Haunting Photos Reveal an Abandoned Town of Disneyesque Castles | Hacker News Reader

Haunting Photos Reveal an Abandoned Town of Disneyesque Castles

architecturaldigest.com

105 pointsmmphosis59 comments

"Every castle boasts magnificent natural vistas" - of other identical faux castles! This feels like a crass development by a group who had very little experience of what does and doesn't work for people to want to live in a development.

Yeah its like they sold them to people based on individual photos but people would never have expected them to be all crunched together and identical like that. The article puts the failure down to the economy but there's no way anyone would have actually wanted to live in this place.

Like you say - the people that did the layout for this development had no idea what they were doing.

Or the plan got iteratively worse - e.g. there were going to be 10 different house types but it got whittled down to 1. Everything was going to be very spread out but then they progressively had to plan for less and less land.

Have you ever been to Irvine? Or Elk Grove?

Hard to say that nobody would buy these, when they had already sold half of them before the project was finished. I don’t think I’d enjoy it, but obviously there are some people who thought this would make a nice vacation home.

Good place for an international criminal to sink a lot of money and then sell it for a “loss” to someone that is owed.

Real estate as money laundering is a well known tactic, and developments of the sort described are a perfect vehicle for them. Hell, almost all of London is a perfect vehicle for them, but that’s a different rant.

In Canary Wharf, in London, they are building a dozen resi sky scrapper at the same time, some within a few meters from each others. All the marketing material shows rendering of the view from the sky scrapper assuming none of the others is built. All sold off plan to the other side of the world where they will get a surprise on completion.

> Yeah its like they sold them to people based on individual photos but people would never have expected them to be all crunched together and identical like that.

That seems to be exactly what they did based on this photo of their brochure[0].

[0] https://www.loveproperty.com/galleries/109137/burj-al-babas-...

That powerpoint is fascinating, looks like work had resumed but then the pandemic hit

"very little experience of what does and doesn't work for people to want to live in a development."

Upper Middle Class and Nouveau Riche kitsch knows no bounds.

Even famous and wealthy artists sometimes live in ridiculous McMansions, as though their creative abilities didn't given them an ounce of taste.

If you gave me one for free I wouldn't live there, they may as well be identical White Houses, or McMansions. I hate neighborhoods made up of dozens of the same floor plan and colors, yet developers keep insisting on that.

I personally love them. I don't care if my house is not unique or personal. In my country those neighborhoods are optimally planned around facilities and that's all I care about.

In my country they aren’t planned around anything

Where do the cars go? Seriously, if you are trying to sell to rich people from the middle east you must include a multi-car garage, and some extra uncovered spots too. Look at any video from Dubai. Cars are a cornerstone of wealth display. Multigenerational families, servants, children ... they all drive cars, big cars at that. Without sufficient parking these things would barely qualify as hotel rooms. I'm not sure this development was ever a real thing. It looks like a scam that went too far.

Looks like they had a huge parking garage off to the side of them all. Almost like someone realized your question and they added it as an afterthought.

In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRzpDqqB2fk it appears they didn't really finish any of them, which definitely makes it seem like a scam. Who would build a giant project like this not in phases?

Apparently no where. In all of those pictures, there isnt a single paved road. Perhaps some are there but not pictured, but it appears that many if not all of the houses were built using dirt roads only. Putting down roads is neither expensive nor difficult so its baffling that there aren't any.

edit: Yep, no paved roads in the development: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Burj+Al+Babas+Villa/@40.44...

I'd hate to be stumbling home drunk in that village

Unfortunately many of today's suburbias are practically the same, it's like a fungus that has spread from Northern America to the rest of the world. A few weeks ago I was exploring the streets around Copenhagen (like this one [1]) and I was surprised to see practically the same building repeating itself, quite soul-crushing in their uniformity.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6784592,12.461008,3a,75y,152...

Why is there a miniature bike lane inside a very long stretch of road without a bike lane?

To make bicycles safe around the speed limiting ‘a’ obstruction.

Well - luckily that’s not the typical neighborhood in Denmark - we have a lot more building-diversity…!

At least many areas have monotony laws in their building codes. The development where I bought my previous house from had accidentally sold two of the same house styles next to each other, so they ended up giving one of the buyers a free elevation upgrade (they had 4 models (floorplans), and 4 trim levels ("elevations") in each floor plan which was basically a simple roof, or adding [fake] dormers or other roof peaks features, and vinyl siding vs partial brick vs stone facing, etc). Add in different siding or brick colors and you could have a large variety with a minimal set of basic house plans.

Has something happened recently? I recall seeing very similar photos of this town when the developers went bankrupt in 2018[1] and the article doesn’t seem to give any indication of why they’re writing about it now.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-26/builder-o...

If I was to build a village, it wouldn't look anything like that one. It'd look like a medieval town, but be all modern inside.

One thing that makes medieval towns so nice is all the buildings are different, and they're all somewhat cockeyed.

There is a gated community in Kirkland that was developed to look like an old English village. It's pretty cool, and I've never seen any other development like it.

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6652292,-122.2070988,3a,75y,...

This has been circulating the web for a few years now and what strikes me every time I see it is that something does not add up.

Who would build that many ugly houses with no promise of people moving in? It just doesn't make sense.

