This Week’s Crazy Building: Elephant Building or Chang Building

The Elephant Building or Chang Building stands 32 stories high in Bangkok, Thailand. With such a large representation, it should come as no surprise that the elephant is Thailand’s national animal. Revered in the Buddhist tradition, elephants also played an integral role in industry and agriculture. Featured on some of the national flags, many provinces
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Bird’s Nest

The Beijing National Stadium or Bird’s Nest as locals call it makes a bold statement. The 2.7 million square foot structure was enthusiastically embraced by the public when it opened in 2008. New engineering software was created to make the unique twisted steel exterior possible. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Bird’s Nest won
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Kansas City Public Library

The Kansas City Public Library is a sight to see! At about 25 feet high by 9 feet wide these huge books line the parking garage. Called the “Community Bookshelf” 22 spines and 42 titles are present including: Romeo And Juliet, Catch-22, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Invisible Man, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, Little
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Royal Ontario Museum

Toronto Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum merges old with new in a startling way. The Crystal as the new addition is called seems to burst forth from the older style building, originally constructed in 1914. The various angles were attained by lifting the steel beams one by one to their positions. The Crystal actually isn’t attached
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This Week’s Crazy Building: London City Hall

Sitting on the banks of the Thames River, the London City Hall at first looks like an oddball but on further inspection is quite smart. Designed by architects Foster + Partners it runs on a quarter of the energy compared to a typical air-conditioned office building. It achieves this feat through its unusual shape which
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Oakley Headquarters

The Oakley Headquarters in Lake Forest may remind you of something from a Blade Runner movie, and that is no coincidence! CEO Jim Jannard, who is a friend of Ridley Scott wanted to bring that movie aesthetic into the building. Besides the movie reference, there is also a military feel to it. This also makes
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Geisel Library

UC San Diego’s Geisel Library located in La Jolla, California has a futuristic otherworldly, look. It is done in a mix of the brutalist and modernist architectural styles. Interestingly, the whole college campus utilizes more modernist architecture instead of the historical-revival style which is most commonly seen. Its name comes from Theodor Seuss Geisel, better
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Centre Georges Pompidou

The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France is a unique building. On first glance you can see what is unusual about it, all of the infrastructure is actually located on the outside! This was done to allow for large open spaces inside the Pompidou (totaling over 1 million square feet), which houses modern art as
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Supertree Grove

"Supertrees" by Khairul Nizam is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Supertree Grove in Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay fuses technology with nature. By day, visitors can enjoy a variety of garden settings and shade from the sun. At night the Supertrees light up and put on an otherworldly display. To bring a project as innovate as this to life requires no small amount of
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Saint John’s Abbey Church

It’s easy to get lost in the unusual forms of Saint John’s Abbey Church. Common among Brutalist architecture, it is large and imposing, and also a bit reminiscent of a scoreboard. In 1950, Abbot Baldwin Dworschak contacted twelve architects, requesting an “architectural monument” that would “be valid for centuries to come.” The committee selected Marcel
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