The World's Fair

At least one - the double urinal - has been on failblog, but no real source was given there either.

Posted by: dean | March 20, 2009 10:09 AM

I think the worst would be #4, the stairway to nowhere. The others are stupid, but not actively dangerous (except for the headsmacking possibilities of the escalator on #1). However, it's all too easy to imagine someone rushing up to cross the pedestrian bridge, not looking where they're going, and taking a twenty-foot fall off the end of the stairs.

[sarcasm] That ATM would be perfectly useful if they just installed some steps! (Except to the wheel-chair bound, but who cares about them?) [/sarcasm] And the streetlight probably works fine as a streetlight, even if they could have chosen a better place for the pole.

Posted by: G.E. Wilker | March 20, 2009 11:29 AM

Doesn't seem like most are photo shopped or someone put in a lot of time to get reflections, shadows and such correct. The exception being the ATM one.

The third seems to me more like art then an error.
The fourth seems to be taken on a disused train station in the Netherlands.
The fifth, who build a building with balconies at THAT point?

I'd have to go with the first (if that isn't taken at the start of placing the escalator)

Posted by: Who Cares | March 20, 2009 12:51 PM

#3 and #6 look like the results of remodeling on the cheap--especially #6 which is presumably (given the Cyrillic lettering) in either Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union. I wouldn't necessarily agree that they were design flaws.

#4: Good call on that being a disused train station. Perhaps there is a barrier at the foot of the stairs, which we cannot see from this angle, and at the other end of the bridge, which is out of view. So again, not necessarily a design flaw. It could also be that this photo was taken during removal of the bridge--if so, it makes sense that they would take out the bridge first and then the stairways.

#5: The architect screwed up, but props for a creative workaround. The building is obviously still under construction, so I will assume the lamppost was there first.

#2 is silly, but probably at least as much a communication screwup as an engineering screwup.

#1, #7, and #8 look like genuine design flaws without mitigating circumstances. #7 and #8 are merely silly. #1, unless it's a Photoshop job or a conscious effort to deceive through perspective, has to win the prize for being dangerous.

Posted by: Eric Lund | March 20, 2009 3:15 PM

Nothing like a pedantic concern, Eric...can they just say "redesign" flaw, then?

Posted by: Ella Mental | March 20, 2009 3:59 PM

I've seen variants of #2, #4, and #6 in real life several times. In my experience, #6 is usually the result of a commercial building being closed between renters, or being remodeled. In the case of #2, the thing in front of the camera is usually a more recent addition. (And in at least one case, the housing no longer contained a camera - something that is difficult to determine from a picture like #2.)


On this topic - the community college I went to before transferring to a 'real' university built a new Sciences and Humanities building shortly before I started taking classes there. As I was working construction at the site at the time it was built, I saw first hand that the basement floor was originally designed and built with no women's restroom. Since there were classrooms and computer labs on that floor, somebody raised a fuss, walls got torn down and rebuilt, and plumbing got done. However, most of the electrical wiring was never redone - which made the outlets for the computers in the computer labs dreadfully inconvenient.
At the same time, the women's restroom in the new library building was originally laid out like a second men's restroom - with two urinals. These were replaced about a year after it opened.

Posted by: llewelly | March 22, 2009 7:35 PM

The mad thing about #2 is that the screen was meant to display what the camera could see. ;)

Posted by: eddie | June 5, 2009 8:27 PM