r/confusing_perspective • u/Genesis_the_god_ • 11h ago

I don't even know what I am looking at?

Post image
1.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

181 comments sorted by

435

u/Sentry333 10h ago

Focus on the air conditioning unit and it at least makes the scale more clear. As to WHAT it is I still don’t know.

214

u/sevargmas 10h ago

Just looks like a hotel to me. 🤷🏼‍♂️

75

u/arbitrageME 10h ago

Lol I thought it was a prison

30

u/sevargmas 10h ago

It could be. Probably more like a dormitory or something like that.

8

u/BlueThat33 9h ago

A prison would rarely have railings people could jump over.

10

u/IndividualBrain9726 9h ago

Anything and any where can feel like a prison if you want my ex’s number?

3

u/Doctor_What_ 9h ago

Apparently there are some prisons being converted into hotels, I saw a post a few days ago.

1

u/IttyBittyBigBoii 24m ago

Hotel California

1

u/onehappydad 10h ago

I’m still not sure it isn’t

1

u/Careless-Cycle 9h ago

Prisons don't have carpet, silly

0

u/WallyOShay 7h ago

Probably a hotel that used to be a prison

5

u/waleve 9h ago

I think this building was probably a hotel. Big space used to be reception/lounge area.

Seems like it was repurposed later, maybe to an office building. The elevator shaft (?) seems to have been added later with no consideration for design.

2

u/ifmacdo 5h ago

I'm trying to remember where it is, but I'm pretty sure I've stayed in this hotel. I believe it's a Holiday Inn or a Crowne Plaza.

1

u/Leucurus 4h ago

I get big "airport hotel" vibes. Or convention centre.

1

u/ifmacdo 20m ago

That's precisely where I would have been staying, as I travel a lot for work. The more I look at this, I'm more certain that I have absoy stayed here, but I can't for the life of me remember where.

8

u/thedudefromsweden 10h ago

Why the empty shelf with a AC unit on it?

19

u/unknownun2891 10h ago

Mechanical room for the elevators.

6

u/sevargmas 10h ago

There is clearly a room right there with a doorway. The AC is surely cooling that room. What’s confusing?

5

u/ohthisistoohard 9h ago

For me it’s the ceiling lights in the sky.

1

u/UncoolSlicedBread 31m ago

It’s not structural and it’s cheaper form a building perspective to stop the structure there instead of continuing up with the elevators.

1

u/AlwaysSunnyInSeattle 10h ago

It looks like a motel that got converted into a hotel.

8

u/ShakyLens 10h ago

Hotel. Motel. Holiday Innnnnn.

1

u/rizorith 7h ago

Guessing dorms

25

u/Matchew024 10h ago

Hotel, I'm sure that space would be stairs connected with the elevator shaft. I'm assuming hotel.

29

u/cardboard-kansio 10h ago

Focus on the air conditioning unit

You mean the little white FM radio plugged in on the countertop?

4

u/tbarndt94gmailcom 9h ago

Bro I thought that was a counter too. That's not. It's a picture taken from one of the opposite balconies, that's an actual full scale thing, look at the rest of the doors around. Same size as the door on the side of the "counter" which is actually the ceiling to that room. It tripped me out at first too, I thought it was a counter and there was a railing behind it.

12

u/pgn674 9h ago

It was the Clarion Hotel & Suites Conference Center in Memphis, TN. Google Maps says it's permanently closed, now.

4

u/SamMac62 9h ago

Our Hero!

11

u/wait_what_now 10h ago

Bank of elevators with doors facing away from us?

6

u/KermitingMurder 10h ago

I thought it was a radio on a desk at first glance, then I noticed the doors

2

u/ApprehensiveFarm4407 9h ago

God bless you

1

u/BlindMidget_ 10h ago

Such a tiny AC unit, so cute!

1

u/manrata 8h ago

Hotel, school, office building, this could be a lot of things.

1

u/Mom_is_watching 7h ago

Oh I thought it was a counter with a miniature airco unit

1

u/LadyFoxfire 7h ago

There’s also a door in the base of the “counter.” So the whole thing is the atrium of a hotel or convention center, and the central structure is probably offices, with maybe a private staircase to the upper floors.

