ever erected. Samuel Friede designed the 700 foot high globe whose 11 floors were to be filled with restaurants, a vaudeville theater, a roller skating rink, a bowling alley, a slot machines, an Aerial Hippodrome, four large circus rings, a ballroom in the world, an observatory, and weather observation station. Public money poured into the project with claims of 100% returns on investments. After two years of almost no construction, the Globe Tower was revealed to be a grand fraud.

Spaceman Future! posted:

Hey de Blasio tear down Madison Square Garden and build this to reimburse us for the loss of penn station TIA.

Also, the new WTC Transportation center owns, it exists mainly to impale people riding the Path, nothing of value will be lost.

quote:

In 1929, the Metropolitan Life Bldg, comprising the 1893 12-story construction, the 1909 campanile-like tower and the 1919 north annex, was becoming too small to house the continual growing activities of the biggest insurance company. A new building was considered for the full block site between E24th and E25th Streets, designed by Corbett and Waid... which missed to be the highest in the world. The proposed 100-story telescoping tower would have reached a climax in the mountain-like style, with fluted walls, rounded façades, like a compromise between the Irving Trust Bldg and the visionary Hugh Ferriss's drawings. But the 1929 crisis exploded and... was erected only what was previously considered as the base. From a rectangular pedestal rise multiple recessed volumes which have the particularity to become 30-degree angled from the 16th floor on each side of the building, resolving at last in an original dumbell-plan shape from the last setback. As the magnificent Ralph Walker's Irving Trust Bldg, the new Metropolitan Life Annex resembles as a complex structure, covered by a limestone-clad drapery, renouncing to the sacrosanct rigid orthogonal geometry. A brilliant success.

Lured to the project by the client's offer of a high salary and the chance to build a mile-high tower of steel, stone and glass, the, Columbia University-educated architect Harvey Wiley Corbett left his position on the Rockefeller Center design team in order to take up this project in 1928. While construction of this steel-framed structure proceeded through the Depression, the crash of 1929 ultimately reduced the scope of the project. The current office block was once intended to be the base of a mammoth skyscraper, but Corbett's longed-for skyscraper was never built. Clad in Alabama limestone with marble details and richly appointed marble lobbies, the vertically striated surfaces and streamlined undulating masses of this Art Deco building give it a slick if somewhat sinister appearance.

Only the base was built, between 1932 and 1950.

quote:

Proposed in 1925, the Larkin Building would have contained up to 110 stories at 1,208 ft. and was to be located on West 42nd Street (the McGraw Hill Building currently occupies the site)

Hard times fell on this proposal as well as the Larkin Company, which went bankrupt in the 1930s.

quote:

First published in Life Magazine 1946:

The airport would have covered 144 city blocks from 24th to 71st Streets and from Ninth Avenue to the Hudson River. (The view above is looking south.) That's approximately 990 acres 200-feet above the streets of Manhattan.

To quote Life, Zeckendorf thinks the $3 billion price tag "can be paid off by rental income within 55 years after the project is completed." Further, and quite optimistically, "although the Manhattan terminal is still in the drawing-board stage and has not yet had approval of New York officials, the planners expect that the increasing tide of air travel will make their idea a necessity."

quote:

After the victory of America and her “co-belligerents” in the First World War, a temporary victory arch was erected out of wood and plaster to welcome the troops home from Europe. After the arch was dismantled, however, discussions soon arose on how to permanently commemorate the war dead of New York, with a surprising variety of suggestions made. A beautiful water gate for Battery Park was suggested, with a classical arch flanked by Bernini-like curved colonnades, so that a suitable place existed to welcome important dignitaries and visitors to New York. (Little did they know how soon the airlines would replace the ocean lines). Another proposal was for a giant memorial hall located at the site of a shuttered hotel across from Grand Central Terminal, while others suggested a bell tower.

