[__void]

I don't think there is a word to express the melancholic fascination with megastructures, but I certainly suffer from it:

...the intricate patterns of stairs, windows, pergolas and cables, the chaotic and seemingly random arrangement of supports, the organic tumefying rust that de-patterns the otherwise perfect recursiveness...

it is the same feeling that makes one appreciate kowloon walled city and Tsutomu Nihei's superb early works, to give two examples

[overthemoon]

"Melancholic" is the right word. Like negative romance. It has a peculiar ugliness that makes me want to stare at it, to get lost in the detail, and the contrast against the relative uniformity of the water is really compelling as a photograph. There's also an element of awe at its engineering, at least for me. Growing up, my dad worked at a nuclear plant, and it inspired a similar sense of awe. It's an aesthetic that's been used in a lot of science fiction.

Contrast against this famous photo: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/why-the-i... which I find disgusting, though similarly detailed. Maybe it's just the whole "familiarity breeds contempt" thing.

[redder23]

Well I kind of get it when people say it, for me personally I do only see it in the very 1st pic a little.

And dystopian, not at all. There are SO MANY crazy dystopian things out there. An oil rig, for me, has nothing dystopian at all.

[matwood]

Same for me with large airports. There's just something about the scale that is fascinating.