Flashback Monday: RTC as Brutalist Wonderland

This lovely rendering of what appears to be an Aztec ritual beheading multiplex on steroids is, in fact, the earliest vision of what our fake downtown gritty urban core might have looked like. We've seen an earlier model that doubled down on the craptastic late 80s Tysons approach to development, indifferently placed trees and all, but this... wow. This is something.

It's as though someone took the sharp angles and edifices designed to cover up rounding errors from Lake Anne, threw in some of the awnings from the old Hunters Woods, and put a giant, unforgiving concrete plaza between them, all the better to bake midscale chain shoppers in the relentless sun and wind.

Though in retrospect, this structure at right bears an uncanny resemblance to another city's planned downtown. There are no words, the end.