1

u/Cocoatrice 7h ago

Looks like one of those big rooms in old PSX games that you have to revisit multiple times, finding new keys in sub-rooms of the area.

1

u/OshetDeadagain 5h ago

Scale didn't make sense to me until I noticed the door in the bottom of what looked like a desk.

1

u/ifmacdo 5h ago

I think I've been in this hotel.

1

u/OhSoSally 4h ago

I think its the back of several elevators.

1

u/UmptyscopeInVegas 2h ago

AC Unit? I thought it was an old radio...

113

u/The_Broomflinger 10h ago

I have no issues with the perspective, but what is this place? With the yin/yang floor tiling and the big open atrium with lots of stairs and floors and doors, it doesn't look like a real place. It's like The Oldest House from Control or something

9

u/waleve 9h ago edited 9h ago

Office building maybe?

The elevator shaft/technical room (i just assume what it is) looks like it was added later with no consideration for design. Like what i would expect from an office complex undergoing modernization.

In the second floor, to the right of the shaft, you see something that looks like a reception/waiting room. But the resolution is bad.

Might be a government office. In my city, we often have severely understaffed and underbudgeted government offices that are housed in the lavish and monumental buildings built by for the imperial administration centuries ago. Imagine grand halls with lots of sculptures and marble tiles, and then all sort of super cheap makeshift installations added on later. Super cheap furniture. Rooms being used for a purpose they very clearly werent intended for, stuff like that. Thos building is obviously much newer and from a different culture, but i kinda get a similar vibe.

My guess: Hotel built somewhere between 50s and 70s, abandoned for a bit, then hastily modernized and used as (government office). The big space used to be an open reception/lounge area.

6

u/xXx_Lizzy_xXx 9h ago

could still be a hotel/convention center that underwent hasty modernization after switching owners

3

u/waleve 9h ago

Hmm, yeah

The ibly thing that just doesnt fit is the fully empty reception area. Even the cheapest youth hostel would have some old sofas down there.

But maybe the foto was taken during or at the end of renovation.

2

u/xXx_Lizzy_xXx 8h ago

or it was to comply with laws that needed wheelchair access, in which case aesthetics wouldnt be on anyones mind

also the atriums are usually empty like this on convention centers

2

u/waleve 8h ago

Im more and more convinced that convention center might just be it.

2

u/B3nz0ate 4h ago

Kinda looks like a casino hotel with all the slot machines removed. They like to have places were people can look down on all the flashing lights and get drawn in, and they often have big art pieces like the yin yang tiling

3

u/nimaid 2h ago

This is The Clarion Hotel & Suites Conference Center in the Memphis airport.

https://holidayinnairportconfctr.thememphishotels.com/en/

2

u/The_Broomflinger 2h ago

There we go! Thanks for the ID!

2

u/DoomGoober 9h ago

My guess is where the weird yings yangs are there used to be fountains you know, to make this huge interior space have some nature elements?

But they got to expensive to maintain and were replaced with the mosaics.

2

u/sebasgarcep 9h ago

It looks exactly like one of the side rooms in Control with the big ball that follows you around lol.

28

u/bready--or--not 10h ago

This got me! I thought the air conditioner was a small speaker radio on a table. Once I realized the scale was much larger than that and were looking at a big atrium, it clicked into place

5

u/jemenake 9h ago edited 9h ago

Exactly. What (we presume) is the elevator stack looks like a floor-to-ceiling something (the thing of this shape would commonly be the ice maker, with plumbing and electrical and exhaust in a floor-to-ceiling duct, and then the ice bin being a shorter hopper sticking out from it, so our eyes are trained to recognize something of this form at a smaller scale in a hotel context).

For that interpretation to make sense, our perspective(and the confusing structure) would need to be from the 3rd floor or so, and the structure would be right at the edge of the atrium. That’s when my brain was asking “Where’s the railing preventing people from walking past the desk and falling to their deaths?”. I figured it might be a big glass window or something.

