The year is 1967. The scene is a co-ed sex education class at a Stockholm high school.
The film is Sweden: Heaven and Hell (Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso), an Italian
pseudo-documentary/mondo film.
Speaker voice:
With the detachment of a naturalist lecturing on the behavior of the butterfly, the teacher traces out the anatomical geography of the genital organs while the children listen dutifully, perhaps a trifle bored - the same boredom they will show when they fall in love, make love, commit suicide and so on.
As can be glimpsed from this fascinating piece of norientalism, my people, the Swedes, has a solid
reputation for self-murder.
However, statistics show that this reputation is vastly exaggerated: In reality, Sweden is a middling country in terms of suicide rates, roughly on a par with Ireland and Australia.
I nevertheless broke out in a retroactive cold sweat when I learned of a 1948 plan to build a
Golden Gate Bridge lookalike in Stockholm.
It would have been 41 m high and featured a breathtakingly beautiful view of the city and
its lush surrounding archipelago.
Imagine standing up there by the railing an early summer morn, contemplating how very brief the Nordic summers are and how very long the winters, listening to the thrushes waking up, watching the morning mist whirl on the surface of the water below... It would have been the end of us all.
Ultimately the bridge was never built due to cost concerns, but it got me thinking: what would the drawbacks of other unbuilt buildings and structures have been?
I was thinking that maybe we could discuss unintended consequenses of otherwise sensible projects
in this thread?
I was hoping to avoid it becoming a repository of the most cockamamie building schemes known to man (that would quickly turn into Albert Speers' Greatest Hits, anyway).
Instead, try to focus on the hidden downsides, like the wretched stench coming out of
beautiful, toiletless Versailles in our timeline!
Which tower would have crumbled under its own weight?
Which utopian settlement would have instantly turned into a hellhole?
Which landmark would have gone the Frank Gehry route of emitting death rays?
Discuss.
(Sorry about the flowery language, by the way; this is my maiden thread, and I'm unused to writing
in English).
TLDR: Name the undesirable side effects of proposed but never constructed buildings and structures. Try to go for the less nutty projects instead of the more Speeresque ones; it will be a fun challenge.