Never Born
It reached for reality, but never truly arrived.
173 verified storiesScalebound
Years of public demos brought it close enough to touch—just never close enough to play.
Batgirl
The unreleased 2022 filmPrincipal photography was finished. Post-production had begun. The audience never arrived.
Chicago Spire
It left a 76-foot-deep foundation hole—but never a skyscraper.
Apple AirPower
Apple announced it, pictured it on packaging—and never sold a single one.
Star Wars 1313
It appeared in a live gameplay demonstration, but never reached an ordinary player.
Superman Lives
Nicolas Cage wore the Superman suit, but principal photography never began.
Palace of the Soviets
Its foundations were under construction when war and political change stranded the megastructure between drawing and ruin.
Titan
Blizzard's cancelled MMOBlizzard spent years building a successor-sized MMO, then turned its strongest fragments into something smaller and faster.
Project Ragtag
Visceral's Star Wars gameA cinematic Star Wars heist reached a public glimpse just before its studio was closed around it.
Mega Man Legends 3
Capcom built a community around making the game, then cancelled both the game and the public prototype meant to prove it.
Jodorowsky's Dune
The film never rolled, but its enormous storyboard book let an unmade Dune travel through cinema anyway.
Napoleon
Stanley Kubrick's unmade filmKubrick catalogued a life day by day and planned battles by the thousand, but the epic remained an archive instead of a film.
Monument to the Third International
Tatlin's TowerA 400-metre spiral promised to make revolution move, but post-revolutionary Russia could barely supply its steel.
Plan Voisin
Le Corbusier proposed clearing a large part of central Paris so eighteen glass towers could stand in open ground.
The Illinois
Frank Lloyd Wright's Mile-High TowerWright answered urban congestion with a 528-storey tower one mile high—announced in detail and impossible to finance or build.
Broadacre City
Wright built a twelve-foot model of a decentralized America, but no single place ever became Broadacre City.
Project Ara
Google demonstrated a phone built from replaceable blocks, then stopped before anyone could buy one.
Aryan Papers
Kubrick researched a Holocaust film down to costumes and location tests, then decided the subject and production had become unbearable.
Spider-Man 4
Sam Raimi's cancelled sequelSony dated a fourth Raimi Spider-Man film and developed villains and scripts, but rebooted the series before cameras rolled.
Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit
Del Toro spent two years designing Middle-earth, then left when financial delays made the start of filming impossible to predict.
Halo film
The Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp projectMicrosoft brought Halo to Hollywood with Jackson and Blomkamp, built test material, and watched the studio partnership collapse before filming.
Star Wars: Duel of the Fates
A complete Episode IX screenplay sent the saga toward Coruscant and a different ending before Lucasfilm replaced its director and story.
Kingdom of the Sun
Disney built an epic musical, recorded songs and animated major sequences—then dismantled it into The Emperor's New Groove.
Yellow Submarine remake
Disney and Robert Zemeckis prepared a motion-capture Beatles remake, then closed the studio technology built to make it.
Genndy Tartakovsky's Popeye
Sony released a dazzling animation test for Tartakovsky's Popeye, then let the director and feature drift apart.
Blue Sky's Nimona
Blue Sky animated much of Nimona before Disney closed the studio; another team later rebuilt and released a different production.
Larrikins
DreamWorks cancelled an Australian musical after years of story, songs and animation work, leaving its creators to share only fragments.
Star Wars: Underworld
Lucasfilm wrote dozens of scripts and built a technology test for a darker live-action Star Wars series that television budgets could not support.
Destino original production
Disney and Salvador Dalí built a surreal short, then stopped after months of design and animation; it was completed by another generation decades later.
The Other Side of the Wind original production
Orson Welles shot his labyrinthine Hollywood film for years but died before finishing it; an archive team completed a successor cut in 2018.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2000 production)
Terry Gilliam started shooting Don Quixote, then storms, illness and insurance ended the production in less than a week.
Heart of Darkness
Orson Welles's unrealised first RKO featureWelles planned to film Conrad through the protagonist's eyes, built elaborate camera tests, and lost the project when its budget would not fit RKO.
Fun Palace
Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood designed a building that would continuously rebuild itself around its visitors, but never secured a site long enough to construct it.
Potteries Thinkbelt
Cedric Price proposed turning a declining railway network into a roaming university for 20,000 students.
