This 300-meter-high skyscraper could well be an imposing presence in a city's skyline. In Pyongyang, North Korea it dwarfs every other structure in sight, dominating not just the skyline but the city itself. It really is North Korea's largest building, however it remains for the moment, unfinished.
In 1986, a South Korean Group completed the building of the 226-meter-tall Westin Stamford Hotel in Singapore, at thee time essentially the most ambitious construction project ever undertaken by a Korean company. The communist leadership of the North wanted to prove that its own engineers were competent at constructing a building traveling on an even more grandiose scale. Baekdu Mountain Architects & Engineers started construction in 1987.
The building consists of three triangular sections, each 100 meters long. The sections converge along at the summit, giving an overall pyramidal outline to the structure. It s a gigantic building containing roughly 360,000 square meters--roughly 67 football fields--of floor space. With the very summit of many hotel is really a 40-meter-tall, eight-floor conical structure, which was supposed to house seven revolving restaurants. The hotel's original plans called for 3,000 rooms, as well as tons of space for additional commercial venues.
According to the original plan, the accommodation was presupposed to open in 1989, however construction problems forced the govt to postpone its opening many times. Inside the early 1990s multiple problems hit the project. Poor quality materials, electricity shortages, and also a widespread famine on the west coast all became serious obstacles to the completion of the building. Expected foreign investments never materialized. Finally, in 1992, construction was halted. Japanese sources estimate that over the course of its construction, the project swallowed over two percent of North Korea's GDP, or roughly 750 million US dollars.
The Ryugyong Hotel shell was left standing empty for 16 years. Because of the financial burden the project placed on the already starving nation, as well as the drab and menacing look of the naked concrete structure, foreign media called the hotel the "World's Worst Building" and the "Hotel of Doom." Nevertheless, work resumed in 2008, along with a slick glass facade is currently being installed. A new official date for the opening of the lodge has been spread over 2012, around the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.