An entirely different proposal, however, was made by the New York architect Alfred C. Bossom (later ennobled as Baron Bossom of Maidstone)....Bossom envisioned a massive work of engineering and transportation: a ‘Memorial Bridge’ spanning the Hudson at Manhattan. As memorials go, however, it was suggested that the ‘Memorial Bridge’ was too large, too impersonal, and too utterly convenient as a public work to serve as a memorial to the dead, and so Bossom promptly rebranded his idea as the ‘Victory Bridge’. The floor of the bridge was described as very high, in accordance with the requirements of the War Department for ocean-going vessels to pass beneath it, but also allowing the New Jersey side to rest upon the heights of Weehawken. The lower level was to hold ten railway tracks side-by-side.

quote:

Trump plans NYSE tower
August 13, 1996: 6:18 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (CNNfn) -- Donald Trump is planning to build the world's tallest building at the end of Wall Street to house the New York Stock Exchange, according to published reports.
The 140-story New York Stock Exchange Tower, as the building would be named, would have 31/2 million square feet of office space, house up to 100,000 office workers and take 31/2 years to build.
At 1,792 feet tall, the proposed building would extend far above the neighboring World Trade Center, currently the fifth tallest building in the world.
"For Trump this is the ultimate," the New York Post quoted a Trump family friend as saying. "Donald is obsessed with that fact that New York should have the world's tallest building."
On Monday, the NYSE said it was mulling a move from its historic Wall Street headquarters, a 93-year-old building.
Both City Hall and NYSE Chief Executive Richard Grasso reportedly greeted the plan with "huge enthusiasm," citing the advantages of bringing the tallest building status back to the Big Apple.
Trump's NYSE plan is designed by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox, the same firm that designed Malaysia's skyscrapers.

sweek0 posted:

Those bridges are amazing. Here's an old plan for an airport on top of King's Cross station (right in Central London) from 1931.


Designed by architect Charles W. Glover, the new Central Airport for London was launched in an article in the Illustrated London News in 1931, and Glover presented a model at the Institution of Civil Engineers in June. It was to be built over the railway sidings just north of St Pancras. It would have cost some £5million.

It was envisonaged that planes would approach down a new ‘Aerial Way’ above the Pentonville Road, landing on one of the half-mile concrete runways (which look like spokes on a cartwheel.) In the 1930s, London had no skyscrapers, so the approach would have been obstacle free.

The “Aerial King’s Cross” would see both regular and private flights; businessmen who owned their own small planes would be able to store them in garages under the runways, which would be brought up by lifts when they were going to be flown. Passengers were taken up to the planes in much the same way, via lifts from the buildings below which made up the rest of the urban airfield.

Planes would taxi around the rim of the wheel until they got clearance to take off from the runways – which, due to the spoke design, were ingeniously laid out to allow take-offs and landings in eight different directions.

There were two problems with the concept, though: firstly, the design meant the runways could not be lengthened at a later date, and secondly, if a plane careered off one of the numerous edges, it would be a catastrophe.

quote:

Way back in '91, Swedish architect G. Lars Gullstedt announced plans for two 65-story towers, a new park and other amenities surrounding the Biltmore Hotel. It would've been a multi-BILLION dollar project. Mayor Maynard Jackson headed the press conference; it would BEAT Rockefeller Center. By '93, Swedish debtors were calling on loans. Gullstedt didn't have the dough

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Circa 2006, real estate tycoon Wayne Mason — whose supposed Midas Touch with residential investments helped transform the pastures of Gwinnett County — got really inspired by then-nascent Atlantic Station. Working with a group of Korean investors, Mason bought up two ailing shopping centers totaling 42 acres near Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth. He called the vision "Global Station." It promised to reshape the suburban skyline and introduce mixed-use living on a scale never seen in suburban Atlanta.

Mason's answer to Atlantic Station was set to include as many as 10 towers, to be built over several years. Early concepts showed the $700 million retail, condo and commercial village with a huge central entertainment area, replete with an amphitheater and exotic architecture. In 2006, Mason projected that construction could start the following year.

Instead, the Recession happened.

The whole shebang went kaput in 2008, when Mason declared that his South Korean counterparts just couldn't line up the financing. And the long, slow decline of Gwinnett Place Mall continued.

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In 1992 the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, owner of the World Trade Center, commissioned Davis Brody & Associates to develop a master plan for the redevelopment of the Center’s public spaces. The public spaces of the World Trade Center complex included the large open-air plaza plus 500,000 square feet of interior retail and circulation space on four different levels.

