What Is This?

My first thoughts: It looks like a cross between a glassed-off launchpad and some kind of prop you'd find in a stunt driving video game. In reality, this is a day-to-day convenience in a major city.

The retro-futuristic, glass-encased structure is actually a parking garage in Moscow, for regular, non-flying cars. Unlike VW's staggeringly large take on the same concept, this little piece of urban engineering takes up a mere 100 square meters, in which it can cram between 22 and 54 cars, depending on how many floors it's configured with—this one holds 34. The incredibly ornate rotating elevator mechanism is best explained in pictures.

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There is definitely a Yakov Smirnoff joke in here somewhere, but I'm slightly too tired—and slightly too proud—to find it. [Zyalt via English Russia]