World's Weirdest Looking Skyscrapers
once you've seen one massive skyscraper you've seen them all am I right well no While most Modern Skyscrapers look tall boxy and dull Architects and developers are constantly coming up with increasingly crazy Concepts so that their buildings will stand out from the crowd from rotating Towers to death star designs let's take a look at some of the strangest skyscrapers you'll ever Lay Your Eyes On a whole lot of gold now I don't know about you but when I think of a typical skyscraper I imagine soaring vertical structures maybe made of gray concrete or blue glass panels this building in China has flipped both of these features on their heads the Guangzhou circle is a round golden colored skyscraper and Matt 453 feet tall it's the tallest circular building in the world but it didn't come cheap with construction efforts costing some 160 million dollars when it was completed back in 2013. so the ultimate question is why place a giant 160 foot hole in the middle of such an expensive Circle well it turns out the entire design is based on an ancient Chinese symbol known as a Bee flat discs made out of glass or Jade that could only be afforded by the elite but it's not the only part of the design associated with money located on the banks of the Pearl River the Golden Circle casts an impressive reflection on the water beside it creating a giant figure of eight this is another symbol popular in Chinese culture for its Association to Good Fortune and prosperity this is pretty ingenious because the skyscraper serves primarily as the headquarters of two billion dollar entities the Guangdong plastic exchange and the hung Dash Xing Yi group with millions of dollars being managed here every day they need all the prosperity they they can get no matter what shape it comes in put a ring on it most skyscrapers have multi-purpose uses they will include hotels shopping malls or offices but not China's brand new 16 million dollar ring of life no sir at 515 feet tall with a circumference of more than 1 617 feet making it longer than the Empire State Building is tall this massive circular structure doesn't house a single habitable room originally it was going to serve as a bungee jumping facility but at 515 feet tall it was deemed too high and was instead replaced with an observation deck today the 3 000 ton steel rings main feature apart from its size is the 12 000 LED lights that can light up the night sky in various colors pretty cool I'll admit but an awfully odd way to spend 16 million dollars if you ask me hey China if you're that Keen to spend all that cash on something feel free to hit up my super thanks button thank you muscle Tower any number of things can inspire a skyscraper's design the shape of the Burj Khalifa for example was inspired by the leaves of the Spider Lily the marina Bays Sands Drew its design from a house of cards and the Sarco style was based on muscle tissue weight muscle tissue well how does that work well when you look at it from a slightly different angle that uh yeah it still isn't clear might be why it was never built called the sarcos style this 689 foot tall conceptual skyscraper was put forward to fill a space on New York's iconic Harbor front designed by Harry atock Design Studio they aimed to make it look similar in shape to the surrounding structures but distinctly biological in nature construction of such dramatic shapes would require structural tubes on each corner of the building to allow the inside to look like it had folded in on itself through a series of giant voids and while it certainly stands out it's not exactly clear how things like elevators would reach each of the 60 floors nor would the floor layout of those middle tubes could possibly be used for still for a building inspired by muscle tissues it's one hell of a flax well no matter if they're real or conceptual I don't think holes or voids belong in skyscraper designs something about them just makes me feel uneasy do you feel the same if you do be sure to hit that like button down below and if you don't well then hit subscribe all right what architectural weirdness have we got next Water Tower in the middle of Chicago there's a building that from afar looks like it's made of water but that's impossible right well despite being called aqua Tower it thankfully isn't built on liquid foundations the 876 foot skyscraper completed back in 2009 with some 300 million dollars is cleverly composed so that it looks like vertical waves are running down the entire length of the building how well the architect stretched the balconies on each floor by as much as 12 feet and used varying sized concrete slabs across the tower to emphasize each curved undulating wave so as the sun moves across the building so do these shadowy waves that might be the biggest optical illusion I've ever seen the separate sizes and shapes of the slabs also allow residents inside to maintain access to sunlight and stunning views of the city not only is it a residential building but it's 1.9 million square feet spread over 82 floors also houses offices a hotel and one of Chicago's largest green roofs man with those Wild Waves it certainly sticks out from Chicago's other more traditional Towers sky's the limit you wouldn't necessarily think that an entire skyscraper could be just one home but over on billionaires Row in Mumbai India that's exactly what's been built called antilia or more commonly Ambani house the entirety of this 27-floor skyscraper is valued at an insane two billion dollars and is home to just one single family it's one of the most expensive private Residential Properties in the world occupied by one of the richest people on the planet Mukesh Ambani along with his wife and three children there's also enough space to house six live-in staff to maintain this Mansion wait hang on did I say six staff sorry I meant 600. yeah that's right 600.
