Grote Werken: Tropical Islands

The hangar at Brand-Briesen, known as the Aerium, is one of the world's largest buildings: The only larger buildings are the Boeing Everett works, the Airbus A380 super-jumbo assembly hall, and a Target distribution warehouse in Washington state. (It's 360 metres long and over 100 metres high: so large you could fit a Nimitz class super-carrier inside it.) It was a suitably ambitious plant for what was essentially a plan to build an aircraft with a cargo capacity even greater than the Antonov An-225 Mriya, with vertical take-off and landing thrown in as a bonus. And so, when CargoLifter AG went bankrupt in 2004, having completed the hangar, it should be no surprise that someone, somewhere, sat up and said to themselves, "hey, we could use that!"

Fascinerend verhaal vol heerlijke details van Charles Stross over de mislukte hangar in het Duitse Brand-Briesen die werd omgebouwd tot Tropical Islands, het grootste indoorzwembad ter wereld. Dat klinkt veel te optimistisch en inderdaad, achter de façade is het een ambitieus panopticon. De toekomst zal kitschy en paranoïde zijn.