Begun in 1987 to mark the occasion of the world youth games, and to this day unfinished (apparently for financial reasons), the Ryugyong Hotel is a pyramid 330 metres high (9th tallest bldg in world), 105 floors, 3000 rooms, $750 million (which is about 2% of North Korea's GDP).

It has a Y-shaped base and stands on a hill at the centre of Pyongyang. When operative, the building was to house the 105 floors of an international hotel, a rounded slab of services on the ground floor, and three sloping elevators along the pyramid�s oblique lateral walls, plus a series of rings to contain revolving restaurants at the apex.

Interesting fact: A rusty construction crane remains at the very top of the building and has remained there since 1992, permanently gracing the PyongYang skyline. Can you see it?

DOMUS magazine ran a controversial competition last year for the reuse of the tower.

Placemark posted bypivnice.

3D Model by pivnice

Very nice model indeed.

An interesting Article on this building at Archinect

The Czech architect Jan Kaplicky critizes Domus initiative of a call for ideas for the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea: �An intellectual exercise which supports cruel regimes�. Stefano Boeri answers: �The Ryugyong competition is a simbolic bridge to open a crack in the regime�s isolation without using smart bombs�.

Letter on Domus 882
by Jan Kaplicky

I have read Domus since 1956, almost 50 years. I always thought that your magazine was about architecture, design, beauty and people. In the last few months it has become just a political journal. I was shocked, horrified, angry and sad when Domus 882 June 2005 arrived. 22 pages and 3 covers full of North Korean propaganda. Propaganda of a regime with a horrific human rights record. A country led by a dictator responsible for the deaths of more than 2 million of his people. Hunger used as the main weapon. Nuclear weapons. Supporting terrorism abroad. Concentration camps. Prisons. What more do you want me to say? Your pictures and text support that evil empire without a single critical comment. Phrases like �visionary plan of the leader� are laughable.
How are we supposed to take you seriously? Not a single word about starving people, prisons and camps. People brainwashed to be �yes robots�. Scared people. Your favourite hotel costs $750 million of state money to build. How many lives could that save? This is all the product of the magazine and its editor. His team sitting comfortably in one of those famous Milano coffee places trying to pretend they are fashionable left wing intellectuals. How pitiful. Who you are trying to impress? Yourselves. Certainly not architects. Certainly not. There is no philosophy on these pages. Maybe admiration of that regime. Please note that even Jean Paul Sartre refused to accept Stalin�s horrors. I am reminded of the picture of Jane Fonda sitting on a North Vietnam anti-aircraft gun. How na�ve that was. You must stop these meaningless intellectual exercises. You cannot support cruel regimes. Mussolini built railway stations, Hitler autobahns and Stalin underground systems, often using slave labour. Kim Jong-Il Hotel. Millions of people affected. Millions of people dead. What you talk about is not even architecture. Possibly only piles of bricks or concrete.
The Ryugyong Hotel is certainly not architecture. It is empty. Without people. It cannot be designed and used by brainwashed robots. Modern architecture cannot exist without free human beings. Not a single word about that in your article. Please do wake up. You are isolated. You are alone. It is too dangerous. Please look around for beautiful things, they are happening. Your responsibility is enormous to young architects, students and humankind.
This cannot and should not be of any inspiration to anybody. Please think new, beautiful, useful and particularly progressive. Think of the human cost of these projects whilst having another coffee in Bar Magenta. What is the next issue of Domus going to be about - Mussolini, Hitler or Mao? Mugabe destroying buildings? Next time celebrate creativity, not destruction. Please!
Jan Kaplicky

Jan Kaplicky (Prague, 1937) founded the London-based practice Future Systems in partnership with David Nixon in 1979. Recent projects include the Media Centre at Lord�s Cricket Ground in London and the Selfridges store in Birmingham.