that may seem like Overkill but each of them have jobs maintaining this skyscraper mansion's Health Spa gym multiple swimming pools ice cream parlor nine elevators 50 seat Cinema Ballroom and Temple is there anything this building doesn't have well apparently not because it also contains an underground private car park and not one not two but three helipads suddenly having 600 staff on hand to help out doesn't seem that outrageous its odd shape is yet another feature that sets this Mansion apart from any other looking like an uncontrollable game of Jenga but it isn't nearly as easy to knock down as it's been specially designed to withstand an earthquake of eight on the Richter Scale one of the highest magnitudes recorded So this strong stable Super Rich skyscraper really does have it all my only question now is how do I get adopted by this family foreign Death Star scraper we're off to outer space for this next skyscraper because it looks like a full moon but wait a minute that's no moon it's a space station actually Obi-Wan it's not that either while it may look like the Death Star it's actually azerbaijan's full moon tower from the front the concept certainly looks spherical but it's actually designed to be thin more like a disc than a moon seems like false advertising to me still at 515 feet tall this was conceptualized as part of baku's Crescent Bay which at its opposite end has another Moon shaped building aptly called the Crescent Hotel but it seems like this was too many Moons for Baku to handle because before work could begin on this eye-wateringly expensive 500 million dollar project in The Architects scrapped their original plans focusing all efforts onto the Crescent Hotel instead seems that one 545-foot novelty moon-shaped Hotel was enough who'da thought who wears the pants TV companies all over the world have their headquarters offices and studios located in some pretty iconic buildings like the BBC's broadcasting house or NBC Tower but few come close to the conceptual craziness of the China central television headquarters this gravity-defying structure is built on a web of diagonals which are denser in areas of Greater stress allowing around a quarter of the building to look like it's floating without any support underneath built back in 2008 it was specially created to accommodate all the TV coverage that came with hosting the Olympic Games in Beijing that year unlike traditional vertical high-rises this building utilizes Two Towers one 767 feet tall and another some 636 feet tall that lean against each other and are connected on their upper floors by a cantilevered link level this linked level features 13 foot wide glass floors allowing visitors to look down a 530 foot drop for that additional Fear Factor to create this wonderfully weird design the construction company had to figure out a way to ensure the towers could Bend at 90 degrees to form this continuous loop this led to the towers being built at different heights to balance all the elements out but thanks to this strange shape it now has a variety of nicknames such as the pants and big pants considering it cost 900 million dollars to build they might just be the most expensive pair of pants on the planet foreign I'm a sucker for old 8-bit games but luckily the 8-Bit way of life is coming back in style if this next skyscraper is anything to go by located in Bangkok the Maha nakhan or King power was completed back in 2016 and then designed to reveal its interior through a winding architectural pixel design standing at 1050 feet tall the swirling design makes it look like a 1981 Donkey Kong has taken a swipe at it but in reality each pixelated section is made of a series of glass Sky boxes and balconies each one giving occupants both indoor and outdoor living spaces that are well suited to bangkok's climate alongside this fun feature the 150 000 square foot skyscraper contains 79 floors the majority of which are luxury residences and hotel rooms from certain angles though it can look like residents are living in floating boxes with the building's inner structure cleverly hidden from View but to make this work more than 30 percent of the tower floor plates have been built to work as cantilevers with just one end of each plate supported in a way that allows the rest of the beam to hang free to further support this the core of the building is wrapped in a series of Mega columns connected at several transfer floors all this allows the pixel indents to spiral up the building without any problems well it may be a pixelated design but this looks like 4K quality to me foreign Gods on Earth Okay so we've established there are insane skyscrapers there are crazy Concepts and some super odd designs but this next one might take the award for weirdest looking building on the planet built in the outskirts of Beijing China what you're seeing here is a 136 foot tall 10-story structure which is also the biggest image building in the world it depicts three Gods from Chinese mythology with each deity representing an attribute that's necessary for a good life the white-haired God on the far left is Xiao who can control lifespans and is associated with longevity Foo stands in the middle representing fortune and next to him the god Lou embodies Prosperity Rank and influence so what exactly is this building maybe it's some sort of Temple or religious Center designed to encourage people to pay homage that would make sense right well since be damned