Winnipeg has a building with a very rare and unique design. The Canadian Grain Commission Building on Main near Portage has a bulge that makes the top floors wider than the bottom floors. According to Wikipedia it is called “Setfront design.”
Ernest J. Smith of Smith Carter was the principal architect of the Grain Commission’s current headquarters, nicknamed the “mushroom building”, the structure itself is a notable example of a Canadian skyscraper displaying Brutalist elements. The building’s “extended cap” was designed because of a space needed between the upper and lower floors for specialized mechanical equipment used to transport grain to an upper-level flour mill and test brewery. Smith remarked on the challenges involved:
Mixing two different functions in a vertical building is difficult. Normally construction would be separated horizontally. In this case, we worked out two separate modules for offices and lab space, [and] found we needed greater depth in the lab and rationalized the present form.
I surf tall building websites quite often. Mainly Skyscraperpage.com. In searching cities across North America and the world I have found only one other building with this setfront design.
It’s in Denver, 707-17th street. It has 42 stories compared to the Grain Commission at 17. Grain Commission is 220 feet tall while 707-17th is 550 feet. Only two buildings. And one in The Peg.
In Japan where space is at a premium strange things happen.
One of the most curious buildings in Japan is the Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan. The 5th, 6th and 7th floors of this 16-story office building is occupied by an express highway – passing right through the building. On the building’s floor information board on the ground floor, the tenants for the three floors are listed as the Hanshin Expressway. You realize this as the elevator skips from the 4th floor to straight to the 8th.
The Gate Tower Building is actually the result of an unusual compromise between the land owner and the Japanese government. The land has been occupied by a wood and charcoal processing company since the early Meiji period, but the gradual move to other sources of fuel resulted in the deterioration of those company buildings. In 1983, the redevelopment of the area was decided upon, but building permits were refused because the highway was already being planned to be built over this land. The property rights’ holders refused to give up, and negotiated with the Hanshin Expressway corporation for approximately 5 years to reach the current solution.
Aside from the intrusive highway, business at the Gate Tower Building is almost normal. The highway does not make contact with the building, and a structure surrounding the highway keeps noise and vibration out.
111 West 57th Street, also known as Steinway Tower, is a supertall residential skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Developed by JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group, it is situated along Billionaires’ Row on the north side of 57th Street near Sixth Avenue. The main portion of the building is an 84-story, 1,428-foot (435-meter) tower designed by SHoP Architects and completed in 2021. Preserved at the base is the 16-story Steinway Building (also Steinway Hall), a former Steinway & Sons store designed by Warren and Wetmore and completed in 1925, which originally carried the address 111 West 57th Street.
111 West 57th Street contains 60 luxury condominiums: 14 in Steinway Hall and 46 in the tower. The residential tower has a glass facade with piers made of terracotta; its pinnacle contains setbacks on the southern side. The tower is the fourth-tallest building in the United States as of November 2022, as well as the thinnest skyscraper in the world with a width-to-height ratio of about 1:24.
The residential tower atop Steinway Hall is one of the tallest buildings in the United States, as well as the thinnest skyscraper in the world with a width-to-height ratio of about 1:24. Due to its slenderness, the top stories sway several feet during high winds. The building has been characterized as part of a new breed of New York City “pencil towers”. The tower’s northern elevation rises directly up to the pinnacle, and the southern elevation contains several setbacks as the tower rises, thinning the tower’s footprint on higher floors. The pinnacle’s lighting pattern was commissioned by L’Observatoire International. Because of the shape of the tower’s pinnacle, 111 West 57th Street is nicknamed “Stairway to Heaven”.
111 West 57th Street’s interior spaces were designed by Studio Sofield, though the interior of the original Steinway Hall was planned by Walter L. Hopkins. There are 60 apartments in total: 46 in the tower and 14 in Steinway Hall. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of 303,225 square feet (28,170.5 m2).
The 46 condominiums in the building’s tower range from 3,873 to 7,128 square feet (359.8 to 662.2 m2). The apartments start above the 17th story, numbered as floor 20, because the views of Central Park from the lower floors are obstructed by neighboring buildings. The units are mostly three-bedroom apartments each occupying one full floor, except for seven duplex units on floors 60–61 and 72–83, which each have between two and four bedrooms. Many of the stories are open in plan and have 14-foot (4.3 m) ceilings. As of 2018, prices ranged from $16 million for a studio apartment to over $66 million for the triplex penthouse.