In 1994 a schematic design was developed to better define the architectural components of the master plan. These components included a monumental screen covering the existing plaza, new plaza structures adding restaurant and retail space and providing new access to the concourse level below, new street-level retail space along the Center’s perimeter and a new public park surrounding the complex.

A major feature of the redevelopment project, the plaza screen was designed to accomplish the following tasks: (1) visually define and unify a three-dimensional multi-purpose outdoor space; (2) mediate the strong cross winds created by the twin towers; (3) serve as a staging element for temporary plaza events. Hung with support cables from the adjacent towers, the plaza screen would require no additional vertical supports on the plaza or concourse levels. Visible from well outside the immediate vicinity, the support cables would serve as a symbol of the New World Trade Center.

Another principle feature of the Center’s redevelopment is the crescent shape North Plaza Building. The 60-foot tall, fully glazed structure would contain dining and interior circulation space along the northern edge of the open plaza. The design successfully creates an appropriately scaled focal point for the Plaza as it provides a single, unified identity to the various tenants and functions of the building.

The schematic design also included a refinement of the master plan’s new concourse level shopping complex. This work included the enhancement of circulation patterns and user orientation, the development of the architectural aesthetics and the integration of structural, mechanical and lighting systems throughout the retail complex.

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The Temple of the Vedic Planetarium will be a stunning spritiual monument, dwarfing the already huge Srila Prabhupada Samadhi Mandir and featuring three giant gold domes. The middle, and largest, dome will house three different altars: one for the Gaudiya Vaishnava line of teachers and disciples, ranging from the Six Goswamis of the 15th century all the way to Srila Prabhupada; one for the Pancha-tattva of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his associates; and one for Sri-Sri Radha-Madhava and their eight principal gopi servants.


What’s so special about the TOVP? Well, it was back in the 1970s that ISKCON’s founder Srila Prabhupada first expressed his desire to build a Vedic Planetarium at his society’s headquarters in Mayapur, India. “Within the planetarium we will construct a huge, detailed model of the universe as described in the text of the fifth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam,” he said.
Of course, as with everything he did, Srila Prabhupada was acting in fulfillment of the desires of previous spiritual teachers. A grand temple for Mayapur was predicted by none other than Lord Nityananda, the most intimate associate of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, some five hundred years ago. Speaking to Srila Jiva Goswami, the Lord said:
“When our Lord Chaitanya disappears, by His desire, the Ganges will swell. The Ganges water will almost cover Mayapur for a hundred years, and then the water will again recede. For some time only the place will remain, devoid of houses. Then again, by the Lord’s desire, this place will again be manifest, and the devotees will build temples of the Lord. One exceedingly wonderful temple (adbhuta-mandira) will appear from which Gauranga’s eternal service will be preached everywhere.”
Srila Prabhupada wanted this great temple to have a specific look. In July 1976, during a visit to Washington D.C., he instructed Yadubara Dasa and Visakha Dasi to take photographs of the domed Capitol building there, as a basis for the TOVP. And in the early days of ISKCON in London, he gave further detailed instructions on what different parts of the temple should look like, directing many senior devotees make drawings and models of the building.



The Temple of the Vedic Planetarium will be a stunning spritiual monument, dwarfing the already huge Srila Prabhupada Samadhi Mandir and featuring three giant gold domes. The middle, and largest, dome will house three different altars: one for the Gaudiya Vaishnava line of teachers and disciples, ranging from the Six Goswamis of the 15th century all the way to Srila Prabhupada; one for the Pancha-tattva of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his associates; and one for Sri-Sri Radha-Madhava and their eight principal gopi servants.



In the center of the middle dome, hanging from the ceiling, will be a huge rotating model of the universe as described in sacred texts such as the Srimad-Bhagavatam. Described by Srila Prabhupada in his letters, the model will be in the form of a chandelier, two hundred feet across, and will feature displays explaining how Vedic cosmology corresponds to the visible universe of our experience.
A smaller dome on the TOVP’s right hand side will serve as a separate temple for Krishna’s half-man half lion form, Lord Nrsimhadeva. And on the left hand side of the main temple, another dome will offer an enlivening tour of the various regions of the cosmic creation. Beginning from the lower planets, pilgrims will be able to travel up through the earthly realm and then on to the higher planetary systems, before passing beyond the boundary of the material universe. Within the spiritual realm, visitors will view the various spiritual planets, before finally arriving at the topmost spiritual abode of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna.

