Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Marin Civic Center

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Friday, 9th December 2005

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars

This is the utterly bizarre-looking Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, Califoria. Designed by America’s most famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright (although it wasn’t completed until after his death in 1959), the building featured in George Lucas’ other movie, THX-1138, and the (much better) sci-fi movie, Gattaca.

There’s some photo galleries well worth having a look at here and here, and there’s an excellent aerial fly-over gallery available here. The wikipedia page for the building currently has virtually no content, but fortunately the offical site has all the info you budding Wikipedians might need!

Thanks: William Kendrick, Leah Brooks, Eric Hegwer, Ross Burnett

6 Responses to 'Marin Civic Center'

  1. Matt Johnson says:

    THX-1138 > Gattaca

  2. MrWhipple says:

    Perhaps it would be better to say (TXH-1138 <> Gattaca). They are very different movies.

  3. Ross says:

    The north wing is not actually wavy as it appears in this shot. Can anyone expain this effect?

  4. Alex says:

    Matt and MrWhipple, that was very geeky…

    And anyway, personal opinions aside, the imdb ratings system has spoken ;-)

  5. Geoff says:

    forget IMDb. I don’t know what they say about either movie, but THX is definitely much more original and visually impressive than Gattaca. THX is better than any of Lucas’ movies, for that matter. Don’t get me started on how gut-wrenchingly bad the Star Wars franchise has gotten.

  6. Alex says:

    I think I’ll refrain from stating my opinions about movies in the future…

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