London Garden Bridge
London spent tens of millions developing a tree-covered Thames crossing that lost political guarantees before construction began.
Crystal Island
Moscow approved a 450-metre spiralling city under one roof, then the financial crisis stopped it before the skyline changed.
Cardiff Bay Opera House
Zaha Hadid won an international competition twice, yet political and funding resistance prevented her crystalline opera house from being built.
A Plan for Tokyo 1960
Kenzo Tange proposed extending Tokyo across its bay on a vast civic spine rather than letting the city spread around the shore.
Ville Contemporaine
Le Corbusier arranged three million residents around cruciform towers, transport layers and immense open ground—a city designed as one total system.
Hotel Attraction
Antoni Gaudí designed a 360-metre hotel for New York decades before such a tower could be engineered or financed.
Lower Manhattan Expressway
New York repeatedly planned a ten-lane motorway through Lower Manhattan, but neighbourhood resistance stopped the road before it erased SoHo.
Adolf Loos's Tribune Tower
Adolf Loos answered Chicago's skyscraper competition with a 122-metre inhabited Doric column.
Millennium Tower Tokyo
Foster + Partners designed an 840-metre vertical city for Tokyo Bay that would house 60,000 people offshore.
Nakheel Tower
Dubai planned a tower more than a kilometre tall, redesigned it repeatedly, then stopped when its developer's finances seized up.
Russia Tower
Moscow began foundations for what would have been Europe's tallest building, then the financial crisis left the site without its tower.
Minnesota Experimental City
Minnesota spent years planning a pollution-controlled city for 250,000 people beneath a climate-regulating dome, but no host community accepted it.
Plan Obus
Le Corbusier proposed a sinuous inhabited motorway above Algiers while demolishing much of the existing city below.
Palm Foleo
Palm announced a Linux laptop companion, demonstrated working hardware and set a price, then cancelled it weeks before release to focus on a future mobile platform.
Eight Days
Sony demonstrated a cinematic road chase across the United States, then stopped the PlayStation 3 project before the public could play it.
The Getaway 3
A detailed digital London appeared in Sony demonstrations, but the next Getaway never became a game the public could buy.
Star Wars: Battlefront III
Free Radical versionFree Radical built a nearly complete Battlefront that moved seamlessly from ground battles into space, but LucasArts cancelled it before release.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots
Ubisoft announced a story-heavy Rainbow Six about domestic extremism, restarted development, and ultimately replaced it with Siege.
Mega Man Universe
Capcom showed a platform game built around remixing and sharing Mega Man levels, then cancelled it months before its planned release.
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans
Blizzard cancelled a nearly finished animated adventure because its design no longer met the studio's standards.
EarthBound 64
Mother 3 for Nintendo 64Nintendo's first 3D Mother game crossed three hardware formats before its creators cancelled the production and rebuilt the story years later.
Sonic X-treme
Sega's attempted 3D Sonic showcase fractured across engines and teams until illness and an impossible deadline ended the Saturn game.
Thrill Kill
EA inherited a completed four-player fighting game and cancelled it rather than release its deliberately extreme violence.
SimCity for NES
Nintendo publicly demonstrated an NES SimCity alongside its SNES edition, then quietly cancelled the smaller version until a prototype resurfaced decades later.
Sega VR for Genesis
Sega showed a head-tracking VR headset and commissioned games for the Genesis, then cancelled the consumer launch amid technical and safety concerns.
Dinosaur Planet for Nintendo 64
Rare's nearly complete original fantasy adventure became a Star Fox game on different hardware, leaving its first world officially unreleased.
Propeller Arena
Sega completed and manufactured an aerial combat game, then withheld it after September 11 and the collapse of Dreamcast's market.
NBA Elite 11 for consoles
EA pressed review and retail discs for a basketball reboot, delayed it after a disastrous demo, and then cancelled the console release outright.
Star Fox 2's original SNES release
Nintendo finished a radical SNES sequel, cancelled its 1995 launch to protect the coming Nintendo 64, and finally released it twenty-two years later.
EverQuest Next
Daybreak publicly demonstrated a destructible, changing fantasy world, then concluded that the long-awaited EverQuest sequel was not fun enough to finish.
Justice League: Mortal
George Miller assembled a complete superhero cast and prepared Australian production, but strikes and financing policy stopped filming before it began.
