Daily Dose: The Wooden Skyscraper

Posted on April 21, 2010 by mtidry

What you’re about to see is not, perhaps, what most people desire as a personal residence. But for Nikolai Sutyagin, “gangster” and builder extraordinaire, the Wooden Skyscraper is what he’s calling home.

Wooden Skyscraper; Image courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

Sutyagin was born in Arkhangelsk, Russia and worked construction in his teenage years to support his mother and sister. Eventually, he had enough money to buy a lumber yard and start his own contracting company. With his new status came the need to “flaunt it.” The Wooden Skyscraper started as a simple two-storey home (the city limits wooden buildings to two storeys because of fire hazards) but over a period of 15 years grew to 13 storeys and 144 feet tall. During this process, Sutyagin was jailed (reasons and charges vary with the source) and his home and possessions were looted by his employees. He now lives in the skyscraper in poverty with his wife and daughter, unable to finish construction. Government officials and neighbors want it taken down, but Sutyagin argues that the upper storeys are merely decorative so the building is technically within city limits.

What do you think – should Sutyagin be forced to take the building down, or at least scale it back? Or could the home be completed and perhaps act as an attraction for the struggling town? What do you think? Leave us a comment here!