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Is this a cool building?

Is the [b]North Korean[/b] building nice/cool?

  • Yes, one of the nicest/coolest buildings I have seen..

    Votes: 15 16.1%

  • Yes, definetely..

    Votes: 28 30.1%

  • Its ok..

    Votes: 12 12.9%

  • Nothing special..

    Votes: 5 5.4%

  • Nah, not nice/cool

    Votes: 26 28.0%

  • Something else(explain)...

    Votes: 7 7.5%
  • Total voters
    93
Kandahar said:
If the location of the building is irrelevant as you claim, then why do you once again bring up the United States?

And for some reason, you seem to have mistaken me for a supporter of the war in Iraq...not that it has the slightest bit of relevance to this thread. :doh
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No, I didnt take you for that. You were babbling on about the building and how many people it could have saved from starvation and so on. Thats IRRELEVANT, so I just mentioned the Iraq war and how many people it could have saved from poverty if they had spend the money on such instead of war.


Kandahar said:
No. It's an abomination. Definitely a top contender for the ugliest building in the world.
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Why do you say that? What about the empire state building then or the sears towers in comparison? They must truly also be ugly in your view then..? If not, why do you think any of those is nicer to look at than the building in this thread, the North Korean one?
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
Why do you say that? What about the empire state building then or the sears towers in comparison?
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They're both awesome. Especially the Sears Tower.

Maximus Zeebra said:
They must truly also be ugly in your view then..?
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How do you figure? :confused:

Maximus Zeebra said:
If not, why do you think any of those is nicer to look at than the building in this thread, the North Korean one?
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Well for starters, the Empire State Building and Sears Tower actually serve their intended purpose (you know, to be a building instead of a monument). And they aren't made out of substandard building materials which render them uninhabitable. And they are located in cool cities as part of an awesome skyline (New York and Chicago are a bit more lively than Pyongyang). And the construction has actually finished. And they don't have an ass-ugly design.
 
Kandahar said:
The Empire State Building definitely looks cooler on a picture than the Hotel Of Doom, yes.
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Really? I think the empire state building looks kind of shabby.. I do however like for example the sears towers..

I think the empire state building looks "worn out"... Best building in NY is daimler tower. Thats quite a nice building, actually fabulous.

But really... Just without any feelings and not thinking of anything else than how it looks.. Do you really think the empire state building looks nicer/cooler than the pyongiang(or whatever its called) hotel??

korea_834.jpg

empire-state-building.jpg
 
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Maximus Zeebra said:
I think the empire state building looks "worn out"... Best building in NY is daimler tower. Thats quite a nice building, actually fabulous.
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New York has a lot of nice buildings. The Empire State Building has a bit more competition than the Hotel of Doom.

Maximus Zeebra said:
But really... Just without any feelings and not thinking of anything else than how it looks.. Do you really think the empire state building looks nicer/cooler than the pyongiang(or whatever its called) hotel??
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Yes, assuming we're talking about how the buildings ACTUALLY look...rather than the worst picture you could find of the Empire State Building, and the DPRK-Photoshop-propaganda picture of the Hotel Of Doom.

empire-state-building-1-main_Full.jpg

ryugyong.png
 
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So, to prove your own feelings and bias.. You post a picture of the empire state building at night. Instead of viewing my realistic picture. The real empire state building, in light at a distance not too far away, not too up close.

Then you show the picture of the NK hotel before they started putting glass on it...
 
Kandahar said:
New York has a lot of nice buildings. The Empire State Building has a bit more competition than the Hotel of Doom
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To be perfectly honest I do not even find the empire state building on the top 100 list of buildings in the US. Compared to daimler tower, the empire state building is ugly, in my opinion..
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
So, to prove your own feelings and bias.. You post a picture of the empire state building at night. Instead of viewing my realistic picture. The real empire state building, in light at a distance not too far away, not too up close.
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Fair enough. Here is it in the daylight. Still quite awesome.

Empire-State-Building200.jpg


Maximus Zeebra said:
Then you show the picture of the NK hotel before they started putting glass on it...
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Is there any actual evidence that they ARE putting glass in it, rather than just Photoshopping pictures of it? Also, putting glass in it hardly makes it more attractive. A reflection of the rest of the Pyongyang skyline is just as ugly as the concrete.

