Here’s a fun fact about architecture—sometimes, buildings are supposed to look like other things. India’s Lotus Temple looks like the titular flower, the arcs of the Sydney Opera House are supposed to mimic the wings of a bird, and the US Capitol building references greek and roman architecture the same way the Founding Fathers modeled their new republic on those ancient governments or whatever.
But not all buildings are sly references to other things. Some buildings just look like buildings, and nothing else. Take China’s recently completed Guangxi New Media Center, for example—a new skyscraper that is just a skyscraper and shares no conceivable parallel with any other form or shape in nature.
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Behold, the completely ordinary building:
What do you see here? If what you see is an ordinary, well-constructed skyscraper and literally nothing else, then you are correct. According to Shanghaiist, the architects say they borrowed the stacked, layered design from the surrounding province’s terraced landscapes, but that seems like a stretch. Does it look like terraced Chinese farmland? Not really. Does it look like anything at all besides a benign and totally unsuggestive skyscraper? No! Of course not! It is a building and nothing more.
It’s just a normal building, everybody. Just a standard, completely non-phallic building. Just your usual dick-free tower, a typical and absolutely unassuming addition to the skyline, absent of anything that may make it look like a massive schlong and a set of rotund, oblong balls.
Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing at all.
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