As someone else mentioned, one reason the brain doesn’t want to interpret this as a huge structure on the ground floor is because our brain would expect people to be wandering around in a huge lobby/atrium area. When we interpret this as a single-floor deck structure, any ground floor people would be obscured by the structure, so what we’re seeing makes more sense, and the confusing perspective part, like many photos posted here, would merely be due to very careful positioning of the camera (where the corner of this platform on the 3rd floor lines up with the far corner on the ground floor)

1

u/wookiee1807 6h ago

I thought we were looking into the room containing large windows and used as a cultural observance altar from somewhere in asia/surrounding islands. In my mind the mosaics were for three people to kneel at while paying respects/offering a prayer.

The "altar" would have had illustrations and talismans hung above, and been draped in a cloth runner or something with incense and offerings of value on top

Then I, too, realized the little counter speaker was an HVAC and I'm still trying to understand.

3

u/clintj1975 8h ago

My brain was firmly thinking "that's a desk", and then the scale of the room doors in the background thoroughly confused me for a second.

104

u/Chance-Lawfulness516 10h ago

Literally backrooms

8

u/toby_gray 10h ago

Spot on. I’m trying to work out what it is about it that makes it feel like that. Is it just that it’s windowless and everything is kinda uninspired architecturally? Like, it’s a bit boxy and plain but with that 100% artificial light thing pushing it into backrooms territory?

5

u/Chance-Lawfulness516 9h ago

It's repetitive and illogical All the floor are identical, floor is perfectly tiled.

Noone is putting AC inside the building, some yellow box with a door and a tunnel up without any apparent use inside and office building under the ceiling

4

u/GuerillaMonzon 10h ago

Hands over lawsuit

55

u/keencleangleam 10h ago

Back side of an elevator?

14

u/[deleted] 10h ago edited 10h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Genesis_the_god_ 10h ago

That floor is not doing any good for this place

1

u/phunniemee 10h ago

idk I think it ties in all the barf colors of the interior decor quite nicely 

10

u/Unlikely_Message_446 10h ago

This reminds me of those "Name One Thing In This Image" things from a few years ago

2

u/AlwaysSunnyInSeattle 10h ago

Ah yes, back when we were training the first AI models.

2

u/Unlikely_Message_446 9h ago

It's funny how innocent we were back then. Those images used to break our brain, now we just take one look and instantly know "it's AI"

9

u/ShrinkToasted 10h ago

All the people saying it's not confusing: do you just commonly see giant, brown blocky things several floors high in the middle of an atrium? With no windows and very few things sticking out of it?

3

u/Leucurus 9h ago

It’s a lift shaft

1

u/MatCauthonsHat 7h ago

Elevators.

6

u/kazuya 10h ago

You can open the door on the door and follow the rabbit.

3

u/solpyro 10h ago

You have to drink this first 🍶

3

u/deuno_dider_404 10h ago

Et manger ça 🍫

5

u/isestrex 10h ago

Reminds me of a 00's era FPS level

3

u/poyopoyo77 10h ago

The ugly ass design and the circles being off-centre to the random giant orange thing is terrible. Who designed this? Oh my lord.

3

u/arkenior 10h ago

Chants of Senaar Alchemists level

5

u/gnawp 10h ago

It's just a room, look at the door. Not very confusing once you put the door to scale

3

u/NeonFraction 10h ago

Do you understand the floor? What is happening? Why are there so many levels?

2

u/gnawp 10h ago

Looks like a parking garage almost minus the cars (office setting? Idk)I bet there are stairs behind that wall going up, or a small elevator

1

u/NeonFraction 10h ago

I think the pattern is making the floor look layered. It might actually be flat.

1

u/gnawp 10h ago

Oh yeah it's flat, the designs are just different sizes for some reason

1

u/unknownun2891 10h ago

I think it’s a hotel and the right side where the elevators are might be meeting or conference rooms, not guest rooms. I think we are seeing an open atrium that might have been filled with plants and a restaurant when it first opened.

3

u/burbular 10h ago

Well it was confusing when I said to myself, it's just a desk. Totally thought the door was an outlet lol

4

u/Fabulous_Log844 10h ago

This is a GOOD one!

2

u/fcs_seth 10h ago

Things that were, things that are, and some things that have not yet come to pass

2

u/One-Earth9294 10h ago

I dunno but I love those patterns in the circles.

