5 Massive buildings that were never built

Throughout history, mankind has managed to create some pretty amazing buildings, ranging from the pyramids of Egypt to the Burj Khalifa. But making a building has always, so to speak, been easier drawn than done, and so it's only natural that some of the most jaw-droppingly massive buildings ever conceived have remained confined to paper. In this video, I'll be showing five examples of that. The first one came about as a product of the Enlightenment. It was designed by the French architect Étienne-Louis Boullier, and was intended to be a funeral monument for the famous scientist Isaac Newton. Fifty years after his death, Newton had become a prominent symbol of the movement of reason and rationality sweeping across Europe, and was widely admired, presumably also by Boullier himself, because he certainly didn't hold back with the design. The building, known as the Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, would at a height of 150 meters, or 500 feet, be the tallest building in the world. Dwarfing the previous holder of that title, the Strasbourg Cathedral, and even outsizing the Great Pyramid at Giza. The sheer volume of the building makes the tightly planted cypress trees, associated with mourning by the Greeks and Romans, look more like grass than anything else, and the humans climbing this man-made mountain appear ant-like in contrast to it. Having entered the giant sphere through a long tunnel, you would've been met by an inverted world. During daytime, light would've penetrated the upper parts of the dome through a number of painstakingly positioned holes, so as to create an accurate representation of the stars in the night sky. When, on the other hand, it was dark outside, the interior of the building would've been lit by some sort of sun-like sphere hanging in the middle of the space. The only thing giving a sense of human scale in the room would've been Newton's sarcophagus, located, so to speak, at the center of gravity. But the Cenotaph was never built for obvious reasons. It was simply too big. The cost of such a project would've quite fittingly been astronomical, and it would've been impractical from an engineering standpoint. This would probably not have been much of a problem for Boullier, though, who saw architecture more as an art of envisioning conceptual ideas through spatial forms, rather than a science of building, and whose drawings of similarly impressive projects actually became widely circulated, and gained him a fair bit of fame. The next project takes us to the other side of the Atlantic, and to the first years of the 20th century. At the time, the construction of skyscrapers was rapidly changing the face of New York City into something that we would recognize today. But while most of the skyscrapers were still being built in classical styles, there was one which, had it been built, would've stuck out as incredibly futuristic for its time. It was known as the Hotel Attraction, and designed by no one less than Anthony Gaudi, this would've been New York's own Sagrada Familia. Very little is known about the project, but supposedly, two unknown businessmen, fascinated by the works of Gaudi, travelled to Spain and managed to convince him to design a grand New York hotel for them. The building was to be a downtown playhouse for the rich, with lavish guest rooms, six floors of restaurants, a large theatre and lecture hall, multiple galleries, as well as a 390-foot-tall exhibition space. At the top of the hotel, there would've been a star-shaped sphere in which up to 30 people at the time could've gained unobstructed views of the city. While this wouldn't have been the tallest building in the world, at a height of over 1100 feet, or about 360 meters, it would've been the tallest in the United States. But in the end, Gaudi cancelled the project, and there are two stories about why. One states that it fell ill in 1909 and simply couldn't work on it anymore, while another one claims that Gaudi, being a communist, decided that it would be wrong to participate in building a palace for the wealthy. Following this, the project was quickly forgotten, and would actually remain more or less unknown until the 1950s. It was never decided exactly where the building would've been located, but one possible site was that of the later World Trade Center. And that's why, following 9-11, a group of Spanish architects actually proposed building Gaudi's hotel in its place. Another great tower that was never built was the Phare du Monde, or Lighthouse of the World, designed by Eugène Frésiné for the 1937 Paris exhibition. The 701 meter, or about 2,300 feet tall concrete structure would've been topped by a restaurant, and as the name suggests, there would've also been a light beacon. But what really makes this tower stand out is the way by which you get to the top. Because winding around the building would've been a spiral ramp, on which you were actually supposed to drive by car until reaching the garage at a height of 500 meters. By then, you would've been driving for about half an hour. Meanwhile, over in Germany, the Nazis had come to power and Hitler, along with his chief architect Albert Speer, were planning the construction of the new world capital, Germania. Although it was never officially called that. Instead, the project went by the name of the Comprehensive Construction Plan for the Reich Capital. But regardless of its name, the plan was to reorganize Berlin along a 5 kilometer long boulevard, known as the Prachtallee, and to build a series of huge monuments so that Berlin would, as Hitler said, be only comparable with ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. The most impressive building in this new Berlin would've been the Volkshalle. Early sketches of the building had actually been made by Hitler himself, all the way back in 1925, and the design stems from his admiration of the Pantheon in Rome. In the later versions of the building, made by Speer, the Volkshalle would've been 290 meters, or 950 feet tall, and made out of a combination of steel and lightweight concrete, hidden behind stone cladding. The oculus, or roof light located at the center of the dome, would, with a diameter of 46 meters, or 150 feet, been so large that the entire dome of St. Peter's Cathedral could've been lowered through it. The interior of the building, on the other hand, would've been so huge that when filled to its limit with people, the condensation from their breaths could've caused clouds to form within it, and subsequently even rain. So, what was the purpose of this monster of a building? Well, of course it would've impressed and humbled anyone who saw it, but the design of the building was not the only thing that Hitler and Speer borrowed from the Romans. Much like the emperors of antiquity, Hitler wanted to make a temple intended for the public worship of him and his successors. As Speer would later go on to acknowledge in an interview, Hitler believed that as centuries passed, his huge domed assembly hall would acquire great holy significance, and become a hallowed shrine as important to National Socialism as St. Peter's in Rome is to Roman Catholicism. Such cultism was at the root of the entire plan. As you probably guessed, though, the war made sure to put an end to this project before it could even begin. The last building brings us back to the United States, and to yet another skyscraper. Known variously as the Illinois-Illinois Sky City, or the Mile High Illinois, this is by far the tallest building on this list. The project, which was unveiled in 1957 and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was intended to be built somewhere in Chicago. As the name suggests, the Mile High Illinois was to be over one mile, or 1600 meters tall, and would've had 528 stories. In order to put that into perspective, that would've made it more than four times the height of the tallest building at the time, the Empire State Building, and twice as tall as the current holder of that title, the Burj Khalifa. This vast tower would've housed 100,000 people, and had parking space for 15,000 cars, as well as 100 helicopters. It would've also contained all government offices in the city of Chicago. But in building such an incredibly tall skyscraper, one would inevitably bump into some problems. For example, the higher floors of the building would be inclined to sway quite a lot in the wind, causing discomfort for its occupants. Wright acknowledged this, and among other things, suggested that it would be solved by placing a tuned mass damper somewhere in the building, although this was a more or less untried concept at the time. He also proposed cutting the travel time from floor to floor by using atomic-powered elevators, which would've allowed them to move at 60 miles per hour, but would probably raise some eyebrows if used today. Finally, there was the rather important question of whether or not the building would be able to stand at all. Perhaps a particularly strong wind would have it all tumbling down. That would not be a problem, according to Wright, as he had made sure to bury the base of the building 150 feet, or 45 meters, into the ground, as well as make it successively narrower the further up it got. Even so, it's still up to debate whether the Illinois could've been built. Another question surrounding the project might be why Frank Lloyd Wright, who supposedly detested cities and centralization, suddenly decided to take that to its extreme. After all, he had always been for the suburban idyll, and believed that with cars and telephones readily available, there was no longer any reason to live in crowded cities. But perhaps this isn't as out of character as it might seem at first. After all, building super tall skyscrapers would free up a lot of space, and subsequently allow cities to become less dense. As he reportedly later said, if we're going to have centralization, why not quit fooling around and have it? Another part of the answer could be that he was seeking attention. At the time, architectural historians were beginning to see the 89-year-old Wright as a has-been. The new wave of architects was personified by the likes of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose box-like buildings Wright happened to loathe. So perhaps this was a way of saying If so, it certainly worked, at least in the beginning. Journalists quickly flocked to Wright's Taliesin compound in Wisconsin to hear all about his new super tall skyscraper. But as you know, it was never built. This was not mainly because of a question of whether it could, but rather because of a lack of funding. The final bloat of the project was the death of at the age of 91.