Stretching for over three miles along the white sandy beach on Germany’s Baltic Sea island of Ruegen, lies the world’s biggest hotel with 10,000 bedrooms all facing the sea. But for 70 years since it was built, no holiday maker has ever stayed there. This is hotel Prora, a massive building complex built between 1936 and 1939 by the Nazis as part of their “Strength through Joy” (“Kraft durch Freude,” KdF) programme. The aim was to provide leisure activities for German workers and spread Nazi propaganda. Locals call Prora the Colossus because of its monumental structure.
Prora lies on an extensive bay between the Sassnitz and Binz regions, known as the Prorer Wiek, on the narrow heath (the Prora) which separates the lagoon of the Großer Jasmunder Bodden from the Baltic Sea. The complex consist of eight identical buildings that extend over a length of 4.5 kilometres and are roughly 150 metres from the beach. A workforce of 9,000 took three years to build it, starting in 1936, and the Nazis had long-term plans for four identical resorts, all with cinema, festival halls, swimming pools and a jetty where Strength Through Joy cruise ships would dock.
Dr. Robert Ley envisaged Prora as a parallel to Butlins – British “holiday camps” designed to provide affordable holidays for the average worker. Prora was designed to house 20,000 holidaymakers, under the ideal that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach. Designed by Clemens Klotz (1886–1969), all rooms were planned to overlook the sea, while corridors and sanitation are located on the land side. Each room of 5 by 2.5 metres (16’5″ x 8’3″) was to have two beds, an armoire (wardrobe) and a sink. There were communal toilets and showers and ballrooms on each floor.
Hitler’s plans for Prora were much more ambitious. He wanted a gigantic sea resort, the “most mighty and large one to ever have existed”, holding 20,000 beds. In the middle, a massive building was to be erected. At the same time, Hitler wanted it to be convertible into a military hospital in case of war. Hitler insisted that the plans of a massive indoor arena by architect Erich Putlitz be included. Putlitz’s Festival Hall was intended to be able to accommodate all 20,000 guests at the same time. His plans included two wave-swimming pools and a theatre. A large dock for passenger ships was also planned.
During the few years that Prora was under construction, all major construction companies of the Reich and nearly 9,000 workers were involved in this project. With the onset of World War II in 1939, building on Prora stopped and the construction workers transferred to the V-Weapons plant at Peenemünde. The eight housing blocks, the theatre and cinema stayed as empty shells, and the swimming pools and festival hall never materialised. During the Allied bombing campaign, many people from Hamburg took refuge in one of the housing blocks, and later refugees from the east of Germany were housed there. By the end of the war, these buildings housed female auxiliary personnel for the Luftwaffe.
Beach side
In 1945 the Soviet Army took control of the region and established a military base at Prora. The Soviet Army’s 2nd Artillery Brigade occupied block 5 of Prora from 1945 to 1955. The Soviet military then stripped all usable materials from the building. In the late 1940s two of the housing blocks – one on the North and one on the South – were demolished and the remains mostly removed.
In the late 1950s the East German military rebuilt several of the buildings. Since the buildings had been stripped to the bare brick in the late 1940s, most of the exterior and interior finish that can be seen today was done under East German control. After the formation of the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR’s) National Peoples Army in 1956, the buildings became a restricted military area housing several East German Army units. The most prominent were the elite 40. Fallschirmjägerbataillon Willi Sänger (40th Parachute Battalion “Willi Sänger”) which was housed in block 5 from 1960 to 1982. Block 4 on the north side was used for urban combat training by the Parachute Battalion and others. Large sections remain as ruins to this day. Also housed in the building from 1982 to 1990 was the East German Army Construction Battalion “Mukran”, where conscientious objectors served as noncombatant Construction Soldiers (Bausoldaten) to meet their military service obligation. A part of the building also served as the East German Army’s “Walter Ulbricht” convalescent home.
In 2013, a German company, Metropole Marketing, bought the rights to refurbish Prora and market the units as summer homes. By that year, refurbished apartments in the so-called Colossus were on sale for as much as 700,000 euros ($900,000) apiece. The completion date was estimated as 2016. In 2016, the first of the new apartments opened in Block 1. The Prora Solitaire hotel in Block 2 opened in time for summer 2016, and some reconstructed flats were for sale in that Block by mid 2017. At that time, four of the buildings were in the process of redevelopment, a fifth was used as a youth hostel while the remaining three remained in ruins.