Star Trek: Phase II
Paramount wrote episodes, cast new characters and began constructing an Enterprise for a television network that never launched.
Bloodmoon
The Long NightHBO spent millions on a Game of Thrones prequel pilot starring Naomi Watts, watched the finished episode, and declined the series.
The Fantastic Four
1994 unreleased filmA complete low-budget Fantastic Four feature held a premiere campaign, then disappeared before audiences could officially see it.
Toy Story 3 by Circle 7
Disney built a new animation studio to make Pixar sequels without Pixar, then discarded its alternate Toy Story 3 after buying the company it had tried to replace.
Gigantic (Disney film)
GiganticDisney publicly scheduled a musical Jack and the Beanstalk adventure, then closed the storybook before animation could reach the screen.
Heat Vision and Jack
Ben Stiller directed Jack Black as an astronaut and Owen Wilson as a talking motorcycle, but Fox left the completed pilot stranded online.
Global Frequency
Warner Bros. completed a pilot about a global emergency network, rejected it, then watched the leaked episode find the audience television had denied it.
Wonder Woman
2011 NBC pilotNBC completed a modern Wonder Woman pilot, tested a redesigned costume in public, and declined to show the episode or order the series.
The Shadow King
Disney spent tens of millions on Henry Selick's handmade shadow world, then stopped the puppets mid-production and returned the rights to him.
The Day the Clown Cried
Jerry Lewis finished most of a Holocaust drama, refused to release it, and placed the surviving material under a long archival restriction.
Wild Life
Disney put a visually experimental animated comedy into production, then judged its adult humour incompatible with the studio name and shut it down.
Space Theater at Woodstock
Frederick Kiesler designed a theatre as a spiralling cosmic machine for upstate New York, but only its intricate model entered the world.
Key Plan for Ellis Island
Frank Lloyd Wright imagined Ellis Island as a circular city of towers and terraces after immigration closed, but New York chose preservation over reinvention.
City Corridor
Paul Rudolph proposed threading a megastructure of homes, roads and public space across Lower Manhattan, but the city remained outside his concrete frame.
Eyebeam Museum of Art and Technology
Diller Scofidio + Renfro won a Manhattan museum competition with a folding ribbon of spaces, but Eyebeam's building never left the model table.
Bridge of Houses
Steven Holl proposed carrying a neighbourhood of individual homes across Manhattan on a bridge, turning infrastructure into a suspended street that was never built.
Parallax Towers
Steven Holl designed paired Manhattan waterfront towers whose apparent relationship changed as the viewer moved, but the skyline never received them.
Agent
Rockstar's AgentRockstar promised a Cold War espionage game exclusively for PlayStation 3, renewed its trademark for years, and finally erased the last official page without releasing a frame of public gameplay.
Star Wars: First Assault
LucasArts built a compact online Star Wars shooter close to release, but Disney closed the studio before its planned announcement and the finished test build stayed hidden for thirteen years.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned
Disney Interactive announced an open-world pirate role-playing game with moral choices and naval combat, then closed its developer before the voyage could begin.
Phantom Dust reboot
Microsoft announced a modern Phantom Dust and commissioned a playable reboot, then cut ties with its studio and quietly replaced the project with a remaster of the original.
Fez II
Polytron revealed a sequel to its perspective-bending indie hit and cancelled it five weeks later after its creator publicly left game development.
Allison Road
A photorealistic haunted-house demo drew millions of viewers and a publisher, but the team dissolved before its playable nightmare became a finished game.
Resident Evil 1.5
Biohazard 2 PrototypeCapcom rebuilt Resident Evil 2 after a late prototype failed to satisfy its creators, leaving an alternate police station and heroine trapped in development builds.
Silent Hills
A free playable corridor became one of horror's most influential demos, but the Silent Hill game it revealed never advanced into a public build of its own.
Ronnie Rocket
David Lynch carried a script about electricity, language and a three-foot rock star through decades of financing attempts, but never found a budget that could make its industrial dream world real.
The Beatles' Lord of the Rings
The Beatles asked Stanley Kubrick to direct them as Tolkien's heroes, but the author resisted and the director judged the fantasy impossible to film at the time.
A Topiary
Shane Carruth wrote an enormous science-fiction film, attracted David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh, and made effects tests—yet could not turn its ambition into finance.
