Ryugyong Hotel, North Korea

Apparently considered by many to be the ugliest building in the world I fear I'm in the minority by finding the Ryugyong hotel in Pyongyang quite beautiful. The first time I saw it I was working for an architectural charity and on the back of a magazine there was an advert for a competition to sort out this biggest of world architectural problems, but what I saw was a gothic pyramid - its emptiness somehow perfectly echoing this most abandoned of cities. Find rare footage of Pyongyang and you will rarely see a car on the street, tourists aren't allowed unless sponsored by the government and from an approved country. There's something amazing about the sheer scale of national denial in building the world's largest hotel in a country of no visitors. Yet it seems to be a fixation of many an isolated dictator - before he died Turkmanbashi of Turkmenistan was working on a whole street of marble 5 star hotels that he must have known would always stand empty. These buildings for me contain the very essence of the confusion, wasted misplaced dreams and hipocrisy of these societies. And brutal architectural ambition is hardly a new idea in dictatorial regimes - look at all the giant impossible edifices Stalin dreamt up that never came to life and the extraordinary communist structures that sometimes did (perhaps a subject for another post...).

Many great cities have giant hills rising from them, important buildings that piece the skyline as if bursting from the ground - taking possession of the image of the city they come to represent. The Ryugyong hotel has changed Pyongyang from a visually anonymous city to an instantly recognisable international skyline. I also think the use of a pyramidal shape is interesting - they are the greatest tombs of the world - giant structures hiding unknown secrets from a society that it's hard for us modern westerners to permeate. It is said that the communist regime often airbrushes photos to make the hotel appear open, but rather than an embarressed cover up I sometimes feel that there is also a sense of pride in this building - like it is waiting there for the moment the communist regime wishfully thinks its star will rise, take over the world, finish this building and then the west will be jealous. Communist regimes have always liked grand claims and the Ryugyong is the largest hotel in the world.

105 concrete stories high, the 3000 room hotel began construction in 1987 and halted in 1992 after the regime had put 2% of North Korea's GDP into its building. Since then it has been left to deteriorate further and as this video shows is a virtual wasteland:

Architects call for its demolition even though it is in a country they will never visit, may not be allowed to even if they wanted to. There is something about the Ryugyong hotel that unnerves people, but for me this is its power. Yes it is a creepy, brutalist if Cinderella lived in Bladerunner vision, but how often now do real buildings exist more in imagination than reality? This video shows some Italian architects vision of it being westernised then disappearing like a rocket into the stars: But this illustrates my point perfectly - it is pure science fiction, but in reality, in its untouchable, preposterous state it is also a blank canvas - the scale of ridiculous project most architects will only dream of being involved with. It represents a architectural virtual reality we can all have a distant piece of. There is even a collaborative website run by two German architects where you can claim a section for yourself!

But as architecturally unfashionable as it is to say, for me I'm afraid I just find it weirdly beautiful. I'm a sucker for modern ruins and urban decay, granted, but there is something about this building that is so utopian yet ridiculous at the same time that I can't help love it. For me it's hardly human any more but has a life of its own, aided by its incomplete empty of people status - it's the first communist organic man-made mountain - a building forever suited to explorers not hotel guests. A natural phenomena that people are almost scared to tackle.