Messy Nessy: Oh, just an Utterly Insane Ghost City of Fake French Chateaux

This is not Photoshop. I repeat, this is not Photohop. Ever heard of “duplitecture”? It’s the term that’s been coined to describe replica architecture which has been popping up all over China since the 1990s (and let’s not forget Las Vegas either), where iconic landmarks and entire towns are constructed using lower-quality building materials to clone centuries of European history in a matter of months. Except this isn’t China. The latest “Sim City” to join the duplitecture hall of insanity is courtesy of a developer in Turkey. This recent AFP photograph from December 2018 shows hundreds of faux Loire mini-castles which are part of the Sarot Group’s “Burj Al Babas” project, close to the town centre of Mudurnu in Turkey’s northwestern region. But you might also have noticed that it’s all looking eerily deserted…

Nestled deep in the picturesque mountain province of Bolu, midway between Ankara and Istanbul, seven-hundred and thirty near-identical turreted chateaux line the empty dirt tracks of Burj Al Babas, a surreal Sim City that’s been quietly sprouting here as early as 2011. The project is marketed to the super-rich, promising health & beauty centres, shopping malls, aqua parks, fast-food areas and game parks (ya know, to really stay authentic to the old French way).

A total of 350 “villas”, each built on 324 m2 plots, were snapped up by buyers from Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, who paid between $370,000 to $530,000 per property, intended to be kept as a second/ third or fourth homes. Presented in a similar style to Dubai’s “The World” or “Palm Islands”, it was all going well for this Disneylandish city of cloned castles until the developer went bankrupt late last year.

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Messy Nessy: Inside the Drawing Board of the Soviet Subway

It doesn’t get much better than this, especially for a morning commute: space-age chandeliers, marble statues, ‘golden’ ornaments, and a floor so clean you lick your lunch clean off it. Well, it’s all a part of the Moscow Metro, which has been shuttling Russians to-and-fro in opulent style since 1935. The stops were designed to reflect all the glory Soviet Russia hoped to deliver, and to this day the 200 stations serve millions of passengers with palatial, state-of-the-art flair. They’re even streaming the World Cup in some trains — but we digress…Creating such a beacon of svet, or “light” 84 metres underground isn’t easy. Architects followed design principles of sveltloe buduschee (bright future) to carve out vast, airy spaces that look like they’d fallen straight from Alexander Palace…

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