Locke & Key
2011 Fox seriesFox commissioned a lavish pilot, filmed Keyhouse in Pennsylvania and screened the completed episode at Comic-Con, but never opened the door to a series.
Aquaman
Mercy ReefThe creators of Smallville filmed Justin Hartley as a young Aquaman for a new network, but the CW rejected the series and sold its lone episode instead.
Marvel's Most Wanted
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wrote two popular spies out to launch their own show, ABC filmed the pilot, and then decided the episode was not strong enough for a series.
The Deep
Dead ReckoningOrson Welles filmed a commercial thriller at sea with Jeanne Moreau and Laurence Harvey, but money, weather and a lead actor's death left the negative without a finished film.
Superman: Flyby
J. J. Abrams rewrote Superman as a science-fiction dynasty, multiple directors and actors tested costumes, and Warner Bros. abandoned the expensive reboot before filming.
Cenotaph for Newton
Étienne-Louis Boullée imagined Isaac Newton inside a 150-metre sphere where daylight would become stars and night would become a single artificial sun.
Walking City
Ron Herron gave cities giant robotic legs so they could cross continents, dock with infrastructure and leave whenever their inhabitants wanted a different future.
Plug-In City
Peter Cook designed a permanent craneway whose homes, offices and streets would be replaced like appliances before the city itself could become obsolete.
Dome over Manhattan
Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao proposed covering Midtown Manhattan with a two-mile geodesic shell to control weather and reduce the city's energy use.
Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid
Shimizu imagined one million people living above Tokyo Bay inside a lattice pyramid two kilometres wide and taller than any completed building.
X-Seed 4000
Taisei Corporation drew a four-kilometre mountain for Tokyo Bay, a building so tall that its summit would rise far above Mount Fuji.
Volkshalle
Große HalleThe Nazi regime planned a domed hall for up to 180,000 people as the centre of a rebuilt Berlin, but its architecture of domination remained model, drawing and forced displacement.
StarCraft: Ghost
Blizzard moved its stealth-action spin-off through two studios and years of trade-show demonstrations, then placed Nova's console mission on indefinite hold before finally calling it cancelled.
Prey 2
Human Head versionA dazzling bounty-hunter demo turned Prey into an alien open world, but years of silence ended with Bethesda saying the game never reached its quality standard.
Project Milo
Milo and KateLionhead introduced a virtual boy who recognised faces, remembered conversations and accepted drawings through Kinect—then Microsoft insisted the spectacle had never been a product.
True Fantasy Live Online
Level-5 built Xbox's great cel-shaded online world, showed its towns and airships across two Tokyo Game Shows, and lost the project when voice chat and deadlines overwhelmed the partnership.
B.C.
Lionhead's cavemen could hunt dinosaurs, reshape their tribe and alter an ecosystem, but the ambitious Xbox simulation vanished so its studio could finish other games.
LMNO
Steven Spielberg and EA built a road movie around protecting an expressive alien woman, but experimental emotion systems never became a finished action game.
This Is Vegas
Surreal Software spent years building an open Las Vegas of racing, gambling, fighting and parties before Midway collapsed and Warner Bros. stopped the expensive production.
Project Offset
A tiny team built a spectacular fantasy engine, joined Intel to turn it into a game, and disappeared when the chipmaker abandoned its graphics ambitions.
At the Mountains of Madness
Guillermo del Toro filmGuillermo del Toro secured James Cameron, designed Antarctic creatures and prepared a $150-million Lovecraft epic, but an R rating and bleak ending froze it before filming.
BioShock
Gore Verbinski filmUniversal hired Gore Verbinski to take Rapture to the screen with a vast budget and an R rating, then chose neither when the financial crisis made the underwater city too risky.
Batman: Year One
Darren Aronofsky filmDarren Aronofsky and Frank Miller stripped Batman down to a homeless mechanic, improvised armour and street violence—far enough from the brand that Warner Bros. chose another reboot.
Justice League Dark
Guillermo del Toro versionGuillermo del Toro wrote Constantine, Swamp Thing, Zatanna and Deadman into one supernatural romance, then left when the studio's timetable collided with his next film.
Mockingbird Lane
NBC spent millions rebuilding The Munsters as a lush Bryan Fuller drama, aired the completed pilot for Halloween, and left the family inside that single house.
