This Week’s Crazy Building: Balancing Barn

Balancing Barn, Suffolk by William M. Connolley licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is the Balancing Barn in Suffolk, England. Located by a picturesque lake on the English country side, the Balancing Barn gets its name the peculiar way in which it’s situated. Legendary architecture firm MVRDV designed the building with a massive cantilever: half of its length juts out off the hillside and hangs over the
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Shanghai Tower

Shanghai Tower by Yhz1221 licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0
This week’s crazy building is Shanghai Tower in Shanghai, China. At 2,073 feet high, Shanghai Tower is the second tallest building on earth. It has an incredible 128 stories dedicated to a combination of office, retail and leisure space. In addition to its dizzying height, the tower has an unusual twisting facade. The main structure
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Dorton Arena

Dorton Arena by Leah Rucker licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is the J.S. Dorton Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina. Polish architect Maciej Nowicki designed an arena with the first cable-supported roof system on earth. Tragically, he was killed in a plane crash before construction began. Nowicki’s friend, another local architect named William Dietrick, was called upon make his vision a reality. Opened in 1952, Dorton Arena’s innovative design
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Grand Lisboa Hotel

Grand Lisboa Hotel by Harvey Barrison licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Grand Lisboa Hotel in Macau, China. This extravagant 856-foot building is a hotel casino featuring over a thousand slot machines and 800 gaming tables. There are two main elements to this fanciful golden resort: a dome-like enclosure that houses the gambling and dining, and the 47-story hotel portion that
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Azadi Tower

Azadi Tower by Mahdi Kalhor licensed under the CC BY 3.0
This week’s crazy building is Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran. This remarkable structure is also known as “Freedom Tower” and marks the west entrance to Iran’s capital city. Created in 1971, its intricate patterns and bold swooping lines combine several architectural styles, both Islamic and post-Islamic. The tower is built with a whopping 8,000 blocks
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Palace of Winds

Palace of Winds by lensnmatter licensed under the terms of the CC BY 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Palace of Winds in Jaipur, India. This incredibly ornate building (called Hawa Mahal in Hindi) is actually mostly just a wall. This elaborate facade is situated at the edge of the City Palace. It was built so that women in the royal household could watch the street festivals without
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: The Eden Project

Panoramic view of the geodesic biome domes at the Eden Project by Jürgen Matern licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 2.5
This week’s crazy building is the Eden Project in Cornwall, England. These massive structures look a bit like clusters of giant soap bubbles, but they’re actually a type of architecture called geodesic domes. They’re made of huge hexagon- and pentagon-shaped plastic cells (much like a soccer ball) and supported by steel beams. The domes are
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Bundeswehr Military Museum

Bundeswehr Military Museum by Kolossos licensed under the terms of the CC BY 3.0
This week’s crazy building is the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany. This building’s original use was as an armory in the 1870s, but believe it or not, it has been a museum since 1897. In that time, it’s been a Nazi museum, a Soviet museum and an East German museum, shifting every few
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: MI6 Building

MI6 Building by Dun.can licensed under the terms of the CC BY 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the MI6 Building in London, England. You may know this one better as the “James Bond” building. It’s been depicted in The World Is Not Enough, Skyfall and most recently as a ruin in Spectre. What you may not know is that this oddly-designed building really does house the British Secret Intelligence Service.
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Borgund Stave Church

Borgund Stave Church by Tnarik Innael licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is Borgund Stave Church in Borgund, Norway. The first crazy thing to note about this church is when it was constructed: around 1200 AD, making it 800 years old or more. Given that it’s made up completely of wood, it’s remarkable that it’s managed to remained standing (and never caught fire!)
Read more
No Comments