Hopehenge
Here is a bit of nerdy transport planner humour from Thailand. I work with a Thai guy and he keeps me up to speed with the latest architecture, developments and construction in Bangkok.
A train line was supposed to connect Bangkok to the old airport, but it was never built. The Hopewell company had the contract to construct it, but they went bankrupt and/or there was political scandal that involved the government of the time, and this coincided with the Asian stockmarket crisis, so construction just stopped one day and multi-millions of baht were wasted. There are now hundreds of these monoliths dotted throughout Bangkok, at a cost of around 1 million dollars each!
A few ideas have been raised to finish the mystery train line to the north of the city with a combination train and above ground freeway, but I'm not sure what the status of this project is. When I was in Bangkok last year I saw a few creative uses of some of the pillars, some people had swings hanging off one of them, some had created a market area under the base of a few, and I even saw some shanty housing built around at least one of them. (There could even have been an urban rock climbing wall!)
It was kind of cool to see how people utilised these abandoned Stonehenge like pillars. I always thought it would be great to built a birds nest style apartment on top of them, and create funky Roger Dean (aka those old 'Yes' album covers from the 1970s) styled bulb-shape buildings that could serve as a type of fancy community in the air. Though I'm sure the realities of Thai poverty and property owners probably wouldn't allow for that to happen even if someone did try to do it..
..but still, I think it would look cool. Maybe I'll make it a pet project of mine when I am president of the world.
A train line was supposed to connect Bangkok to the old airport, but it was never built. The Hopewell company had the contract to construct it, but they went bankrupt and/or there was political scandal that involved the government of the time, and this coincided with the Asian stockmarket crisis, so construction just stopped one day and multi-millions of baht were wasted. There are now hundreds of these monoliths dotted throughout Bangkok, at a cost of around 1 million dollars each!
A few ideas have been raised to finish the mystery train line to the north of the city with a combination train and above ground freeway, but I'm not sure what the status of this project is. When I was in Bangkok last year I saw a few creative uses of some of the pillars, some people had swings hanging off one of them, some had created a market area under the base of a few, and I even saw some shanty housing built around at least one of them. (There could even have been an urban rock climbing wall!)
It was kind of cool to see how people utilised these abandoned Stonehenge like pillars. I always thought it would be great to built a birds nest style apartment on top of them, and create funky Roger Dean (aka those old 'Yes' album covers from the 1970s) styled bulb-shape buildings that could serve as a type of fancy community in the air. Though I'm sure the realities of Thai poverty and property owners probably wouldn't allow for that to happen even if someone did try to do it..
..but still, I think it would look cool. Maybe I'll make it a pet project of mine when I am president of the world.
posted by mrlederhosen at 3:36 pm
1 Comments:
That's pretty bizarre stuff. We got your email just the other day. Definitely dig your blog!
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