The Farm
The Office spin-offDwight Schrute inherited a beet farm, a new family and a possible series, but NBC rejected the spin-off and folded its pilot back into The Office.
Lookwell
Adam West played a forgotten television detective who believed old acting lessons qualified him to solve real crimes; NBC aired the pilot once and declined the series.
Korgoth of Barbaria
Adult Swim aired an ultraviolent barbarian pilot, announced a series, and then blamed the price of animation when no second adventure arrived.
Facebook Aquila
Facebook built a solar wing wider than a Boeing 737 to beam the internet from the stratosphere, flew it twice, and closed the aircraft factory before a network existed.
Windows 10X
Microsoft redesigned Windows for two screens, turned it into a lightweight laptop system when the hardware slipped, and then poured its interface back into Windows 11.
Microsoft Courier
Microsoft built book-like tablet prototypes around ink, clippings and a bottomless journal, then killed the device because it refused to become another Windows PC.
Copland
Apple System 8 projectApple tried to replace almost every foundation of the classic Mac at once, distributed unstable developer builds, and finally bought NeXT when the pieces would not become one operating system.
Newt
Pixar announced a romance between the last two blue-footed newts on Earth, built its visual world, and then removed the film from the calendar without producing it.
Me and My Shadow
DreamWorks paired hand-drawn shadows with CG humans, cast Bill Hader and Kate Hudson, and completed striking animation tests before the hybrid film fell out of production.
Neill Blomkamp's Alien
Neill Blomkamp designed an alternate return for Ripley, Hicks and the derelict ship, won studio backing, and watched Ridley Scott's prequel plans close the airlock.
My Peoples
A Few Good GhostsDisney's Florida studio built Appalachian folk-art dolls, music and early animation around a cross-family romance, then cancelled the film and closed the studio producing it.
Star Wars Detours
Lucasfilm completed dozens of animated Star Wars comedy episodes with Seth Green, announced the series publicly, and then locked the entire production away after Disney changed course.
Scoob! Holiday Haunt
Warner Bros. cancelled its Scooby-Doo Christmas film while it was nearly finished; the crew completed the work anyway, but the studio never released it.
Fraidy Cat
Disney spent years developing a Hitchcock-style mystery about a nervous cat framed for kidnapping, but executives refused to greenlight the Florida studio's thriller.
King of the Elves
Disney announced a Philip K. Dick adaptation about a Mississippi shopkeeper crowned by elves, changed directors, revived it once, and quietly let the kingdom vanish.
Battle of the Sith Lords
Red Fly built a stealth-action Darth Maul game in secret, was told to combine him with a distant-era Sith, and lost the project before Lucasarts ever announced it.
The Crossing
Arkane tried to merge a authored Paris campaign with human players invading as enemies, but publishers would not finance the genre-crossing experiment.
David Fincher's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Disney secured an Australian production incentive and David Fincher prepared an enormous undersea adventure, but casting disputes stopped it before cameras rolled.
Kaleidoscope
Alfred Hitchcock shot explicit handheld test footage for a serial-killer thriller decades ahead of his usual style, but Universal refused to let the experiment become a film.
Crusade
Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared a brutal medieval epic with castles, battles and religious doubt until Carolco chose pirate ships instead and collapsed soon after.
Terry Gilliam's Good Omens
Terry Gilliam had a script and major stars in mind, but could not persuade studios to finance an apocalyptic comedy before the rights moved on.
Project H.A.M.M.E.R.
Nintendo spent nearly six years turning a giant hammer into a Wii showcase, repeatedly rebuilt the game and then cancelled it without a release.
Fallout Online
Project V13Interplay rebuilt its future around an online Fallout, but financing conditions and a rights lawsuit transferred the wasteland back to Bethesda before players could enter it.
Gotham by Gaslight — Game Prototype
Day 1 Studios built a rain-soaked Victorian Batman prototype, but the pitch could not secure the licence needed to turn its moving cape and steampunk Gotham into a game.
Six Days in Fallujah — Atomic Games Production
Atomic Games interviewed Marines and rebuilt a recent battle as a tactical shooter, but public controversy cost it a publisher and the original studio collapsed before release.
Bio Force Ape
A mutant wrestling ape reached magazine previews and a nearly complete NES cartridge, vanished into legend, then reappeared at auction eighteen years after cancellation.
