This Week’s Crazy Building: Gates Hall

Gates Hall by Robert Gray licensed under the terms of CC BY 2.0
This week’s crazy building is Gates Hall in Ithaca, NY. Built in 2014 and named after (who else?) Bill and Melinda Gates, this unusual structure looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. But it’s actually the administrative center for the Information and Computer Science departments at Cornell University. The massive cantilevered entryway, the mix
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Heydar Aliyev Center

Heydar Aliyev Center by amanderson2 licensed under the terms of Public Domain
This week’s crazy building is Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. This unusual site is the brainchild of world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid, famous for the curves and unusual structure of her architecture. The design was meant to convey an optimistic future, a departure from the rigid, imposing Soviet architecture that dominates much of the country’s
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This Week’s Crazy Building: ArtScience Museum

The ArtScience Museum by William Cho licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the ArtScience Museum in Singapore. Located at Marina Bay Sands, this attraction resembles a gigantic lotus flower lifted high above the water. The points of the “petals” contain skylights that provide natural lighting to the interior. Another “green” feature: rainwater flows down through the center of the building and into
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Casa Milá

Casa Mila by Rob Shenk is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is Casa Milá in Barcelona, Spain. Also called “La Pedrera” (“The Quarry”), this strange, modernist-style building was the last public work by world-renowned architect Antonio Gaudí. It was built for land developer Pere Milá and his wife. Like Casa Batlló, another of Gaudí’s later works, there are bonelike structures that make
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Tokyo Big Sight

Tokyo Big Sight by heiwa4126 licensed under the terms of CC BY 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo, Japan. While it may look like some futuristic spacecraft or a supervillain headquarters, it’s actually a convention center—the largest one in all of Japan. Officially called the Tokyo International Exhibition Center, it was completed in 1996 for nearly $2 billion. It’s well known in the
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This Week’s Crazy Building: From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes

From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes by Alex Chinneck licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0
This week’s crazy building is From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes in Margate, England. This 4-story house is as bizarre as the name itself. It had stood empty and decaying for 11 years before designer Alex Chinneck decided it would make an excellent art installation. Chinneck removed the old
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This Week’s Crazy Building: South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute

SAHMRI by Jackstarshaker licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0
This week’s crazy building is the South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute in Adelaide, Australia. It looks like either a cheese grater or one of those big old-style microphones, but this building actually houses a state-of-the- art research facility. Completed just last year, the structure’s unique facade was inspired by the pattern of a
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Sharifi-Ha House

Sharifi-ha House by designmilk licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Sharifi-Ha House in Tehran, Iran. Built for an affluent Iranian man as his private residence, this home has one very unique feature. The rectangular rooms in each of its three stories can be rotated outward so that they jut into the air. With the press of a button, the
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Incheon Tri-Bowl

This week’s crazy building is the Incheon Tri-Bowl near Seoul, South Korea. Finished in 2010, this highly unusual structure is quite aptly named: it’s made up of three bowl shapes that connect in the middle, arching over a large reflecting pool. The building has several levels of meaning: the three bowls represent the air/land/sea, the
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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
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