World’s Largest LED Project: Does This Even Still Count As Symbolic?

The United Arab Emirates aren’t booming like they used to, which is worrying. Judging from the latest, though, the UAE was only about three major architectural projects away from building an actual giant penis, so maybe it’s for the best.

The Yas Hotel in Dubai’s sister Emirate, Abu Dhabi, has earned the impressive (though weirdly categorised) title of the world’s largest LED project, which is to say it’s the largest single concentration of LED lighting in the world. Given that it’s comprised of about 5,300 steel panels adorned with over 5000 lighting fixtures, I don’t doubt it for a second. The lighting grid can change colours and display patterns, and, though it’s a stretch, play low-res video.

Underneath this curvilinear shell is a typically extravagant 500-room hotel, which, bizarrely, is divided by a Formula 1 race track, meaning that this egregious phallic symbol is regularly entered and exited by other compensatory phallic symbols, which is way too much for me to process, now or ever. [Inhabitat via Flavorwire