If they actually are putting glass in it, their money would be better spent tearing this down and rebuilding it with steel. Or better yet, actually feeding their people and building their economy.
 
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Maximus Zeebra said:
I am sure the North Korean hotel is also nice on the inside.
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It doesn't have an inside. There are no windows, no plumbing, no doors, no furniture, and no habitable rooms. It can hardly even be called a building. It's just a monument to white elephants.
 
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Kandahar said:
It doesn't have an inside. There are no windows, no plumbing, no doors, no furniture, and no habitable rooms. It can hardly even be called a building. It's just a monument to white elephants.
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You dont know that..
 
Kandahar said:
Fair enough. Here is it in the daylight. Still quite awesome.

IMG]http://www.trutv.com/graphics/photos/criminal_mind/scams/leona_helmsley/Empire-State-Building200.jpg[/IMG]
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Its not my favorite building, but of course its an icon.


Kandahar said:
Is there any actual evidence that they ARE putting glass in it, rather than just Photoshopping pictures of it? Also, putting glass in it hardly makes it more attractive. A reflection of the rest of the Pyongyang skyline is just as ugly as the concrete.

If they actually are putting glass in it, their money would be better spent tearing this down and rebuilding it with steel. Or better yet, actually feeding their people and building their economy.
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I am just presuming its true because the picture in the OP is taken from a newspaper article about how North Korea is finally doing something on the building again, after decades of doing nothing and letting it deteriorate. Its not proof, for all we know the journalist could be wrong and just have bit on propaganda. But thats not the point.. The point is the building on the picture, which I think after the glass was put on looks very cool and unique.
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
You dont know that..
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Uhh well considering that this "hotel" has never had a single guest and has never opened for business, that's a pretty good assumption. Let's look at those things one at a time:

No windows - This one should be obvious, since you can plainly see from the outside that it doesn't have windows.

No plumbing - Since the construction has never been finished, it is impossible for it to have plumbing.

No doors, no furniture - OK, I'll grant you that I don't *know* that it doesn't have those things. But again, since the construction hasn't been finished, why WOULD it have those things? What possible purpose would they serve before the building opens to the "public"?

No habitable rooms - Even if the building had all of those other things, it still wouldn't have any habitable rooms, due to the fact that it was made out of concrete instead of steel.
 
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Kandahar said:
Uhh well considering that this "hotel" has never had a single guest and has never opened for business, that's a pretty good assumption. Let's look at those things one at a time:

No windows - This one should be obvious, since you can plainly see from the outside that it doesn't have windows.

No plumbing - Since the construction has never been finished, it is impossible for it to have plumbing.

No doors, no furniture - OK, I'll grant you that I don't *know* that it doesn't have those things. But again, since the construction hasn't been finished, why WOULD it have those things? What possible purpose would they serve before the building opens to the "public"?

No habitable rooms - Even if the building had all of those other things, it still wouldn't have any habitable rooms, due to the fact that it was made out of concrete instead of steel.
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Actually all of this is just speculation..
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
Actually all of this is just speculation..
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Are you disputing the fact that the Hotel of Doom has never opened, has never had a single guest, the construction remains unfinished, and it was built using substandard concrete instead of steel? :confused:
 
Kandahar said:
Are you disputing the fact that the Hotel of Doom has never opened, has never had a single guest, the construction remains unfinished, and it was built using substandard concrete instead of steel? :confused:
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Those are not facts. Just speculation.. We know little about North Korea and nothing about that building in general. Perhaps it had tons of guest, perhaps its frequently used as military quarters. Who knows? You know nothing about the concrete, and claiming steel is better than concrete is ridiculous.
The construction is not finished, thats the only fact..

Concrete is much used in Dutch skyscrapers, and they look far better than glassy steely skyscrapers and its not necessarily better to use steel.

rotterdam019.JPG

Does this concrete/glass/steel structure look like its falling apart because of usage of concrete/stone?
 
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Do you perhaps find this typical glass/steel structure nicer/cooler than the concrete/stone and glass structure above?

Same city.. Rotterdam. One of the few glass-steel scrapers I have seen in the Netherlands.

rtd008.jpg
 
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Maximus Zeebra said:
Those are not facts. Just speculation.. We know little about North Korea and nothing about that building in general. Perhaps it had tons of guest,
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Patently ridiculous, and you know it. If the Hotel of Doom wasn't a national embarrassment, certainly the DPRK would be touting its virtues as they do with North Korea's Arc d'Triumph. Instead, they Photoshop images of it and/or crop it out of photographs altogether.

