Big Labyrinthine Building: Difference between revisions

== [[Mythology]] ==

== [[Real Life]] ==

* The Pentagon.

* Allegedly: the pyramids. In actuality most of their volume is cut stone / cement, but it is certainly plausible that undiscovered passageways exist.

** Several have been discovered by modern technology, but left unopened. Some most likely played part in the construction process, while others may have religious significance, or burial chambers. They are largely unconnected to each other, and isolated from the main tunnels by tons of stone, making potential excavation tricky business.

* The Gunkanjima Island in Japan. It tops on a coal mine; the area of the island is fifteen acres, and its built-up area is sixteen acres - meaning that ''the whole island is one continuous humongous maze of buildings'' - extending at some places over the sea.

* The [https://web.archive.org/web/20131105000746/http://www.cracked.com/article/181_the-6-creepiest-places-earth/ Winchester Mystery House] (scroll down to #4). A house in San Jose, with 160 rooms, built like a maze to confuse ghosts - with stairways disappearing into the ceiling, doors opening into walls, and lots of 13's strewn about the place.

* The British houses of parliament have more corridors in meters than the White House has floor space in square meters.

* The British Prime Minister's office at Number 10, Downing Street also applies to this trope, since the apparently relatively modest-sized upper-class house has been expanded to include all the neighbouring buildings while retaining their original fronts intact.

* According to [[Top Gear|Jeremy Clarkson]], the BBC Television building is one of these.

* Any [[Steel Mill]]. The MMK integrated mill in Magnitogorsk, Russia, is a riverside of ''eleven kilometres'' of continuous buildings, furnaces, workshops, corridors and halls.

** Likewise, paper and cellulose mills qualify as big labyrinthine buildings.

* Many large hospitals qualify, as they're generally expanded as funding allows, and it's easier to get most donors and foundations to pay for a new wing than a separate building. It's not just some patients' lack of mobility that makes it necessary for orderlies to transport them around the place in wheelchairs: it's to keep them from getting lost on their way to Radiology.

* Shopping districts in colder cities are often interlinked by skyways and underground corridors so customers can move freely while avoiding the weather, essentially merging them into this trope.

* Colleges are rife with Big Labyrinthine Buildings; varying ages of buildings, additions, flirtations with experimental architecture, large buildings built on hills (so that there are short stairs, confusion as to what floor any given floor is, and sometimes the impossibility of using a single stairwell or elevator to get from the bottom to the top. Good luck if you're disabled.) The tendency of many colleges to have "buildings" that are connected to each other or even full-on contiguous translates into a lot of very confusing buildings. It's probably related to space and funding, as with the hospital example, except college donors prefer to finance buildings.

** Padelford Hall at the University of Washington, housing the Math, Linguistics, English, Comparative History of Ideas, and Spanish departments, known for being hard to navigate (the third floor of C-wing connects to the second floor of B-wing being one of its more benign quirks). Also, the UW Medical Center, which is.....very, very large....

** Several buildings of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, most notably the central "K" building - it's so confusing for new students that there is a map with a route planner on the website. Since the rooms were renumbered recently, it will be confusing for older students too.

* Large airports, particularly when one massive terminal building is used rather than multiple smaller ones. One example that comes to mind is Miami International (MIA), with all kinds of lengthy passageways used to access remote "headhouse" gates, to accommodate international arrivals, to transfer between flights, and to access ground transportation. It was really a labyrinth while the new North Terminal was under construction. Some airport terminals make use of moving sidewalks, or even people-movers to navigate within.

* Resort hotels, especially the old-school "Borscht-Belt" resorts in New York's Catskill Mountains, such as Grossinger's and the Concord. These places were designed so that guests could walk between one of multiple lodging structures and: the lobby, the dining rooms, the indoor pool, the health spa, the nightclub, the game room, the on-site stores, and the coffee shop (some also had indoor mini-golf and/or a skating rink) -- all without ever stepping outside.

== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==