Honj Steak posted:

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In 1993, the Desert Inn was purchased by ITT/Sheraton. The Desert Inn had a large surface parking lot to the south of the resort (which now holds Wynn Las Vegas). Their first plans were a Balinese Resort called Desert Kingdom.

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ITT/Sheraton's second plan for the Desert Inn land (now under the Wynn complex) struck a deal with the dudes from Planet Hollywood and came up with some crazy plans for a Planet Hollywood resort on the property.

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There have been two locations for the London Resort and Casino, and both of them have had a giant observation wheel (from the Giant Wheel Co.) The resort was to include a Harrod's department store, Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, a Piccadilly Square shopping area and many other London themed attractions.

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The Titanic resort, 400 feet long and containing 1,200 rooms, would have been one of the most heavily themed fantasy resorts in Las Vegas. The concept was rejected by the Las Vegas City Council. This was proposed for the big lot across the strip from the Sahara.

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The original rendering for the MGM Grand was a real OZtravaganza. Rainbows, OZ-esque architecture, dancing fountains, monorails, and an MGM bat-signal

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...We learned everything we could about the Starship – its actually size and dimensions, how it would exist in “dry dock” on the planet if indeed such a situation had been possible. We imagined what it could be, and how we might achieve it. We got Ken Ball (former head of engineering at Disney’s MAPO) involved to figure out how to engineer and support it. (Ultimately we realized we would need to add some supports on the outer edge of the “disc” section due to the extremely high wind conditions in Vegas. For this we created a high tech “scaffolding structure” that gave the ship more of the appearance of being in an open-air dry dock. I have not yet located that sketch, but I’ll try to find it.)

The “big idea” was building the ship itself at full-scale. That was the main attraction. That being said, we also knew we would have to have some kind of “show” on board. So, conceptually, it was to be a “tour” of the ship, with all of the key rooms, chambers, decks, and corridors that we knew from the movie. There was to be the dining area for the ship’s crew (where you could dine in Star Fleet comfort), and other special features. There were also one or two interesting ride elements that we were considering including a high-speed travelator that would whisk you from deck to deck. But we were really just getting into the show aspects when everything came to a head....

Applewhite posted:

Some more Bruce McCall for you guys:

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Here is an article from the Baltimore Sun, published on February 12th, 1887.

The Grant Memorial Bridge.– There has been sent to us from Washington an admirably engraved representation of the memorial bridge which it is proposed to construct across the Potomac from Washington to Arlington, in honor of Gen. U.S. Grant. A bill to carry the proposition into effect was introduced in the House of Representatives on Wednesday last by Mr. Curtin, of Pennsylvania, was read twice, and referred to the committee on public buildings and grounds. According to the pans submitted by Captain Symons, of the United States corps of engineers, and Architects Smithmeyer and Pelz, the starting point of the bridge on the Washington side would be Observatory Hill, near the foot of New York and New Hampshire avenues, and thence across the Potomac to some point near Arlington, as may ultimately be determined upon by a commission, to be composed of the Secretary of War, the chief justice [sic] of the United States, the engineer-in-chief of the United States army, and one member of the Senate and another of the House, to be chosen by the respective presiding officers of those bodies. The preamble to the bill declares it to be “the desire of the people of the United States that a monument of imperishable material should be erected in honor of its greatest soldier of a design suitable to commemorate his distinguished services;” and that the most appropriate design is a grand monumental bridge to connect Washington with the sacred grounds of Arlington, where fifteen thousand Union soldiers lie buried.” The object of the bridge appears to be to afford easy access to the thousands who go to Arlington from year to year to scatter flowers on the graves of those who lost their lives in defense of the Union. The bridge it is proposed to build for this purpose, as represented by the engraving of it, is what might be called a medieval structure of granite and steel, with square and round towers and turrets, arches of different spans, and a drawbridge over the main channel to admit the passage of vessels. Its total length, including the approach, is to be 4,650 feet, or 630 feet less than a mile. The carriage-way is to be forty feet wide and the sidewalks each ten feet wide. The main arch spans are to be 240 feet in the clear, the bascule span 160 feet and the smaller spans 120 feet each. no such elaborate and imposing structure of the bridge kind has ever been built or even contemplated before in the United States, and its resemblance to the causeway of a great fortress, approached by a series of fortified outworks, is kept up by the bold arches spanning the roadway and their supporting towers and turrets. Although the cost of such a work of the strength and elaborateness proposed is not given, it must necessarily be very great, for to simply commence the construction of the bridge the bill calls for an appropriation of half a million of dollars.


