PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Having come across “7 Super-Sized (And Somewhat Insane) Soviet Projects” on Digg the other day, I started to wondering about all the Chinese Architectural monstrosities there are out there these days. Great Wall excluded of course…

Are these, like the Soviet projects, a public flexing o’ the muscles aimed at showing off to the West? Who knows…
But damned if they ain’t wacky, thas fo’ sure!

1. Shanghai World Financial Center

a.k.a. “The Bottle Opener.” This one was definitely poorly conceived:

The architects, Kohn Pedersen fox, intended to reflect the Chinese cosmic model of ’square fearth and round heaven,’ with the tower’s square column intersected by two sweeping arcs, resulting in a slender crown punctuated by a large circle….The Shanghainesee, knowing that japanese money was behind the project, decided to see this figurative motif as two Japanese army swords holding a Japanese flag over Shanghai – a regrettable metaphor in light of 20th century history – and the construction was halted. The architect’s response to this public rage was, once again, figurative; the circle is now intersected by a bridge, and is transformed into a Chinese ‘moon gate.’” Source

Did I mention it looks like a bottle opener?
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2. Grand National Theater

It’s a big ol’ bubble:

“Though it has been the subject of much controversy since 2001 when construction of the ‘Egg Shell’ started, nobody can resist the attraction of the bubble-shaped theater which is covered by glass and titanium and surrounded by the greenery and water,” said Wang Zhengming, deputy head of the National Grand Theatre. Source

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3. The Ren Building

a.k.a. “The Banana Peel” (I just made that up), the Ren Building is shaped like a giant ? character, which means person in Chinese. It’s actually two buildings in one, the left side being devoted to the body and the right devoted to the mind. The top part where they meet is a hotel, and this area is supposedly reserved for knockin’ boots. Photo Source

4. CCTV Headquarters

It’s nice to see that the Chinese media will finally be housed in a structure as equally bent as they are. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist…)
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5. “The Watercube” – National Swimming Center

Ok. I’m not cracking any jokes about this one. It actually looks cool. But does it remind anybody else of those Transformer energon cubes?
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6. Olympic Stadium – The Birds Nest

Sitting directly across from the Watercube, this will be the centerpiece of the Beijing Olympics. Oddly enough, the Chinese architect who designed it seems to wish that he hadn’t, saying that “he wants nothing to do with the propaganda for which it will be used during [the] games.”
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7. The Three Gorges Dam

The mother of all monstrosities, this dam is as controversial as it is ginormous:

There are so many issues related to the Three Gorges it could start its own library. It’s the biggest dam in the world, and it’s never been anything but controversial since it started. Some time ago it was alleged that the dam was being built with inferior materials, with contractors and officials rorting the budget and skimping on quality. . . Let’s hope it [succeeds], because if it doesn’t, the world’s biggest fire hose is being built. If that 186 metres of water decided to move, nothing could stop it. Imagine a 20 storey version of the Mississippi River, going downhill, at full flood. The Three Gorges Dam is 600 km long, and contains a gigantic amount of water. It’d cause earthquakes, and obliterate anything it encountered, due to kinetic energy. It would be the flood equivalent of Mt. Saint Helens, at the very least, and downstream is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.

If Noah saw something like that coming, he’d build a spaceship, not an ark. Source

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Honorable Mention: The Citreon Transformer

While it’s far from an architectural monstrosity, this Transformer built by some guys in Nanjing is very very cool.