The district where I work has a number of quaint landmarks. One of them is the distinctive glass towers of the Lippo Centre, whose opening in 1987 was followed by a series of spectacular corporate collapses in ownership, including that of late Australian magnate and fraudster Alan Bond (who previously lent his name to the towers). It was designed by American architect Paul Rudolph, who was famous for his brutalist works, a style that was favored not only by communist countries which aligned its socialist utopian ideology to brutalism’s architectural philosophy but also by countries like the Philippines in the 1970s. The most distinctive part of the design are the cantilevered projections that house the so-called sky-rooms. Local geomancers have suggested the building has bad feng-shui based on the C-shaped glass-walled extrusions, which gave it its nickname “the koala tower” as it resembled koalas clinging to a tree. Several foreign consulates have also established representative offices in the Lippo Centre, such as Angola, Brunei, Ireland, Mongolia, Romania, Turkey and Taiwan. #lippocentre #koalabuilding (at Lippo Centre)
