-
Sections
-
Keywords
The 10 weirdest architectures you can find in Guinness World Records
The smallest skyscraper in the world
The red brick and stone building, known as the “smallest skyscraper in the world”, is the product of a misunderstanding. When the oil rush prompted many people to move to the area, making it necessary to develop office towers, engineer J.D. McMahon proposed the design of a skyscraper about 146 metres high. The work was completed with a height of only 12 metres and, during the legal dispute between the investors and the designer, it emerged that the engineer had expressed the dimensions not in feet but in inches: since the clients did not notice it, no compensation was due for the disappointment of having a tiny skyscraper.
The biggest church in the world
The Italian marble building was commissioned by the country's first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, on the model of St Peter's Basilica. The Guinness World Record considers it the largest church in the world, with its 30,000 square metres of floor surface area.
The heaviest building in the world
4.10 million tons distributed over an area of 365,000 square metres: these are the dimensions of the heaviest building in the world according to the Guinness World Record. The Romanian Parliament Building (Casa Poporului) houses the two chambers of parliament (the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies), three museums and an international congress centre, and sinks 6 millimetres every year due to its weight.
The largest bird-shaped building
The largest bird-shaped building is Gereja Ayam (or Chicken Church) in Indonesia, which measures approximately 56.41 m from beak to tail. Built as a dove-shaped house of prayer, the building has been described as more like a giant chicken. The seven-storey, 15-room structure has been a church, a film set, a rehabilitation centre and is now a popular tourist attraction.
The first building built with artificial fog
The first building built predominantly with artificial fog is the Blur Building designed by Diller + Scofidio for the Swiss National Exhibition in Yverdon-Les-Bains in 2002. The steel platform suspended over Lake Neuchâtel is entirely enveloped by a gigantic cloud, created by atomising water from the lake through 31,400 steel jets.
The largest vertical maze in the world
The 25-storey building with offices, residences and a rooftop swimming pool, characterised by a latticework of façade panels covering an area of approximately 3,950 square metres, is listed in the Guinness World Records as the world's largest vertical maze.
The largest high-heeled-shoe-shaped structure in the world
The 17.76-metre-high, 11.91-metre-wide and 25.16-metre-long shoe-shaped building is made of more than 300 pieces of blue-stained glass and in 2016 received a Guinness World Records certification as the largest high-heeled-shoe-shaped structure in the world. The building is famous for being used as a wedding venue and, although commonly referred to as a "church", it has no religious function.
The world’s largest building in the shape of a letter
The world’s largest building in the shape of a letter of the alphabet (“D”) has been built by the Dentaprime dental clinic in Varna. Designed to contain 50 treatment rooms, the building is visible from the landing plane as an eloquent advertising display.
The sleekest tower in the world
British Airways i360 is a slender viewing tower on which a mobile circular platform runs, with a capacity of 200 people. The 160-metre-high structure with a diameter of 3.9 metres has been recognised by the Guinness World Record as the world's sleekest tower, with an impressive height-to-width ratio of 41.15 to 1.
The area with the highest density of white marble-clad buildings
As a result of a huge government-led architectural restyling project, a 22-square-kilometre area of the capital city has achieved a top density record for white marble-clad buildings, with 543 new buildings clad with 4,513,584 sqm of white marble. The main boulevard, Bitarap Türkmenistan Sayolu, is 12.6 km long and is bordered by 170 buildings clad with a total of 1,156,818 sqm of white marble.