San-Zhi Pod City
Location: Taiwan
Year: 2010
Cost: $50 million+*
For over 30 years, Taiwan’s San-Zhi Pod City was abandoned. Construction on the vividly colored, curiously UFO-shaped dwellings began in 1978, when avant-garde architecture were popular. The initiative to build a U.S. military officer vacation location was never completed. A sequence of unusual events and catastrophes caused investors to lose money rapidly by 1980. They abandoned the location without finishing the project. Urban explorers, many of whom made YouTube videos, frequented it for years. These movies showed the pods’ odd interiors as mini-apartments with an open kitchen and living area and a small bedroom off to the side. Could this idea have succeeded with half the chance?
San Zhi Pod City
Buzludzha Monument
Location: Bulgaria
Year: 1981
Cost: $35 million (adjusted for inflation)*
Buzludzha Monument history is complicated. It commemorates the Bulgarian Communist Party on Buzludzha Peak in central Bulgaria. Building began in 1974 as Georgi Stoilov’s concepts took shape. Despite costing $35 million, it was completed in 1981. The monument boasts beautiful craftsmanship and about 900 square meters of mosaics, however it has been abandoned since 1989. Weather, vandals, and other causes have damaged Stoilov’s outstanding design. A endeavor is underway to conserve what’s left. Architects love the monument’s grandeur and detail, despite its controversial background. Its disrepair is understandable yet expensive to fix.
Buzludzha Monument
