We’ve seen lots of dazzling concepts by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut, most of which seem far too fanciful to ever actually materialize, but his twisting high-rise tower in Taipei is finally taking shape in three dimensions. ‘Tao Zhu Yin Yuan’ is about halfway complete, pivoting on a central axis for a layout that enables outdoor space brimming with greenery on every floor. Scheduled for completion in September 2017, the residential tower will support 23,000 trees absorbing up to 130 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

The tower is conceived as a ‘inhabited tree,’ set upon a circular footprint with towers extending from the core in a double helix shape. From the north or south, it looks like a pyramid, while east and west views give onlookers a fuller idea of the building’s scale. It will contain 40 luxury apartments and additional facilities, and is set to meet LEED gold status as well as diamond-level Low Carbon Building Alliance certification.

Callebaut is known for proposals that emphasize sustainability, self-sufficiency, the inclusion of vegetation and eye-popping shapes. Examples include his dragonfly-wing-shaped urban farm, the Lilypad floating city concept, the ‘Asian Cairns’ residential towers and a series of futuristic ‘smart towers’ aiming to reduce pollution and create renewable energy while integrating into existing built environments.

Most of these concepts either appear too wild and expensive to developers and investors to inspire confidence for real-world success, or rely on theoretical technology that hasn’t been fully developed or proven. But nobody can accuse Callebaut of limiting his own creativity in the way he envisions the future of architecture, in a world where the choices we make for our cities directly impact our ability to withstand the consequences of climate change.

“In 2050, we will be 9 billion of human beings on our blue planet and 80% of the world population will live in megacities,” says Callebaut. “It’s time to invent new eco-responsible lifestyles and to repatriate the nature in our city in order to increase the quality of our life with respect of our environment.”

Amusement parks offer an adrenaline-soaked escape from reality, transporting us into fantasy worlds where pretty much anything is possible – and sometimes, the concept art for a proposed theme park can be nearly as exciting as the park itself. These 12 concepts include eagerly awaited new theme parks expected to open soon, projects that have been shelved and incredibly imaginative ideas that could never actually exist.

World of Warcraft & Starcraft-Themed Amusement Park

(images via: manaflask)

It’s not a joke: China really is building a World of Warcraft-themed amusement park (with a Starcraft section to boot). It’s called Joyland, and it’s under construction in the Wunjin district with an expected opening sometime this spring. For the time being, however, it’s still just a concept, with fantastical illustrations giving us an idea of what to expect.

Vertical Theme Park for New York City

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Imagine all of the rides in a typical theme park compacted into a single skyscraper – in the middle of Manhattan. Architect Ju-Hyun Kim packs a flume ride, sky promenade, a roller coaster, a ferris wheel, restaurants, a vertical carousel and a space theater into a tower that fits right in with the surrounding architecture. This novel concept not only shrinks the often-sprawling footprint of an amusement park into a much smaller space, but also keeps the fun inside city limits, cutting back on the need for travel.

Dubailand: Marvel Superheroes Theme Park

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Before Disney bought comic book empire Marvel, a deal was struck that allowed a massive Marvel theme park be to constructed as part of the multi-billion-dollar Dubailand, an amusement park complex rumored to be 20 times larger than Disney World. The Marvel section of the park will include 17 rides and attractions and occupy over four and a half million square feet. Said to be opening in late 2011, the actual status of the project is unclear due to Dubailand’s financial difficulties. The developers of Dubailand had hoped to attract 15 million tourists a year by 2015.

Disney’s Forgotten Water World

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Once upon a time, Disney imagineers planned a $2 billion seaside park for Long Beach Harbor, California. Port Disney was to focus on the myths and mystery of the ocean, and the park’s crowning glory was Oceania, a massive interactive aquarium with a tidal exchange with the ocean to create real tidal pools in the outdoor exhibits. Guests would have snorkeled in five different reef environments or even enjoyed a few terrifying moments in a shark cage. Doomed due to concerns about the impact to the coastline, this project got new life when some aspects of it were used at Tokyo DisneySea.

Theme Planet by Michael Sormann

(image via: io9)

Theme Planet, a short film by 3D artist Michael Sormann, explores the concept of an entire planet being one big theme park. Aside from fantastic animation, the film includes glimpses of fun attractions and features like the ‘Barracuda’ steam-powered train.

Dubai Space & Science World

(images via: realtyna.com)

Before the economy crashed, Dubai development seemed like a freight train with busted brakes. Today, it’s unclear whether many of the spectacular concepts proposed for the city will ever actually be built, but what about those already under construction? It’s hard to say whether we’ll ever actually see the ‘Space & Science World’ attraction in Dubailand ever come to life.

