The Choux de Créteil are ten cylindrical apartment towers completed in 1974 in Créteil, a suburb southeast of Paris. Each is covered in two-metre-high concrete balconies shaped like petals, giving the complex the appearance of a field of enormous cabbages. The balconies were intended to provide privacy and support cascading plants that would change colour with the seasons. Developers cancelled the planting, leaving the residents to live inside bare concrete vegetables.
Every twelve years, the floodplains of Prayagraj, India, become a temporary megacity for the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage centred on bathing where the Ganges and Yamuna meet. Tents, roads, hospitals and entire neighbourhoods are connected by floating pontoon bridges, serving millions of pilgrims over several weeks. Once the festival ends, the city is dismantled before the monsoon returns.
Gbadolite is a city in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the ancestral home of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country—then called Zaire—from 1965 to 1997. Mobutu transformed the remote settlement into his personal capital, complete with three palaces, a five-star hotel, hospital, Coca-Cola plant and a 3,200-metre runway built to receive chartered Concordes from Europe. Foreign leaders were entertained among marble, fountains and Chinese pagodas in what became known as the “Versailles of the Jungle.” When Mobutu fell in 1997, the palaces were looted and abandoned. Vegetation entered the ballrooms and the airport nearly emptied.
The Kuwait Water Towers are thirty-one enormous concrete mushrooms distributed across Kuwait City in five groups. Commissioned in 1965 as part of a modern water system, each tower stores 3,000 cubic metres of desalinated water. Swedish architect Sune Lindström varied their heights, numbers and geometric stripes so that every cluster became a neighbourhood landmark. A sixth location demanded something more spectacular and produced the better-known Kuwait Towers: three needles decorated with blue-green spheres. Together, the structures hold more than 100 million litres.
The Loosdrecht Lakes are a network of shallow Dutch lakes created by centuries of peat extraction. Houses now occupy the narrow strips of land left behind, arranged in long rows with water on either side. From above, each appears to have its own private canal and impossibly elongated garden.
Survey of London is a long-running and highly respected series of publications that document and analyze the architectural and historical development of the city of London. First published in the early 20th century, the Survey provides in-depth studies of various areas and buildings within the city, offering insights into the history, design, and significance of London’s urban landscape. The project was initiated in 1894 by the London County Council (LCC) and later continued by the Greater London Council (GLC) and other entities. Its primary goal was to record and preserve the history of London’s architecture, as well as to examine the social and cultural impact of its built environment. The Survey has become an invaluable resource for scholars, architects, urban planners, and historians, offering detailed descriptions, photographs, and illustrations of London's buildings and neighborhoods.
Sparoza is a garden in Greece.
Boskoop is a town in the South Holland province of the Netherlands, recognized for its extensive horticultural history and its network of canals. Established in the Middle Ages, Boskoop became a center for tree and plant nurseries, a reputation it maintains today as one of the largest nursery districts in the world. The town’s geography is defined by its narrow waterways and low-lying agricultural plots, which are characteristic of the Dutch polder landscape. Boskoop is also known for its efficient transportation systems, historically using boats to move goods through its canals.
Varosha is a former resort town located in the city of Famagusta, Cyprus. After Turkey took control of northern Cyprus in the 1970s, the resort town Varosha was left empty. Before the division of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha was a booming resort town with sky-scraping hotels, glamorous shopping districts, and sandy beaches frequently called the best in Cyprus. At its height, the resort town of Varosha was home to 39,000 residents and thousands more visited each year as tourists. But after 1974, everyone but the Turkish military was forbidden from entering, and today, buildings in the once-booming resort town are crumbling and abandoned.
The Laguna Garzón Bridge is a bridge crossing the Laguna Garzón in Uruguay, on the border between the Maldonado and Rocha departments. The bridge is famous for its unusual circular shape and was designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly.