This 300-meter-high skyscraper would be an imposing presence in a city's skyline. In Pyongyang, North Korea it dwarfs every other structure in sight, dominating not only the skyline but the city itself. Its North Korea's largest building, and yet it remains for the moment, unfinished.
In 1986, a South Korean Group completed the construction of the 226-meter-tall Westin Stamford Hotel in Singapore, at thee time by far the most ambitious construction project ever undertaken by way of Korean company. The communist leadership of the North wished to prove that its own engineers were capable of constructing a building traveling on an much more grandiose scale. Baekdu Mountain Architects & Engineers started construction in 1987.
The building comprises three triangular sections, each 100 meters long. The sections converge for the summit, giving full pyramidal outline to your structure. It's a gigantic building containing roughly 360,000 square meters--roughly 67 football fields--of floor space. At the very summit of the hotel is really a 40-meter-tall, eight-floor conical structure, that is supposed to house seven revolving restaurants. The hotel's original plans immersed 3,000 rooms, and also plenty of space for additional commercial venues.
While using original plan, the resort was purported to open in 1989, however construction problems forced the government to postpone its opening several times. In the early 1990s multiple problems hit the project. Poor quality materials, electricity shortages, as well as a widespread famine on the west coast all became serious obstacles into the finishing the building. Expected foreign investments never materialized. Finally, in 1992, construction was halted. Japanese sources estimate that for the last 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. As a result of financial burden the project placed on the already starving nation, along with the drab and menacing look of the naked concrete structure, foreign media dubbed the hotel the "World's Worst Building" and the "Hotel of Doom." Nevertheless, work resumed in 2008, along with a slick glass facade is at the moment being installed. A new official date for the opening of the Hotel is set for 2012, on the 100th anniversary of your birth of your Great Leader Kim Il Sung.