The world’s biggest buildings are architectural marvels. They’re also some of the most extraordinary buildings ever created. These unique buildings are truly in a class of their own. They include gigantic industrial buildings, and even a big airship construction building converted into a tropical island resort!
The Aerium, Brandenburg, Germany
The Aerium is 360 metres long, 210 metres wide and 107 metres high. Its 5.5 million m³ makes it the world’s biggest indoor hall without internal supports. It was opened in 2004 at Brandenburg, south of Berlin. Designed originally as a hangar, its shape is an extended dome, with a long central axis and curved, ribbed ends. The Aerium is also the world’s largest indoor water park.
The Aerium was built to construct a new airship by a German firm. The airship was never built, but the Aerium took on a life of its own. After the failure of the airship program, the Aerium was bought by a Malaysian company called Tanjong and converted into an indoor tropical island resort.
Boeing Everett Factory
The Boeing Everett Factory in Washington State is the world’s biggest building. Measuring 13,385,378 cubic metres, it covers an area of 399,480 square metres and is the size of a hundred football fields. This gigantic building is used to manufacture the big Boeing aircraft.
Opened in 1967 the Boeing Everett Factory was designed to manufacture the Boeing 747, the world’s first wide bodied airliner. It now assembles the Boeing 767, 777, and 787 airliners. The Boeing Everett complex includes a cinema, the Boeing Tours office, several restaurants and Boeing’s Future of Flight Center.
Burj Khalifa
The Burj Khalifa is famous for its height, but when it opened in 2010, it broke a lot of other architectural records as well. This huge spire was an architectural vision created by the most advanced architectural techniques and ideas of its time.
The Burj Khalifa is 828 metres high. That’s about a mile high. It required special construction techniques to enable it to manage climate, wind and gravity. It required special elevator technology to access the top floors able to run elevators at 64 kmh. The Burj Khalifa also has 100km of plumbing in one of the driest parts of the world carrying 946,000 litres of water per day and 120,000 square metres of windows, or 120 square kilometres.
CentralWorld, Bangkok
CentralWorld in Bangkok is a classic example of modern architecture designed for a multipurpose role. This 1,024,000 square metre complex is located in the middle of one of the world’s busiest cities, serving as a supplier of space for upmarket retailers, game centres, offices, convention centres, dining, and entertainment.
The significance of this huge complex is its flexibility as a working space. Since its opening in 1990, the original multi-storey CentralWorld (formerly known as the World Trade Centre) retail complex has evolved and changed with the times.