because this is a hotel no joke guests enter through xiao's right foot and can stay in rooms located anywhere from the feet all the way to the gods heads they can even book a room inside the peach oh wow for a minute then I thought that meant one of the butts not the actual Peach Shaw is holding emojis have ruined me foreign scraper when it comes to strong shapes triangles squares and hexagons top the list which is why so many Architects use them in their designs but despite circles being one of the weaker shapes that didn't stop designers of the United Arab Emirates Alder HQ from building one hecking huge circular skyscraper located in Abu Dhabi it was the very first building of its kind to Grace the Middle East when it was completed back in 2010 more than 360 feet tall with 23 floors this distinctive design comprises two circular convex facades which are linked by a middle layer of indented glazing a bit like a giant glass Penny that's miraculously landed on its side and I mean giant the curved glass skin of this skyscraper could cover the area of four entire football fields but all that glass doesn't stay up on its own instead the building relies on a triangular diagram of Steel to keep everything in place the very first of its kind used in the UAE all of this means that while the building has only 23 floors it provides roughly the same floor area as a 40-story tower okay I'll admit I wasn't a fan of spherical buildings at the start of this video but I guess you could say this design has brought me round water tall here's a fun question what happens if you cross a skyscraper with a waterfall chaos destruction a movie directed by Michael Bay well in this case it's actually the Libyan International building situated in gyuyang China construction of this massive skyscraper began back in 2012 and while the building itself is yet to be finished a dramatic water feature built into it was completed back in 2016. standing at nearly 400 feet this skyscraper incorporates one of the world's tallest artificial waterfalls running down the side of the building the waterfall itself uses a blend of recycled tap water and rainwater powered by four pumps however the first time the fall was turned on major water leaks were reported by local residents it also reportedly costs over a hundred dollars per hour to run so despite taking more than four years to complete the fall itself has only been turned on a handful of times man water disappointment where Falcons soar if I asked you to think of an iconic Museum I bet you'd imagine something like Francis Louvre New York's Guggenheim or Amsterdam's Reich Museum well in the not so distant future all of these iconic buildings will be competing with the other worldly zayad National Museum aiming for completion by 2025 it has been designed as an homage to the Founding Father of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Zayed bin sultan al-nayan and a huge one at that reaching a top height of 374 feet tall the Leaning Towers that look like giant air vents are shaped specifically to resemble falcon wings in honor of zayed's Love of falconry its base will be constructed to imitate the landscape of the Emirates and the five steel structures will not only act as decoration but as solar thermal Towers balancing the vertical wings out a central pod-like Lobby dug into the ground will hold the main exhibition area with almost half a million square feet of floor space this gigantic project will include a large Auditorium entertainment venues and of course Gallery spaces all of these different shapes almost feel like three different ideas in one it's a game-changing design to see in any building let alone a skyscraper foreign scraper okay full disclosure I'm actually kind of afraid of heights I'm terrified at the idea of being stuck a thousand feet off the ground oh the only thing worse would be if the floor beneath me started moving but there are no Architects out there statistic enough to design a rotating skyscraper right right wrong this is dynamic tower a concept skyscraper designed for the city of Dubai back in 2008 each floor making up the 1378 foot Tower is able to rotate clockwise and anti-clockwise a full 360 degrees with a complete turn taking 90 minutes what's more you can actually control the direction and speed of the floor inside your own floor independently I just know some sadists would use this feature to turn their floor into a Sky High never-ending merry-go-round but how on Earth would they build this amazingly the plan was to have a whopping 90 percent of the structure pre-built inside a factory and then shipped to the construction site each unit would then be loaded onto a central column and attached in segments with elevators running up and down the central columns to transport residents up and down the tower it's a hell of a zany design one that was projected to cost approximately 1.2 billion dollars yeah that's a billion with a B well somewhere between the insane design and the even more insane price tag this development has been placed on hold indefinitely looks like I can rest easy tonight cut Tower it's no secret that Qatar has a vision to become the most prosperous nation in the world by 2030. they're investing