The spot where this bridge would have been built is now traversed by Arlington Memorial Bridge.

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Rendering of the Proposal for the Washington Monument grounds, by the Senate Park Commission, 1901-02.The wide steps, the circular pool, and the terraced gardens were all intended to provide a more dignified base for the monument, while resolving the awkward geometry resulting from its placement off the axis from the White House.

Thwomp posted:

It's like someone wanted to make a building out of the Apollo capsule and it's escape tower.

Moly B. Denum posted:

Looks like Dracula was having a bad castle day.

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A Chinese university has earned comparisons with Harry Potter's Hogwarts due to its bizarre castle campus, but local traditions supplied the magic at a Confucian-style ceremony for its degree graduates.

The gigantic grey towers, stone walls and turrets of the Hebei Academy of Fine Arts' castle complex dominate surrounding wheat fields near Xinle city in northern China...

"This castle has boosted the reputation of our academy across the world," straggle-bearded college head Zhen Zhongyi told AFP as he stood in the brick and concrete building's shadow.RTR3QWDIChina Stringer Network/Reuters

"I aim to allow students to appreciate Western architecture without leaving the country," he said, adding that he had invested 1.7 billion yuan ($274 million) in the academy so far...The painter-turned-scholar said he raised his initial investment from trading art in the 1990s, and plans to expand the campus with a Baroque cathedral and a Middle Eastern-style mosque.

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Installed in 2013, the capsule-style aluminum and polycarbonate suites are located on a cliff face in Peru's Sacred Valley, and are reached by making a 400-m (1,312-ft) vertical climb up a steel ladder embedded in the rock – there are stretches where guests must also traverse the cliff horizontally.

Each 24 x 8-foot (7.3 x 2.4-m) suite features four beds, a dining area, solar-powered lighting and a private bathroom. In order to stave off the claustrophobia, there's also an open-air seating platform on top of each capsule.

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Intolerance's Babylon set was built on a still-dirt Sunset Boulevard, at Hollywood, site today of the Vista Theatre, and it was both carefully researched (though Griffith insisted on the totally inappropriate elephants) and enormous; in Kevin Brownlow's book The Parade's Gone By, second-unit director Joseph Henabery describes the scale: "The walls of Babylon were ninety feet high. The walls were about the same height as the columns on which the elephants were erected; it is safe to estimate the overall height at one hundred and forty feet … At its widest point, the tower structure was forty feet." (He adds that "Altogether we spent little more than a couple of hours on the scene.")

cloudchamber posted:

They brought the worker over to the US but left the Kolkhoznik woman at home?

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On September 3, 1939, a "record-breaking day in attendance," the Soviet Pavilion was touted by the PR Office as one of the more popular exhibits.
However, the status of the pavilion would soon come into question. Exactly two weeks later, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Poland...In a memo from the State Department on November 29, 1939, F. B. Lyon in the Division of International Conferences wrote, "We have received a telegram from the American Embassy in Moscow, which states that 'the Government of the Soviet Union does not intend to participate in the NY World's Fair of 1940.'" The Soviets were, at the time of that memo, staging an invasion of Finland.
So, during the snowy early months of 1940, Stalin's bust was taken down, the transpolar plane dismantled, and Joe was taken apart — piece by piece — and loaded onto a ship headed back to the Soviet Union to be reconstructed. The rest of the building was dismantled, its site to be taken over by a space called the "American Common” during the 1940 season.