The California Raisins: The Grape Escape
Capcom completed a five-level NES platformer and submitted it for Nintendo approval just as the claymation band's popularity shrivelled, leaving a retail-ready cartridge outside the market.
William Gibson's Alien III
William Gibson wrote two Cold War-inflected Alien sequels around Hicks and Bishop, but producers rejected the direction and the eventual film kept almost none of it.
Instant City
Archigram imagined culture arriving by airship, inflating screens and information into overlooked towns before packing the metropolis away again.
Pentominium
Dubai began foundations for a 516-metre residential needle, but the financial crisis froze it after only a fraction of the planned 122 storeys had risen.
Raven Blade
Retro Studios built a dark GameCube action RPG around a legendary sword, then Nintendo cancelled it and moved the team onto Metroid Prime.
Geist Force
Sega planned a cinematic rail shooter for Dreamcast's launch, built playable stages and marketing material, then cancelled it before the console reached its second year.
Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix
LucasArts planned a Fate of Atlantis sequel about the Philosopher's Stone, but the German market and the cost of hand-drawn animation helped bury it before production.
THQ's The Avengers
THQ built a first-person four-player Avengers game around the Skrull invasion, then lost the licence and closed its Australian studio before the film arrived.
Project Copernicus
38 Studios spent years and public loan money building an Amalur MMO, but the company collapsed before its enormous fantasy world could open.
Tiberium
EA publicly demonstrated a squad-based Command & Conquer shooter, then cancelled it months before release because the build missed the publisher's quality bar.
Aliens: Crucible
Obsidian built a squad RPG where marines could die permanently and a base could be overrun, but Sega cancelled it even after developers believed it looked close to shipping.
The Lord of the Rings: The White Council
EA announced an open-world Middle-earth RPG built around its new engine, then dissolved the team when the remaining licence window could not support years more work.
Batman: The Dark Knight
Pandemic Brisbane tried to build an open Gotham around Christopher Nolan's film, but its engine could not hold the city together and the licence expired before launch.
Batman Unchained
Joel Schumacher's fifth Batman would have forced Bruce Wayne through Scarecrow hallucinations of his past villains, but Batman & Robin ended the continuity instead.
Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy III
Del Toro and Ron Perlman wanted Hellboy to face the apocalypse promised by two films, but no studio would finance the expensive conclusion.
Tim Burton's Catwoman
Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle was sent to a strange resort town in a completed spin-off script, but Tim Burton drifted away and Warner Bros. transformed the title into another film.
James Cameron's Spider-Man
James Cameron wrote a dark Spider-Man treatment with organic webbing and a rooftop romance, but bankrupt companies and tangled rights kept it off screen.
B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations
DreamWorks had cast, books and a heavily animated ghost comedy, then removed it from the calendar and abandoned more than $100 million of production.
1906
Brad Bird tried to turn the San Francisco earthquake into Pixar's first live-action epic, but three studios could not reduce the scale or agree on the story.
Disney's Chanticleer
Disney artists spent two decades trying to make a proud rooster into an animated musical, but executives never found enough sympathy or story for the hero.
Channing Tatum's Gambit
Fox dated Channing Tatum's mutant heist movie again and again, cycled through three directors and prepared New Orleans production before Disney erased it from the slate.
Cloud Nine
Buckminster Fuller proposed mile-wide geodesic spheres that could float when their vast interiors warmed only slightly above the outside air.
The Triumphal Elephant
Before the Arc de Triomphe, an architect proposed a sixty-metre elephant with rooms, a ballroom and a fountain inside its body.
Dubai City Tower
A 2.4-kilometre vertical city would have braided six towers around sky plazas and a train climbing far beyond Burj Khalifa.
Ultima Tower
Eugene Tssui imagined a two-mile-high artificial mountain that would house a million people and draw water from the Bay through its own ecosystem.
London Millennium Tower
Foster proposed Europe's tallest building for the bombed Baltic Exchange site, but heritage objections cleared the way for the Gherkin instead.
Burj Al Alam
Dubai began foundations for a 510-metre crystal-flower tower, but the pit filled with water and was eventually levelled after the financial crisis.
India Tower
Mumbai approved a 126-storey vertical city and began its foundations, then a payment dispute stopped construction before the skyline could change.
Sky City 1000
Takenaka proposed a kilometre-high stack of fourteen inhabited plateaus for 135,000 people at the peak of Japan's property bubble.