This Week’s Crazy Building: Emporia

Emporia Shopping Center by Håkan Dahlström licensed under the terms of CC BY 2.0
This week’s crazy building is Emporia in Malmö, Sweden. Constructed in 2012 for over $250 million, Emporia is one of the biggest shopping malls in Scandinavia. It contains roughly 200 shops and restaurants in its 1,000,000 square feet of of shopping space. On top of the three-story mall is a rooftop terrace garden where people
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Chand Baori

Chand Baori at Abhaneri by Chetan licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is Chand Baori in Abhaneri, India. Some of the past crazy buildings have been extraordinarily high. This one is 100 feet deep! Chand Baori is one of the world’s largest stepwells, extends 13 stories downward into the earth. It is so deep, in fact, that it is several degrees cooler at
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Zhongyuan Tower

Zhongyuan Tower by Meritguy licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is Zhongyuan Tower in Zhengzhou, China. Completed in 2011, it was briefly the tallest steel tower in the world (at 1273 feet) until surpassed by Tokyo Skytree. While the core of the building is tube shaped, there are structural elements surrounding it that widen at the top and bottom to create
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Cuba’s Russian Embassy

Cuba's Russian Embassy by Manuel Castro licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Russian embassy in Havana, Cuba. Constructed starting in 1978 and completed in 1987, what is now the embassy of Russia opened as a haven of the Soviets. This was a time when the USSR had enormous influence in Cuba—at one time they had 7,000 troops stationed on site! The embassy is built in
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: The Cogwheel

Kuggen by Mats Kristoffersen licensed under the terms of CC BY 3.0
This week’s crazy building is Kuggen in Gothenburg, Sweden. Completed in 2011, Kuggen (Swedish for “the Cogwheel”) was designed for the Chalmers Institute of Technology by famous architect Gert Wingårdh. It connects to neighboring buildings via two second-floor walkways. This weird structure does indeed look like a giant cogwheel—or perhaps a jagged red tornado. Each
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: The Crooked House

This week’s crazy building is the Crooked House in South Staffordshire, England. Built as a farmhouse way back in 1765, the Crooked House didn’t become crooked right away. During the late 1800s, nearby mining caused the land beneath to start gradually sinking. Now one side of the building is four feet lower than the other! In
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Light Cathedral

Light Cathedral by Zeisterre licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is the Light Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. The Light Cathedral was an installation featured at the 2012 Ghent Light Festival. But although this was only a temporary feature of the city’s landscape, it left a lasting memory among those who experienced it. Luminarie de Cagna, an Italian family lighting business dating
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Jagged Apartments

Etoiles d'Ivry by Guilhem Vellut is licensed under CC BY 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Jagged Apartments in Paris, France. This bizarre set of apartment buildings was constructed by famous French architect Jean Renaudie, known for his unusual form of brutalist architecture. A true concrete jungle, it has greenery covering much of its tiered patios and even stretches across the street as if trying to
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: Acros Fukuoka

Acros Fukuoka
This week’s crazy building is Acros Fukuoka in Fukuoka, Japan. Designed by famous Argentinian architect Emilio Ambasz, this strange but little-known structure opened to the public in 1995. Acros, which stands for Asian CrossRoad Over the Sea, is a cultural center and Fukuoka’s most distinctive landmark. What makes it distinctive is obvious to anyone who
Read more
No Comments

This Week’s Crazy Building: The Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque at Sunset
This week’s crazy building is the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. Also called the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, this extraordinary structure was completed way back in 1616. It has a capacity of  an incredible 10,000 people, and also contains a hospice, a religious school and the tomb of its founder. The mosque’s six minarets were a source
Read more
No Comments