I know the story says 300 were "sold" but that still doesn't add upp. If they sold 300 house before they were even finished then it's already a red flag. Who buys a house before it's finished? Before they even know what it's going to look like in the environment where it will be located.

It reeks of fraud to me. Most likely they got grants from the government for each "sale" they made and then built shoddy houses and kept any money they didn't have to spend on proper building materials and workers.

Either that or they're just the dumbest people in the world, with money, and a vision. Because that's what it would take to litter the landscape with those monstrosities. A lot of money, no brains and a vision.

> Who buys a house before it's finished?

I'd say this is the norm for most property development around the world. A developer creates a plan, people apply for it and get individual mortgages, the developer takes that money (in-fact having sold say 60% of them) and delivers within 3 years all the buildings, while selling the remaining 20% during development and the other 20% after.

Yes of course, it's the same here in Sweden. In fact I pass a newly developed area regularly to visit my brother.

BUT the big difference is that while they're building the 3rd and 4th house, people are already moving into the 1st one.

This turkish organisation built SEVEN HUNDRED houses without anyone moving in. Surely you can see how that does not add up?

It's is called buying off-plan and is very common, especially for apartments in residential blocks. You buy your apartment early on and it is cheaper than if you buy after completion of the project.

Ah, so almost like crowdfunding sites.

Well... somebody has to pay something before people start building...

At least in the US, having a certain number of presales is literally a requirement to get loans for developers. My folks bought their last two houses like this. I bought my last two condos this way. All before ground was broken, average wait time of about 2 years.

Note that in these cases a presale does not mean the property is fully paid for - it means that some deposit and paperwork have been filed and that the final price on close of escrow has been locked in.

In this video [0] the channel owner sneaks into the area, quite interesting!

[0] https://youtu.be/DRzpDqqB2fk

Annoying camera work aside, it certainly shows how incredibly cheap everything seems in terms of manufacture. I think they mention styrofoam for the outside trim at one point.

Yeah, they did. It almost feels like it's just a movie set. Designed to look real, but actually completely fake...

That kind of building is insane: - nobody wants to live in an overcrowded village with almost zero garden around the house; not in a new one, some old ones are almost decent (for example, Ohrid in Macedonia or Dubrovnic in Croatia) - there is no space for cars - 700 identical houses are insane. At least you can build 15-20 different types and mix everything well, so it does not look like a horror movie - such a village will need some stores and restaurants well fit in the picture, but not in castle-like buildings

Probably the 300 were bought by people looking for investment purchases, with no plan to move and without spending any time to look what this will become, just at the plan of the building they are buying. Out of context purchase of real estate, modus operandi of certain types of investors.

Note that the photos show nothing except rows of identical houses. No services of any kind. No restaurants, no markets, nothing. If you need a plumber, where is the plumber? Someplace far away.

Can see this being inspiration for a CoD map soon enough.

If they do another remake of The Prisoner, this would be a great place to film it.

I don't know why these photos are not giving me the chills that my, eh, burgeoise decadent anesthetics would predict. I'm all for water parks abandoned in the 70s but this, for some reason, not so much.

Looks like a perfect location for Hollywood to come in and do real physical effects with. Way back when Walker Texas Ranger was shooting, DFW airport was ready to expand. There were houses that were about to be demolished to make way for the exapnsion. Walker film crew went in and blew them all up as stock footage to use in later episodes. Something similar could be done here. Attach a giant flame thrower to a helicopter, and then replace the helo in CG with a dragon. HBO will be calling soon, as soon as they fix their email.

There is also a nice video on these https://youtu.be/3NYgET0lCA4

It would actually look kind of funky if you painted every castle with a different bright color.

It would be a start to salvaging the utter waste of resources wasted on this development, but I would be (pleasantly) surprised if anything actually happened. Great setting for a horror flick though.

I was thinking it might be fun to paint one a garishly bright color. And maybe squat a few doors down to appreciate the view and also avoid the attention gained by the bright one

I thought the picture was CGI. It looks like some weird Skyrim mod or something straight out of Google Deep Dream.

My 4 year old daugther would probably love that place... but its haunting indeed!

McMansion to the McMansion'th power!

ah human conceit, I know thee well

"What was supposed to be a European-inspired haven in the Middle East is now littered with abandoned construction materials, making it a proper ghost town."

Middle East? don't think many people consider it the middle east.

Turkey is predominately in the Middle East, despite a small section in the European continent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East

While only a small part of Turkey is in Europe, that part is very important (Istanbul).

Turkey is also still officially applying for EU membership although neither side wants it these days and the process is all but dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...

Only half of Istanbul is in Europe, and while the historical core is on the European side, most of the modern city center (Taksim etc) is on the Asian side.

Taksim is on the European continent though:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/6271669244#map=14/41.0320...

You're right! It's on the east side of the Golden Horn, but still west of the Bosphorus.

I thought so too; isn’t it part of Near East? However Wikipedia suggests people have began to use the term Middle East to cover that part of the world too apparently

For what it's worth, for me they are synonyms.

It depends on the language. For instance, what the US and UK calls the "Middle East", Germany calls the "Near East".

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittlerer_Osten

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naher_Osten

We also call it the "Near East"; that term is just less common than "Middle East".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_East

“Haunting” yes. Each castle is provided with a miniature of the disaster that is the British Royals.\s

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