JHK’s Three-Act Play
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Behold the Burj al Babas, a $200 million ensemble of wannabe French castles in the Turkish town of Mudurnu, about 150 miles east of Istanbul. The castle-ettes are all empty. (No cassoulet for you!) The project, by a money-laundering outfit, called the Sarot Group pulled the plug on this baby when the value of the Turkish Lira fell 25 percent, pranging their business model. The handful of sales had to be cancelled. I’m sorry I missed the meetings where this project was planned and discussed. It would have surpassed the pitch meeting for the blockbuster movie Black Panther. Any ideas for adaptive re-use before the plywood delaminates and the spray-on stucco flakes off? Might make an excellent ISIS training facility. Live in a simulacrum of Western Civ while plotting to wipe it off the face of the earth. I keep telling you: history is a prankster! Below, wide angle view of this amazing fiasco:
Ho Lee Phuck – both images are terrifying. In the first picture I expected to see giant garden gnomes! But the second …is either something out of Sorcerer’s Apprentice or a (mercifully) receding glacier. That this project was a stillborn is a good, good, thing.
gnomes, yes.
Hi Jim,
I wouldn’t know which one was mine! Honestly, I thought it was a set of miniatures when I first looked at the image, and I still can’t shake the feeling. It’s uncanny.
Chris
minis, yes. so perfect. like doll houses in the dust.
The lower picture. I have never seen anything like that, in real life.
How many? 1000? 2000?
What beautiful valley is this, being flooded with this nightmarish fairytale of cookie cutter castles?
Not a sign of a castle keep, but an overwhelming eyeful of a castle heap.
Even a cat might be squeezed on those curved, balustraded balconies.
Despair not. I see the humble beginnings of a Greco-Roman parking lot in the center. Or maybe it’s the rec center at the center of this wreck.
A claustrophobic, cringe worthy attempt at castle conurbation.
and we thought only Chinese did cookie cutter faux euro villages.
All it needs is a freeway and its done!
WTF! If I didn’t know better, I would think this is a joke. So much creativity! From what I can see, all the castle-ettes seem identical.
no Pat no don’t sit on that
Reminds me of my favorite saying: “If it happens, it’s possible”.
More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-26/builder-of-200-million-turkish-chateaux-project-goes-bankrupt
I’ll never bitch about “cookie cutter” developments again….
Pick one up cheap for your Renaissance festival.
Actually, you could put a thousand of these quaint villages on the footprint of China’s ghost cities.
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angry birds