How a Colossal Airship Hangar Became a Colossal Water Park [Architecture]

On the left: a $110 million airship hangar, the realm’s largest freestanding building, located 40 miles south of Berlin. On the suitable: that same building seen today: home to Tropical Islands Resort , a big water park and indoor rainforest. Huh?

The massive hangar, measuring 1,181 feet long by 688 feet wide by 351 high, was built by Carl von Gablenz, a German entrepreneur who thought that helium airships were the long run of heavy machine transport. His company, CargoLifter AG, used the hangar to deal with a prototype airship capable of carrying 60 tons, but by 2002 they were bankrupt and ordered to sell the building to a Tanjong, a Malaysian company. Tanjong was not within the airship business.

Instead they repurposed the hangar for their Tropical Islands Resort, an incredible indoor theme park. They welded the 600-ton steel doors shut, replaced its steel skin with 20,000 square yards of translucent film, and brought along everything they needed to build a completely immersive, totally fake paradise: 600 feet of sandy beach for a faux shoreline, 50,000 trees of some 600 varieties, comprising the sector’s biggest indoor rainforest, and, in fact, a nine-story water slide that sends riders shooting down into a 3,000 square yard swimming pool at 44 MPH. Yikes. I suspect I’d feel safer on the airship. [ Air Space Mag via BoingBoing ]

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This post is tagged: german entrepreneur, indoor rainforest, indoor theme park, translucent film, tropical islands