A November 2017 update indicated that most of the units (flats) in Block 1 had been sold, having been marketed as summer homes for those who live in Hamburg and Berlin. Many were listed by owners as short term rentals on sites such as Airbnb and HomeAway.
In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, a series of peculiarly shaped apartment blocks were constructed in the Polish city of Gdańsk. They were collectively called “Falowiec”, from the Polish word “fala,” which means “wave,” and whose plural form is “falowce.” These buildings earned the name Falowiec due to their distinctive wave-like pattern as they alternate between blocks.
There are eight such buildings in Gdańsk, with the most renowned located in the Przymorze block. It has 11 floors, 16 staircases, 1,792 apartments in which nearly six thousand tenants live. It’s like a small town.
Photo credit: Reddit
The dimensions of the building—32 meters high, 13 meters wide, and 860 meters long—place it among the leading residential giants. The building stretches like a huge train with three bus stops along its length, and four addresses. The building is so large that it affects the air movement creating a microclimate around it. In the north it is colder, and snow and frost last longer. In the south, the average temperature is slightly higher, and in hot weather, grass and trees dry faster.
The Falowiec were built during a period when there was an acute housing shortage. The buildings were meant to be a temporary solution. However, they became embedded in the seaside landscape for many years.
The blocks were designed and erected according to a similar scheme. Most of the apartments are accessed from open galleries that run along the north wall. In the beginning, it was possible to walk from one end of the building to the other. But then, boarders erected walls separating the individual apartments from each other.
There are a total of eight Falowce in Gdańsk. All of them were built in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a huge housing shortage. They were meant to be a temporary solution. However, they became embedded in the seaside landscape for many years.
The blocks were designed and erected according to a similar scheme. Most of the apartments are accessed from open galleries that run along the north wall. They used to be able to walk from one end of the building to the other. Then, on the galleries, walls grew up, separating the individual cages from each other. The blocks have balconies on the south side.
The shape of the buildings resembles a sea wave. Hence their name. Vice-President Wojtkowiak still remembers when the largest of the wave houses, at Obrońców Wybrzeża Street, was settled. — It was done in stages. When the residents moved into the first segment, the next ones were still being finished, he recalls.
The giant’s surroundings resembled a construction site for a long time. There were piles of sand around, concrete slabs lying around, one could only dream of lawns or even a sidewalk. But for most people, their own apartment was quite an ennoblement. Especially living in a place like this. From the upper floors of the block you can see the sea, and in good weather even the Hel Peninsula.
The Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park in Zhuhai, China, is famous both for its impressive offering of rare marine wildlife from all over the world and its sci-fi-inspired design.
Announced in 2015, the Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park immediately captured people’s imaginations with its futuristic design reminiscent of alien motherships depicted in sci-fi flicks and video games. Described as the largest indoor marine science park in the world, with more than 100,000 marine animals of around 300 species, as well as 100 kinds of living coral split into 10 themed areas. Originally scheduled to open in 2021, after ten years of planning and just over 5 years of actual construction, the giant marine science park only opened its gates to the public this month.
The Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park has a total length of approximately 650 meters and covers a total area of about 400,000 square meters. It can accommodate over 50,000 visitors per day and boasts several world records, including the world’s largest aquarium display window and the world’s largest living coral tank.
Built by Chimelong Group, which also owns the Zhuhai Chimelong International Ocean Resort, the Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park cost $1.1 billion, making it the most expensive marine science park, as well as the largest indoor one.
187 Garry Street was constructed in 1903 and designed as a boarding house by the owner, Charles H. Forrester. In 1910 the building was redesigned as a hotel. After construction was complete the Le Claire Hotel opened with three floors of suites and a small one storey gentlemen’s club attached.
In 1930 the hotel went through a redesign to become The Windsor Hotel, which is the current hotel name. The total costs of the renovation was $100,000 which included extensive renovations to the hotel’s bar and lounge.
By the 1990s the old gentlemen’s bar and lounge had become The Windsor Hotel’s Blues Bar. The small one storey attachment to the hotel would host jazz nights in which local jazz musicians would play for small crowds. By 1994 the Blues Bar became so popular that an addition was required to accommodate the many patrons. The much larger Blues Bar was newly designed with a Garry Street entrance and is decorated with paintings of popular blues artists. The mural on the North elevation of the hotel was painted in 1995 by Joe Mallzar. The image is of the Windsor’s logo. A second prominent painting is on the North elevation of the 1994 Blues Bar. This image depicts Charlie Chaplin as he contemplates continuing his career on stage. Chaplin was a previous customer at the Le Claire hotel in 1913.
