Ryugyong Hotel

16/Feb/2008 Filed in: Architecture

The Ryugyong (”Capitol of Willows”) Hotel stands 105-stories tall in the dead-center of Pyongyang, the capitol of North Korea. At its inception, it was hoped to have 3.9 million square feet of floor space (and seven revolving restaurants), at a total cost of $750 million - 2% of the entire country’s GDP. It was created as North Korea’s answer to a renaissance of Asian skyscrapers.  It was never finished, and never will be. Money ran out - as did, supposedly, electricity. All that is left now is a shell, empty and uninhabitable: the quality of concrete is so poor that building probably couldn’t be restarted even if they tried. But North Korea is still looking for a few hundred million dollars of foreign investment to do just that - instead of, say, fighting the country-wide famine and drought for which North Korea is far more famous.
The hotel is not featured on official maps, and even tour guides will deny knowing where it is. This is a rather impressive oversight: it is visible from throughout the entire city.
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