Dubailand Ski Dome

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One of Dubailand’s biggest attractions, ‘Sunny Mountain Ski Dome’ or ‘Snowdome’, is already rumored to have been shelved altogether due to stratospheric costs. A massive steel dome would have enclosed an artificial mountain range covered in snow for a complete ski resort with winter activities and arctic animals like polar bears and penguins – all in the middle of the desert.

Robot Land Theme Park in South Korea

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It’s not finished yet, but in 2013, Robot Land will reportedly open its gates to visitors keen on experiencing every form of robot entertainment currently known to man. There will be robotic rides, robotic fish in aquariums for visitors to manipulate, robotic performers and even robotic cashiers.

Radiant Copenhagen: New Uses for Subway Stations

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What’s to come in the distant future for the city of Copenhagen? One of over a hundred ideas submitted to the Radiant Copenhagen project envisions a sparkling underground amusement park in place of the current Vanløse subway station, to be built after the imagined abolishment of public transport between 2060 and 2100.

Two Amusement Park Concepts for Saudi Arabia

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Sidell Gibson Architects created two concept designs for amusement parks in waterfront locations in Saudi Arabia, each containing a wide range of activities like ice skating, cinemas, rides, virtual games, indoor water sports and outdoor swimming pools. “We have drawn inspiration from the local habitat and in particular the flora and fauna of the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf coasts and the immediate adjacency of the water itself. The starting point is the way seeds are arranged in a sunflower or daisy. The pattern of intersecting parabolic spirals is the result of a natural growth process where new, smaller seeds emerge from a centre and displace larger and older ones… One benefit of this geometric pattern is that it lends itself to being developed flexibly, in many ways without loosing the sense of the inherent geometry.”

The Euthanasia Coaster

(images via: io9)

Perhaps, from the drawings, this roller coaster doesn’t strike you as all that impressive. It’s not flashy concept art; it’s really quite simple. But get on this roller coaster, and it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. Royal College of Art PhD student Julijonas Urbonas created Euthanasia Coaster for the exact purpose that the name suggests; the coaster is designed to starve the rider’s brain of oxygen. The idea is that if you choose to go, you can go in a way that is thrillingly, amazingly, mind-numblingly fun. “Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful.”

Many an architect has dreamed up visionary plans for city centers, but few have actually seen their designs come to fruition in a real live urban setting. And while many such unbuilt concepts are technically viable, others are wacky, fanciful or downright bizarre. These 13 vintage urban design ideas for the future, from perfectly symmetrical egalitarian communities to the egotistical demands of a deranged dictator, will probably never become reality – and in many cases, we’re better off that way.

Gillette’s Metropolis

(images via: io9)

Before his name was inextricably connected to safety razors, King Camp Gillette had a utopian vision for the future which revolved around a waterfall-powered tiered city he dubbed ‘Metropolis’. All residents of this imagined city would have access to the same amenities including rooftop gardens in the perfectly round, precisely divided multi-functional buildings in which they would live, work, play and eat. Like many of Gillette’s ideas, the design never went anywhere, but it’s notably similar to many very modern 21st-century concepts for sustainable urban centers.

Broadacre City

(images via: mediaarchitecture.at)

Like Gillette’s Metropolis, Broadacre City was meant to be an urban utopia. But when renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright imagined the picture-perfect society of tomorrow, he saw not highly compact and efficient high-rises, but sprawling self-sustainable homesteads. Originally conceived in 1932, Broadacre City puts each homeowner in a self-built single-family home on an entire acre of land brimming with gardens. Complete with multiple cars per family, it would almost be an accurate prediction of future suburbia if not for the airplane in every front yard.

Atomurbia

(image via: io9)

If giving each and every family in America an acre of land seems impossible, imagine what life would be like if ‘Atomurbia’ had come to pass. This concept, published in a 1947 issue of Life magazine, detailed how to atomic bomb-proof America by spreading the population across the land in a geometric grid and relocating all industry into underground structures so that any single bomb would do a minimum of damage. The whole plan would have cost a measly 5 trillion dollars in today’s currency, and the authors – atomic scientists from Chicago – thought it could be pulled off within a decade.

