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Thinking BIG: cargo plane, origami crane, and our very own Tower of Babel

By Rain Noe - February 26, 2008

in Object Culture

One of SoHo's first stores (back in the '80s, when it was still filled with artist's lofts) was a store called Think Big! where you could buy novelty items like six-foot pencils and tennis balls bigger than your torso. Since then we've always wondered what people's fascination with BIG is, and we've not yet figured it out.

The obsession with the gi-normous, of course, is only growing. So here's our look (with pictures) at three BIG things:

First up is the Russian Antonov An-225, the world's biggest cargo plane. How big? Loosely speaking, it's bigger than an Airbus A380 (see diagram); if you broke the wings off of a Boeing 737, you could fit the whole darn thing into the cargo hold. (We were going to make a joke about Russian nesting dolls, but that's, you know, low-hanging fruit.) More info here.

(diagram from Wikipedia)

Secondly we have another object with an enormous wingspan, but which doesn't actually fly: the largest-ever piece of origami made from a single (industrial-sized) sheet of paper, Jim Mockford's 215-foot, 1,750-pound origami crane, made back in the '90s. More info here.

Last but certainly not least, Hyder Consulting has announced a Cobra-Commander-like plan to build the world's biggest building; the patently absurd plan would top out at nearly four times the height of the Sears Tower in Chicago. That's right, 1600 meters, or 5,250 feet. (That last statistic is rather weird--an even mile is 5,280 feet, so why stop 30 feet short? Humility?) More info here.

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anishka

16 years ago

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nice post, but i was hoping for more info on our fascination with over-sized objects and the store BIG--i loved it!
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david g.

16 years ago

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Scale can differentiate or add perceived value to a product or service. Check out this absolutely Jurassic cup! http://perpenduum.com/2007/09/perceived-value-and-context-part-three/

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Slag

16 years ago

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Just making sure you know the last two photos are fakes!

You knew this, right? Surely . . .
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Jeremy

16 years ago

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I believe there might have been some doctoring on the last set of images. Seeing as the last image and the third to last image seem to have the same root image ( I would have at least erased the bird from the second of the two)
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sho

16 years ago

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Firstly, you should have attributed that graphic from wikipedia.

Secondly, the image sequence at the bottom is a well-known and obvious fake - look at the last and 3rd-to-last photos, they are obviously identical with only the color of the truck/crane changed and the green truck edited (badly) into the water.

Nice post and love your blog, but more care please!
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