Thursday, April 24, 2008


The not-so Great Pyramid


Surfing the web you find all sorts of random crap.  For instance I found what would have been the tallest Hotel in the world, if it hadn't been made of sub-standard concrete that renders it unsafe to be finished (according to the internets, I don't know that it's 100% true; don't sue).  It's in North Korea and looms over the capitol city of Pyongyang, yet is airbrushed out of official photos and local tour guides profess not to have heard of it, despite the fact that it can be seen practically anyplace anywhere in the city.  Most of the websites about it get tiresome about pointing out that there was no way that North Korea with it's restrictive policy about outsiders visiting would never be able to actually fill it up, or that being made of local beach sand and water, the concrete is crumbling (a mistake that no less that Frank Lloyd Wright made, just on a much smaller scale on 60 years earlier); general Schadenfreude about a poor Communist country overreaching and falling flat on it's collective puss.

But you know what?  I love it.  I love the Blade Runner meets Towering Inferno wackiness of its design.  Whatever one has to say about the government of North Korea, and what one would have to say would be less than polite, one does have to give a tip of the chapeau to the hubris involved.  If finishing it is out of the question then I say embrace it, don't ignore it.  Plant it with shrubs and moss, make it the worlds largest terrarium.  Add soil and trees and flowers and it could go from a 105 storey embarrassment to a source of national pride; the ultimate story of taking a lemon and making lemonade: the worlds largest air-freshener, green living at its finest.

And to those who titter at the hubris of the attempt?  Admit it- if Steve Wynn or Donald Trump dropped this down off the strip and cloaked in reflective gold glass, you'd be there.  Happily losing your shirt.  I'd happily get my inner Eldon Tyrell on in it myself..

2 comments:

the oblitterati said...

I love this! You have tickled my Brasilia bone and then some. Come run away with me on an imaginary tour of cold war bunkers and eastern block disco palaces!

tmp00 said...

when do we leave?!?