3 Great Buildings Never Built

1)MVRDV, Gwanggyo Power Center, Seoul

The Power Center was not a building but a $1 billion city, as much park as self-sustaining development, approved in 2008. The design’s integration into the landscape would have extended natural patterns of ventilation and temperature control. The ten tree-ringed glass hills would have housed hotels, shops, museums, offices—and 77,000 people. But the plan ultimately fell victim to the economic crisis.

2)Atelier Jean Nouvel, Tour de Verre, New York

Proposed in 2007, the Tour de Verre would have been, said some critics, the most exciting building in New York in a generation. Designed for the lot adjacent to MoMA, the 82-story tower—faceted and shimmering with a mirage-like effect—would have housed additional exhibition space as well as a hotel. The proposal died a slow death amid a fanfare of urban bureaucracy.

3)Oma, 23 E. 22nd St., New York

Rem Koolhaas became known for his meditations on what the city could be with his 1978 treatiseDelirious New York. Twenty years later, he returned to Manhattan with a design: a luxury residential complex cantilevered into the air above a neighboring building, peeking around its sister tower, One Madison Park, and occupying a site just 33 feet wide. The project, to be the final phase of the One Madison Park development plan, fell through when the developers overreached.