heavily in major infrastructure overhauls such as the 45 billion dollar development of lusali City the jewel of which is the iconic Katara Towers Hotel by day each of the 700 foot Towers can be seen across the city for miles and by night they light up the Bayside but why did it have to be an upturned Crescent well the design of this ambitious project was based around the shape of the two traditional Scimitar swords in qatar's National seal to build such an unconventional shape table lifting systems had to be modified to incorporate the inclined arches and more than one hundred thousand square feet of construction tables had to come in custom sizes home to the Doha Fairmont hotel which opened in late 2022 its aim is to attract the attention of two tourists and locals alike with its unusual style and quirky features now you can hardly imagine hotels or shopping plazas actually fitting inside the Katara Towers because of its shape it looks like everything would get squashed up fortunately the towers each have a floor area of around 25 000 square feet so there's plenty of room even as you go further up now that's a towering effort laughs wind power tower there are some buildings that look so futuristic and cool you'd think they were the Avengers new headquarters but while this skyscraper certainly looks like it could have been built by Tony Stark may he rest in peace for superhero Antics what goes on inside couldn't be more different this is actually the World Trade Center of Manama in Bahrain reaching 787 feet in height the towers of this building are connected by three Sky Bridges each one containing a 95 foot diameter wind turbine inspired by the traditional Arabian wind towers the sail-shaped towers funnel the strong Sea Breeze from the Persian Gulf into the three wind turbines which provide around 15 percent of the building's total power when it was opened back in 2008 it was the very first skyscraper in the entire world to have Incorporated this kind of wind turbine into its design and while it looked a little wacky it's inspired more skyscraper designers to incorporate wind turbines into their builds like Pearl River Tower and Hess Tower to reduce their Reliance on non-renewable fuels well green energy never looked so good foreign decision so we've looked at skyscrapers that share a base and split off into two towers but have you ever seen a building that shares a tower split over two different bases well you have now thanks to the concept of the ren building proposed for a spot on the Shanghai Skyline the ren building was initially conceived as two towers merging into one the first Tower is designed as if emerging from the water itself and fittingly will house a water culture and Sports Center the second is dedicated to a Conference Centers and board rooms and where the two meet in the middle to form an arch a 1 000 room Hotel would be located this sounds like a perfect mix of spaces but what's the story behind this unusual shape well the structure cleverly forms the traditional Chinese character for people making this public building a standout landmark the Wren was a proposal for the World Expo China 2010 but sadly never became a reality still you could say this design certainly has a lot of character a holy place if you have Trypophobia then you're going to want to look away from this next building but for those who aren't afraid of endless tightly packed holes say hello to Miami's core building this 400 foot tall conceptual cheese grater sorry skyscraper was presented back in 2005 as the first sustainable mixed-use condominium in the whole of Miami the holy exoskeleton of the building was designed to be thermally insulated which at the top layer would also house a series of wind turbines this would help the building be as green as possible with the trade-off being that it looks like a cursed block of Swiss cheese other smart features such as recycled glass flooring bamboo lined hallways and recycled concrete foundations are also mentioned in the brief making this design sustainable from the bottom of its foundations all the way up to its wind turbine lined Roof Garden and sadly the concept never got the green light which I think is a Pity though I know plenty of trypophobes out there who will disagree impossible Heights now I'm no architect but even I know that a skyscraper can't just bend 90 degrees without all the relevant cantilevers in place because you know physics so with that being the case what the heck is happening here I mean that air conditioning unit is holding on for dear life God knows how the elevators in this place work or the stairs for that matter I bet the inside looks like some M.C Escher hellscape luckily this isn't actually real this is all work of digital artist Victor enrich who's taken classic skyscraper design to some unimaginable limits in his City portraits collection he takes pictures of classic buildings like this one in Tel Aviv and manipulates them until they look like concrete slinkies with others he picks out key details and manipulates them like stretching out the balconies of this building until they look like a carton of fries well I mean there is a McDonald's under there or here where he's transformed three relatively ordinary concrete and glass Towers into different shaped portals to another dimension It's a Wonderful look into a world completely unconstrained by constructs like gravity these buildings look like they'd be so much fun to live in assuming I wouldn't immediately fall to my death which of these skyscrapers did you think was the strangest and have you ever seen any of them with your own eyes let me know down in the comments below and thanks for watching [Music]
2023-02-17 18:53
