The property world is obsessed with constructing the world’s tallest building, but one architect has come up with a mind-bending alternative: the world’s longest.

Devised by New York architectural studio Oiio, the solution thinks outside the box – and then curves back around the box to come down on its other side. Nicknamed “The Big Bend”, the U-shaped concept is a sight to behold, looping around the usual restrictions of space and logic to instead find new space for housing in that unused space: mid-air.

Indeed, planning laws in New York mean that companies can purchase air rights from neighbouring buildings, notes Dezeen. That normally means that developers fight to complete taller and taller towers on smaller and smaller plots, but while supertall skyscrapers increasingly become the norm in the world’s highly-developed metropolises, Oiio’s Big Bend goes back on the traditional luxury condo contest, curving at its top and returning to the ground to focus on length rather than height.

“The story of The Big Bend follows a recent trend that has appeared in New York City: the emergence of myriad tall and slender residential skyscrapers,” explains the studio. “New York City’s zoning laws have created a peculiar set of tricks trough, which developers try to maximise their property’s height in order to infuse it with the prestige of a high-rise structure. But what if we substituted height with length? What if our buildings were long instead of tall?”

The result, should it be built, would be the longest building in the world: 4,000 feet from one end to the other.

While it would not quite rank on the same height as the world’s most gravity-defying edifices, the idea would certainly not sacrifice anything in the style stakes: its arching form makes it no less impressive than the most extravagant tall designs, with renderings proposing the unique towers as planting their roots on and around West 57th Street (dubbed “Billionaires Row”), near Central Park.

“If we manage to bend our structure instead of bending the zoning rules of New York, we would be able to create one of the most prestigious buildings in Manhattan,” adds the studio.

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