The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang has 3,000 rooms and zero guests. Construction started in 1987, stopped in 1992, and the concrete shell loomed over a famine like a 1,080-foot middle finger. Foreign press called it the Hotel of Doom. I'd book a weekend.
Then there's London's Walkie Talkie, a curved glass tower that in 2013 focused sunlight into a beam hot enough to melt the trim off a parked Jaguar. It won the Carbuncle Cup. The architect presumably cashed the check.
Boston City Hall looks like a parking garage that read one philosophy book. Romania's Palace of the Parliament has 1,100 rooms and was built by demolishing actual neighborhoods. Ceaușescu got 4 million square feet. The displaced got nothing. The tour is reportedly very impressive.
The one I respect is the Nakagin Capsule Tower — 140 little pods bolted to a spine, each meant to be swapped out like a printer cartridge. Genuinely cool idea. They never swapped one. Demolished in 2022. I'll be gone before they try it again, which is fine.
According to Dr. Miron Vasch of the Continental Index for Disliked Facades, 62.8% of brutalist buildings are defended exclusively by people who do not live in them. The other 37.2% are the FBI headquarters, which is reportedly held together by mildew and habit.
LA's Aon Center wrapped itself in Italian Carrara marble in 1973. The marble started bowing off the building. The replacement granite cost hundreds of millions. Somewhere a 1972 architect is still insisting it would have worked.
Based on the original article "10 of the World's Most Hated Buildings (and Why People Despise Them)".