Maximus Zeebra said:
perhaps its frequently used as military quarters.
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OK, but it's a hotel. Not a barracks.

Maximus Zeebra said:
Who knows? You know nothing about the concrete, and claiming steel is better than concrete is ridiculous.
The construction is not finished, thats the only fact..

Concrete is much used in Dutch skyscrapers, and they look far better than glassy steely skyscrapers and its not necessarily better to use steel.

Does this concrete/glass/steel structure look like its falling apart because of usage of concrete/stone?
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No. But it isn't 330 meters tall either.

Ryugyong Hotel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Though the basic structure was complete when construction came to a halt in 1992, the building shell has sat vacant and without windows, fixtures, or fittings for 16 years. To date, the hotel has not yet been certified safe for occupancy, and it is widely believed to suffer from major structural defects that render it unlikely to ever be so.[2][9]

The original building plans called for a structural steel internal frame, a standard requirement for any building that large. The government was unwilling or unable to supply enough steel, and instead insisted the structure be constructed entirely from reinforced concrete in order to save money.[10] The concrete used was also a poor-quality domestic variety, mixed with cheap ingredients in order to meet the cost requirements. The combination resulted in a structure which proved itself to be defective before it was even fully erected. The sagging of the interior concrete structure is reportedly so severe that most of the building's vaunted elevators are permanently inoperable due to warping of the shafts.[9] The exterior concrete support structures can also be seen to be badly spalling, exposing large sections of rebar to corrosion from the elements.
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What a piece of crap.
 
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Kandahar said:
Patently ridiculous, and you know it. If the Hotel of Doom wasn't a national embarrassment, certainly the DPRK would be touting its virtues as they do with North Korea's Arc d'Triumph. Instead, they Photoshop images of it and/or crop it out of photographs altogether.



OK, but it's a hotel. Not a barracks.



No. But it isn't 330 meters tall either.

Ryugyong Hotel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


What a piece of crap.
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I can without doubt say that the likelihood of that wikipedia article being wrong is quite big. I bet that aside from Kim Jong Ill, only a handful of North Korean engineers really know how the building is structured and built, and only a few thousand North Koreans have enough knowledge on the process to properly speculate how its built.

So yes, what you say and what wikipedia says really is speculation.

What I am saying about North Korea is rather speculative also, because its a very closed country that few people really know much about and not many people know anything about at all.
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
I can without doubt say that the likelihood of that wikipedia article being wrong is quite big. I bet that aside from Kim Jong Ill, only a handful of North Korean engineers really know how the building is structured and built, and only a few thousand North Koreans have enough knowledge on the process to properly speculate how its built.

So yes, what you say and what wikipedia says really is speculation.

What I am saying about North Korea is rather speculative also, because its a very closed country that few people really know much about and not many people know anything about at all.
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I'm not sure what exactly you are disputing. Are you claiming that the building is NOT made out of concrete, and is in fact made out of steel? Or are you claiming that steel isn't a standard requirement for 330-meter-tall buildings? Neither of those have anything to do with North Korea being a closed society. The first point is easily proven just by looking at the picture, and the second point can be easily confirmed by any architect of ANY nationality.
 
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Kandahar said:
I'm not sure what exactly you are disputing. Are you claiming that the building is NOT made out of concrete, and is in fact made out of steel? Or are you claiming that steel isn't a standard requirement for 330-meter-tall buildings? Neither of those have anything to do with North Korea being a closed society. The first point is easily proven just by looking at the picture, and the second point can be easily confirmed by any architect of ANY nationality.
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"substandard concrete", "no steel",

You dont know this. The concrete may be better than any concrete used in Europe or the US for all you and most people actually know. Aside from that there could also be a steel structure mounted in the concrete or behind the facade that you do not know anything about.

You dont know how this building was constructed, I don't know that. Very few people actually do know that, and most things on the internet about the subject is highly likely to be speculations and rumors and so on.

What I am talking about has anything to do with it being a closed society and us knowing nothing about the building aside from what we see with the eyes, and not even that we can trust these days.
 
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