Architecture! At its best, visionary, innovative, mold-breaking. At its worst, cheesy, overwrought, and ill-timed. The recent architectural follies of Dubai present a fairly good case for prudence in the building arts: a Marvel superhero-themed park is a questionable expenditure even in boom times; as for the world’s largest LED structure, a new opera house, a revolving “dynamic” tower, and an experimental resort dubbed “The Cloud,” well, it’s beginning to look like Gomorrah in Abu Dhabi. But as we know all too well, the current financial crisis is a global situation, which is why we’ve rated six new developments and their associated levels of what-were-they-thinking-ness. Follow along after the jump.




