Bálna

This guide to Balna in Budapest starts with four brick river warehouses raised in the 1870s to store Hungary's wheat harvest, and the 2006 competition a Dutch architect won with a plan to wrap them in a glass and steel shell shaped like a whale. It follows the project into a legal war between the city and its developer, which froze construction with the steel ribs left exposed to the weather. Locals just called the half-built shell the whale and waited, watching Budapest argue for years in courtrooms over who actually owned it.