The Katskhi pillar is a natural limestone monolith located at the village of Katskhi in western Georgian region of Imereti, near the town of Chiatura. It is approximately 40 metres (130 ft) high, and overlooks the small river valley of Katskhura, a right affluent of the Q’virila.
The rock, with visible church ruins on a top surface measuring c. 150 m2, has been venerated by locals as the Pillar of Life and a symbol of the True Cross, and has become surrounded by legends. It remained unclimbed by researchers and unsurveyed until 1944 and was more systematically studied from 1999 to 2009. These studies determined the ruins were of an early medieval hermitage dating from the 9th or 10th century. A Georgian inscription paleographically dated to the 13th century suggests that the hermitage was still extant at that time. Religious activity associated with the pillar was revived in the 1990s and the monastery building had been restored within the framework of a state-funded program by 2009.
The Katskhi pillar complex currently consists of a church dedicated to Maximus the Confessor, a crypt (burial vault), three hermit cells, a wine cellar, and a curtain wall on the uneven top surface of the column. At the base of the pillar are the newly built church of Simeon Stylites and ruins of an old wall and belfry.
The church of St. Maximus the Confessor is located at the south-easternmost corner of the top surface of the Katskhi pillar. A small simple hall church design with the dimensions of 4.5 × 3.5 m., it is a modern restoration of the ruined medieval church built of stone. Beneath and south of the church is an elongated rectangular crypt with the dimensions of 2.0 × 1.0 m., which had served as a burial vault. Digs at the ruined wine cellar revealed eight large vessels known in Georgia as k’vevri. Also of note is a rectangular cellar grotto with the entrance and two skylights—on the vertical surface of the rock, some 10-metre (33 ft) below the top. At the very base of the pillar there is a cross in relief, exhibiting parallels with similar early medieval depictions found elsewhere in Georgia, particularly at Bolnisi.
In July 1944 a group led by the mountaineer Alexander Japaridze and the writer Levan Gotua made the first documented ascent of the Katskhi pillar. Vakhtang Tsintsadze, an architecture specialist with the group, reported in his 1946 paper that the ruins found on top of the rock were remains of two churches, dating from the 5th and 6th centuries and associated with a stylite practice, a form of Christian asceticism. Since 1999, the Katskhi pillar has become the subject of more systematic research. Based on further studies and archaeological digs conducted in 2006, Giorgi Gagoshidze, an art historian with the Georgian National Museum, re-dated the structures to the 9th–10th century. He concluded that this complex was composed of a monastery church and cells for hermits. Discovery of the remnants of a wine cellar also undermined the idea of extreme ascetism flourishing on the pillar. In 2007, a small limestone plate with the asomtavruli Georgian inscriptions was found, paleographically dated to the 13th century and revealing the name of a certain “Giorgi”, responsible for the construction of three hermit cells. The inscription also makes mention of the Pillar of Life, echoing the popular tradition of veneration of the rock as a symbol of the True Cross.[1]
Religious activity started to revive in 1995, with the arrival of the monk Maxim Qavtaradze, a native of Chiatura. Between 2005 and 2009, the monastery building on the top of the pillar was restored with the support of the National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Georgia. The rock was once accessible to male visitors through an iron ladder running from its base to the top, but has recently been deemed inaccessible to the public.
La Jument (“the mare”) is a lighthouse in Brittany, Northwestern France. The lighthouse is built on a rock (that is also called La Jument) about 300 metres from the coast of the island of Ushant. There is also a very different lighthouse about 3 kilometres to the North, the Nividic lighthouse. Together with the Kreac’h lighthouse, they are the three most famous lighthouses of the region. It was listed as a historic monument in 2017.
This section of the coastline of Brittany, the west coast of Northern France, had always been known by sailors to be a rugged and dangerous area. Being the westernmost point of land, it is a heavily trafficked sealane, and also experiences severe weather during much of the year. As a result, the area has experienced many shipwrecks over the centuries: for example, just between 1888 and 1904, thirty-one ships were wrecked there.
Plans to build a lighthouse on La Jument started not long after the wreck of the Glasgow-built steam ship SS Drummond Castle in June, 1896, which had resulted in the deaths of around 250 people. The building works were privately financed by a wealthy Frenchman who had almost died in another shipwreck. Construction began in 1904 but the lighthouse could not be finished until 1911 because of the sea’s often challenging conditions.
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