The Worst Hotel In The World

A picture doesn't lie -- 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.

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/DESIGN/worst-hotel-ever-012808?kw=ist

...IMO a hotel can only qualify for "Worst Hotel in the World" if their advertised "deluxe breakfast" consists solely of stale Raisin Bran and half-thawed packaged "cinnamon rolls." :crazy: Not that I'm bitter, or anything...

... like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or X-men are gonna have to kick some evil overlord ass and save the world or something...

Who would stay there anyway? Isn't North Korea like closed to tourists?

It looks a really smallish 'burg.

Nevermind. It looks like crap.

...I must have the Ring of Power...

:D

Thats got to be the most phallic structures I can ever seen. I can only think some guy/dictator was feeling ummm...underappreciated.

It doesn't matter if it's ever finished, it's a "Springtime for Hitler" situation. Or Iraq, whichever you want to name it.

It's the kind of thing you see when you watch Star Trek, painted on the background matte for Klingon or Cardassian city-scapes...

It would look better in glass instead of Communist Concrete.

Though I do agree with the critiquer that it's much too big for that space; but that kind of design would look funny if it were smaller, I think.

Maybe with some bright curtains, a few throw pillows...

Quick, everybody visualize the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man!

It reminds me of a lot of the artwork done in early post-revolution Russia. They had wild models for things like this that were never actually built. I do think it's audacious, but it has this great 1920's conception of the future thing going on, but not in a self consciously post modern way. I think the design is very confident - better than most crap out there.