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Tom Managhan's Leaning Tower of Pizza

In the mid-1980’s, Domino’s Pizza mogul Tom Monaghan asked Taliesin Associated Architects, the inheritors of Frank Lloyd Wright's practice, to erect 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-long world headquarters office building who came up with a design for a tower that would rise at a 15-degree angle and culminate in a swooping top somewhat 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”. The structure was never built but a 50 foot tall scale model stands at the proposed site on Domino Pizza world headquarters in Ypsilanti, Michigan outside of Ann Arbor.