5 mind-bending buildings from Las Vegas to Dubai that never broke ground — and what stands in their place instead
A new skyscraper for Wall Street, a museum in the Kenyan wilderness, and Dubai's first opera house are among the lost treasures of architecture.
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Getty Images/Tony Shi Photography
- A new book, "The Atlas of Never Built Architecture," explores the world as it could've been.
- Authors Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin explore never-built designs from over 300 global architects.
- Here's what Wall Street, Jakarta's skyline, and Ethiopia's Rift Valley could have looked like.
All buildings begin as ideas — but not all of them make it off the page.
Unfortunately, some architects' dreamy ideas are shelved due to a lack of funds, complex political maneuvering, or the death of a major financial supporter.
It was this lost library — a collection of buildings that offer glimpses into how some corners of the world could have looked — that inspired Los Angeles-based writers Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin to write the recently released book "Atlas of Never Built Architecture."
"As we unearthed each treasure, shaking off the dust clouds of memory and the inscrutability of faded ink, we were reminded that our reality is far less fixed than we think," Lubell and Goldin wrote in the introduction. "Every decision could have resulted in something different."
Lubell and Goldin assembled the sketches for and stories behind more than 300 lost skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, government buildings, cemeteries, and even a "floating theater boat that resembles a UFO," according to a press release. The proposed structures span over 100 years and 80 countries.
Below are five building designs once proposed for sites across the world, alongside a breakdown of what currently stands where they were set to rise.
Are we better off? You decide.
Special Collections and Archives / University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The fantastical design for the proposed Xanadu hotel included a circular bar suspended in the air. It would have been supported by tucked-away columns to appear like it was floating.
Sergii Figurnyi
The site intended for Xanadu is now occupied by the Excalibur Hotel & Casino. The medieval-inspired property, which opened in 1990, was once the largest hotel in the world.
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
The proposed 45-story tower, called Finance Place, was described as a "beautifully tapered Mayan temple," with a massive trading floor dominating the bottom of the tower.
Designer Henry Cobb ingeniously drew a steel structure with floors suspended from the roof, allowing the trading floor to be entirely free of columns.
Getty/Tony Shi Photography
Today, the square block is occupied by One Liberty Plaza, the black structure in the left foreground of the photo above.
Tenants of the 54-story building include law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, New York City's Economic Development Corporation — and Business Insider.
Courtesy of MVRDV
A complex of Tetris-like structures, Peruri 88 included spaces for offices, townhouses, a luxury hotel, movie theaters, a wedding chapel, and a mosque.
Plans for a mall included designs for escalators spanning 15 stories.
Shutterstock/Toto Santiko Budi
Instead, the space is occupied by much smaller commercial buildings in the Kebayoran Baru neighborhood of South Jakarta.
The photo above is from the neighborhood proposed for Peruri 88.
© MAQE / Courtesy of Studio Daniel Libeskind
Architect Daniel Libeskind's designs for the museum were inspired by hand axes, tools used by human predecessors over 1.8 million years ago.
Shutterstock/Roger de la Harpe
The design was pulled and no new plans have been announced.
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Hadid's rendering for the futuristic complex in Dubai included the 2,500-seat opera house, a smaller 800-seat theater, an art gallery, and a performing arts school.
The swooping peaks were inspired by the shape of sand dunes.
Shutterstock/Efired
New designs were instead completed by Janus Rostock, who took inspiration for his version of the building from a dhow, a traditional Arabic sailing boat.
The Dubai Opera House was completed in 2016.