A 7-mile pink rainbow for Kim Jong-il

Ben Masterton - Smith , receiver of the inauguralRIBA Norman Foster Traveling Scholarshipin 2007 , visited North Korea for a period of architectural and spacial research .

One of the many outcomes of that slip was Ben ’s diploma task , part of which propose a ridiculous realization of a 7 - mile rainbow reportedly see on the social occasion ofKim Jong - il‘s birth .

Truckloads of vinyl are delivered to the capital metropolis ; teams of “ military volunteer ” pump vast amounts of air into the unfold social organization - the majestic inflatable as architectural character ; and , lo , the titanic pink and violet form ascends to its nostalgic place in the public heavens , assembled tintinnabulation by band across the sky .

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While I have cerise - picked only one aspect of Ben ’s overall North Korean research project , and thus this might seem like a bit of a one - note flute , I have to say that the absurdly over - the - top scale of the proposition actually seems spot - on for an architectural critique of Kim Jong - il ’s surrealistic stage - managing of North Korean life .

In many ways , this spacial realisation of the state ’s own ridiculous mythology dish up as a sadly necessary - because totally delirious - over - compensation for the otherwisemonumentally vacuous cityscapesof North Korean urbanism , as if the grotesque political spectacle of a pinkish rainbow soar seven naut mi over the metropolis might retroactively justify that city ’s empty stagecraft .

In the annals of overbearing innate history - where , apparently , “ even nature is mourning ” the death of Kim Jong - il - the tongue - in - boldness architectural manifestation of an otherwise unimaginable worldly phenomena acts not as celebration but as spatial parody . It is sarcasm , we might say , given architectural configuration .

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