Leaning Tower of Pizza (proposed structure)

Leaning Tower of Pizza
50 foot scale model of Birkerts' tower
General information
Status	Never built
Location	near Ann Arbor, Michigan
Owner	Domino's Pizza
Technical details
Floor count	30
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Gunnar Birkerts

The Leaning Tower of Pizza was a proposed 30-story slanted skyscraper that would have housed Domino's Pizza's operations at its Domino's Farms campus near Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Design

In the mid-1980s, Domino’s Pizza mogul Tom Monaghan asked Taliesin Associated Architects, the inheritors of Frank Lloyd Wright's practice, to erect a structure based on an un-built tower that Wright designed in 1956 for Chicago called the Golden Beacon. Sometime during the planning of the tower Monaghan and the Taliesin architects parted company, allegedly because both parties felt the project may have not served justice to the spirit of Wright’s architecture. Mr. Monaghan then went to Gunnar Birkerts, the architect of Domino’s unusual half-mile (800 m) long headquarters office building who came up with a design for a tower that would rise at a 15-degree angle with a swooping top reminiscent of the forms of Wright's late work. Birkerts’ design, no doubt, had serious intent, but would immediately and forever be dubbed with the nickname “The Leaning Tower of Pizza" after Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa. The structure was never built but a 50-foot (15 m) tall scale model stands at the proposed site on Domino Pizza headquarters in Ann Arbor Charter Township, Michigan outside of Ann Arbor.