Officially known as the Jatiya Shangshad Bhaban, the National Assembly Building (Wikipedia) in Dhaka, Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest and most unique seats of Government.

The building and 200 acres of surrounding grounds were designed by noted architect Louis Kahn. At first glance the bare concrete walls and giant geometric shapes, along with the massive staircases leading to the main building, can cause it to appear quite imposing, but extended viewings reveal the beauty and impressiveness of the design. Some good images appear on Wikimedia.

Construction started in 1961 with the building intended to serve both East and West Pakistan. One liberation war and a couple of decades passed before the complex was completed in 1982 to house the government of the still relatively young country of Bangladesh.

The central part of the building is 47 metres tall and contains the main Parliament Chamber, while the surrounding 8 wings are 33 metres tall and include offices, meeting rooms, store rooms and all the other necessities of officialdom.

Surrounded by lush grounds, lakes and smaller buildings containing offices and residences for MPs, the whole area appears to be an oasis of calm in an otherwise very crowded and bustling city. However, despite being surrounded by a very low fence, and Wikipedia’s comment that the complex is open to visitors and ‘popular with joggers and skaters’, when I visited in early 2008 the grounds were utterly deserted. Tight security surrounding the military government means the whole area is off-limits to the estimated 20 million residents of Dhaka.

To the north, past the crescent lake lies the mausoleum of Ziaur Rahman, a revered President of Bangladesh who was assassinated in 1981.

Read more about architect Louis Kahn and former president Ziaur Rahman at Wikipedia.

Thanks to James.

We’re delighted to announce that the Google Sightseeing team now has two new writers!

Ian Brown manages a fair trade retail store in Ottawa, Canada, and says he spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle. Meanwhile John Andresen is resident of the US state of Alabama, a librarian and a writer, who describes himself as a lover of literature and music.

Expect to see exciting new posts from both authors in the coming days, and with two new authors Alex and I will hopefully have more time to develop new features for the site, while maintaining our established regular schedule of weekday posts.

Meanwhile, everybody’s favourite aeroplane fanatic Rob will continue to write for the site, despite being headhunted for the job of news editor by his Student Union.

Please join us in welcoming John and Ian, and congratulating Rob!

If you think that you might have what it takes to write for Google Sightseeing then please get in touch!

Beaufort West is a town in South Africa, which must be the only town in the world to claim that it has a prison in the middle of a roundabout.

The town lies at the intersection of the N1 and N12 highways (two of South Africa’s busiest roads), and it’s the N1 that splits around the buildings. The prison was established in 1873, so presumably the road was divided to avoid the building, rather than this being some sort of primitive escape-deterrent!

Of all the people who drive around this roundabout every day, I wonder how many of them even realise they’re circling a prison?

Thanks to Fraser (again), via magnumphotos.com (which has some more information on the troubled town as well as an excellent, if not entirely SFW photo gallery).

The Bolwoningen golf-ball-shaped buildings are an early-80s housing project reminicent of the previously featured “Kubuswoning” cube-housing.

The stupendously-ugly (and presumably incredibly impractical) homes were designed in the late 70s by an architect going by the name of Dries Kreijkamp.

Mr. Kreijkamp doesn’t seem to have done much else of note during his career, and by the sound of things, was a little obsessed with his balls.

All of which begs the question, what is the ugliest building you’ve ever seen? (If enough of you post a comment with a link then we’ll post a roundup of the best ones over the weekend.)

Thanks to colapunk.

It appears that an English-speaking inhabitant of the German city of Duisburg has decided to profess his love for a person or persons unknown, who was presumably due to pass this way in some sort of flying mode of transport.

Time and time again on Google Sightseeing, we have seen that the fields of spelling, grammar and large-scale skyward-directed professions-of-love are failing to find much common ground – in this case however, the message additionally fails to have the desired impact thanks to our artist’s truly appalling typographical layout.

The arrangement of words is so bad in fact, that the message reads “I come ♥ back U”, and to make matters worse, is then followed by a botched attempt to write “I ♥ U”, which is being pointed out by an inexplicable arrow.

If I have understood his garbled message correctly, it seems our poor Romeo is actually trying to win his Juliet back.

Awww. Not with typography like that mate!

Previously on Google Sightseeing: I’m A FOOL 4U Gina, Will You Marry Me?, Thelma, Will You Marry Me?, the acceptable-but-they-cheated World’s Largest Marriage Proposal, and the equally disastrously arranged You! America Make Proud!

Thanks to Kay Ludwig.