Architectural fails: Public and expensive reminders of poor taste, judgement and design. While some failures can be happily consigned to the annals of history, architectural disasters tend to be a bit more prominent and hard to forget. Just look at London’s USD 976 mn Millennium Dome, an immediate flop when it opened in 2000. Twenty years’ later and it’s still a byword for failure.

Some failures — like the Tacoma Bridge collapse — are spectacular. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was a suspension bridge in Washington that opened to the public on 1 July 1940. At the time, it was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world and cost an estimated USD 6 mn — which, allowing for inflation, is the equivalent of almost USD 1 bn today. But in an effort to reduce construction costs, the bridge was built with ineffective girders, leaving it vulnerable to strong winds. It collapsed in spectacular fashion four months after opening, under the pressure of 40 mph wind, in an incident that thankfully saw no human fatalities.

Others — like the Leaning Tower of Pisa — have become iconic. While Pisa’s famous tower is by no means the only one to lean, it is certainly the world’s most famous. Built between 1173 and 1372, the tower survives in its current form because of both good and bad luck. A shallow foundation and soft ground made it unstable from the beginning, but war between Pisa and Genoa resulted in a 100-year construction break, which gave the foundation time to settle. Fun fact: the tower was closed for repairs for the first time ever in 1990 because it was leaning too much. Its tilt was reduced by about 18 inches, but not straightened entirely — because what would be the point of a Tower of Pisa that’s perfectly straight?

North Korea fails at totalitarian tourism: Almost three decades ago North Korea showed the world how not to implement a prestige project. The Ryugyong Hotel was supposed to put Pyongyang on the map: tourists would come to the city in droves to stay at what would have been the world’s then-tallest hotel, complete with 3k rooms and five revolving restaurants. Unfortunately construction was never finished: originally scheduled to open in 1992, the rocket-shaped concrete hulk continues to loom over the city. Orascom was brought in by the government in 2009 to give the building a facelift but it remains shuttered to the public to this day. More than 30 years after breaking ground, the building has succeeded only in breaking the less-than-prestigious world record of ‘tallest unoccupied building in the world.’

Can we agree on the worst building in the world? While there are several strong contenders for this dubious accolade, Boston’s City Hall repeatedly tops the lists of the most unattractive buildings ever constructed (see image above). It’s regularly compared to an upside-down wedding cake, and there were calls for it to be demolished even before it was completed, in 1968. But one person’s ugliest building is another’s brutalist masterpiece, and some architects have praised its immensity, expressiveness, novelty and influence.

---