The Gear Tek Corporation takes us on a brief visit to “the longest building I have ever seen,” located somewhere in the “physically oppressive and hallucinatory” flatlands of Illinois.
“This is the longest building I have ever seen,” GTC writes. “It is totally windowless and stretches for at least a mile, although it seems to defy laws of space-time so it may be longer or shorter than that.”
The building’s absolute superlinearity appears to be a “spatial illusion” that is only amplified by the “simple gray rectangles which glide along the blank facade like dotted lines on an overlay. It looks like an Ellsworth Kelly interpretation of Superman chasing a train.”
(Links to the original Gear Tek Corporation post have been removed because the URL now resolves to a porn site. Thanks to Tim Drage for the tip!)
love the site. could you look into ‘the facts and the dreams’? it’s a rare 1920’s german architectural book. i learned about it via afragile state album and thought it would interest you (see the link):
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00006JNA3.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg
Vaguely related: Hessing cockpit building in an acoustic barrier by Kas Oosterhuis (Along the A2, Utrecht, The Netherlands) – http://www.oosterhuis.nl/quickstart/index.php?id=122
This must be visible via GoogleEarth! Wheres the kmz! Anybody!
Geartek is a fun site. Love the commentary on suburbia. I especially liked the photos of the (optionally) solar-powered Victorian Towne Homes.
http://www.geartekcorporation.com/dailyphoto/2006/victorianvillage.html
mildly related
standford linear accelerator in palo alto,CA a mile long building that they use for the acceleration of atoms. it runs perpindicular to a highway. so the moment you pass it is the only chance you have to perceive its length.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that building houses a hog farm.
hey Geoff, this got me thinking of a couple of other extremely long buildings, both dating from the 1970s. Both are academic buildings.
1) Lethbridge University in Alberta, designed by Arthur Erickson;
http://www.arthurerickson.com/B_leth.html
2) the University of Calabria, designed by Vittorio Gregotti.
Hard to find good images of the second one…there’s a book, though:
http://www.stoutbooks.com/cgi-bin/stoutbooks.cgi/42444.html
Anyway, check those out!
UGLY