Hotel Attraction

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Antoni Gaudi’s architecture defines Barcelona, Spain even today with its fluid curves, reflective surfaces and organic shapes – but it would stick out like a sore thumb in the comparatively staid cityscape of Manhattan. Perhaps that’s what he had in mind for ‘Hotel Attraction’, commissioned in 1908 and also known as the Grand Hotel. The rounded, spaceship-like form would have risen in the exact spot where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were later built, but the idea was ultimately abandoned. Gaudi’s unrealized design was actually considered as a possibility for the Ground Zero memorial after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Welthauptstadt

(images via: wikimedia commons)

We all know that Adolf Hitler had many an ambitious plan that (thankfully) never came to pass – but few are aware of ‘Welthauptstadt’ (German for ‘World Capital’), the Fuhrer’s design for a new Berlin to be constructed after his expected victory in World War II. Taking elements from other empires around the world, Hitler imagined a broad ‘Avenue of Victory’ down the center as well as his very own ‘Arch of Triumph’. A test structure constructed in 1938 to determine whether Berlin’s marshy ground could have even held up such heavy Romanesque architecture (verdict: nope) still stands today.

Palace of Soviets

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The Palace of Soviets would have been the world’s tallest structure at 100 meters high and crowned with a brightly lit hammer and sickle as a monument to Lenin on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior, if only the Nazis hadn’t invaded in 1941, putting a stop to construction. Its steel frame was disassembled for use in fortifications and bridges, and its foundations served as the world’s largest open-air swimming pool for a while before 1995 when the whole thing was filled in so that the cathedral could be rebuilt.

Ville Contemporaine

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The architect known as Le Corbusier was an essential figure in the development of what we now know as modern architecture, and his many theoretical urban design projects aimed to make life better for residents of cramped cities. Displeased with the chaos of big cities, Le Corbusier designed ‘Ville Contemporaine’ as an orderly home to three million people where housing, industry and recreation all occupied distinct areas connected by roads that emphasized the use of personal vehicles for transportation.

Seward’s Success

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If it was Seward’s Folly to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire in the first place, perhaps Seward’s Success – a huge climate-controlled, glass-enclosed city for 40,000 people – could have made up for it. Or not. Proposed in 1968 and nixed in 1972, this unbuilt community was dreamed up after the discovery of oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska when developers imagined droves of people coming to the area. The crowning jewel of the perpetually 68-degree dome would have been a 20-story Alaskan Petroleum Center, surrounded by housing, offices, retail space and an indoor sports arena.

Triton City

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If not for a certain tell-tale 1960s aesthetic, Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Triton City’ could easily fit among today’s designs for floating eco-friendly cities. The futurist, architect and inventor was ahead of his time as usual when he imagined this tetrahedronal metropolis for Tokyo Bay, a seastead for up to 6,000 residents. Fuller wrote about the possibility of desalinating and recirculating seawater “in many useful and non-polluting ways” and using materials from obsolete buildings on land, which were hardly popular ideas at the time.

Future New York, “The City of Skyscrapers”

(images via: io9)

By 1925, many of New York City’s skyscrapers were already present, but futurists of the time envisioned not only a great deal more but a sort of aerial civilization complete with elevated train platforms and perhaps a rather unsafe number of aircraft flying around all at once.

New York City’s Dream Airport

(image via: ptak science books)

All the airplanes in that 1925 postcard would definitely require a monumental airport in New York City, and what better location than right smack in midtown Manhattan? This concept  for “New York City’s Dream Airport” featured an astonishingly large – and some say ugly – runway platform. But for all of the prime real estate that this monstrosity would have devoured, it seems as if it could only handle a handful of planes at a time with absolutely zero  margin of error, sending errant planes straight into Central Park or the East River.

Slumless, Smokeless Cities

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How do you build a city so egalitarian that slums are eliminated entirely, and nobody ever has to breathe in pollution? Sir Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city movement, believed that a careful layout with six satellite garden cities connected via canals to a densely populated central city would do the trick. Thoughtfully, the design included specially designated spaces for “Eplileptic Farms”, “Homes for Waifs”, “Homes for Inebriates” and an insane asylum.

Boozetown

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“Just imagine a resort entirely centered on the culture of alcohol. A boozer’s paradise built expressly to facilitate drinking and the good times that naturally follow. Where the bars, clubs and liquor stores never close.” Mel Johnson’s ‘Boozetown’ was an entirely sincere proposal with street names like “Gin Lane” and “Bourbon Boulevard” that would have begun as a resort town in Middle America and eventually expanded into a full-sized adults-only city with permanent housing and its own suburbs. After many obsessed years of struggling for financing, Johnson gave up on his dream in 1960 and died in a mental hospital in 1962.