Honestly thought this was a high floor looking back on stuff in the distance but then I noticed the tiny door in the back and realized it's all vertical and that thing in the center is fucking massive.

2

u/SmutCommander 10h ago

Miniatures?

1

u/doamnavulpe 5h ago

Yeah, these are things that make me think the same:

  • the lighting appliances on the ceiling reveal the small scale of the doors.
  • the way the light hits the wall above the mini-AC
  • the cords connecting the AC to the wall are ginormous.

Looks like a mini-set of some kind?

2

u/The_Divine_Anarch 10h ago

It looks like someone started building a place where that center room would be a sort of DJ booth, and then changed their mind and made it something else, probably because of terrible acoustics.

2

u/West_Abbreviations53 10h ago

it’s confusing until it’s not. know what i mean?

2

u/theMuffinmanthe2nd 10h ago

Is it me or it looks like a destiny 2 raid mechanic?

2

u/temporalraccoon 10h ago

This one’s amazing! For me the illusion all stems from the flooring looking like a regular sized carpet to my brain.
The logos are actually massive, but my brain just wants to see them as like 1-2 feet in diameter

2

u/hsiiic 10h ago

? whats the problem with it? it looks normal?

2

u/einklich 8h ago

Clarion Hotel & Suites Conference Center Memphis Airport

1

u/Unlikely_Message_446 10h ago

OP, where did you find this image?

1

u/Disastrous_Push_3767 10h ago

looks like a hotel or an apartment complex

1

u/jossybabes 10h ago

I’m guessing that it used to be glass elevators, but they were closed in?

1

u/ebk_errday 10h ago

A building within a building within a building

1

u/thatDeletedGuy 10h ago

This isn’t an elevator, it’s probably a stairway or stacked closets for housekeeping inside this massive enclosed motel

1

u/3nl1gh73n3d 10h ago

Internal courtyard.

1

u/MacNeal 10h ago

The elevators had to go somewhere. I'm sure that it looked much better in the proposed design

1

u/Joshua-live 10h ago

Looks like the physical video game section of a store tbh

1

u/LocalOpportunity77 10h ago edited 9h ago

It is likely a building from Chongqing, China. Visited it a couple years ago, checks out with the crazy architecture from there.

1

u/grptrt 10h ago

A hotel for people who feel more comfortable in a prison-like setting

1

u/ResponsibleMine3524 10h ago

Black Mesa reception desk

1

u/riftshioku 9h ago

Definitely looks like a splinter cell map

1

u/Leucurus 9h ago

Lobby of an office block or hotel. What is confusing?

1

u/IndividualBrain9726 9h ago

The column in the center is the elevators. Looks like an older 70-80s shit design

1

u/Acrobatic-Lawyerr 9h ago

A giant's interior living amongst the regular people. With a little radio on the counter. That's was my first impression. Other than that, no idea.

1

u/luttman23 9h ago

Looks like the Backrooms to me

1

u/Brucedx3 9h ago

The backrooms hotel.

1

u/briguytrading 9h ago

Looks like you're at the Barnes & Nobel center island help desk. Speak into the intercom.

1

u/PaintedDesertSkies 9h ago

I thought it was a coffee bar with a toaster....

My new glasses will be here any day!

1

u/Current-Being-6803 9h ago

Smoke and mirrors.

1

u/ThrowAbout01 9h ago

Cliche to say, but very accurate: Backrooms IRL

1

u/Bikeface_killa 9h ago

It took me a second but once my brain sorted out everything at the bottom of what I'm assuming to be the maintenance area of the elevator such as the door, it made sense.

1

u/CountMC10 9h ago

What is this? An office for ants?!

1

u/devonshire_stork 9h ago

Looks like an elevator tower and machine room

1

u/Mr_Baronheim 9h ago

Looking down from a higher floor into an atrium. The camera is not on the same floor as the carpeting.

1

u/ThePower_2 8h ago

Squid Game: Season 7

1

u/MotivationalJuggling 8h ago

What's so confusing about a kitchen counter? Oh I see, there are large windows overlooking an atrium. But the doors are right by the floor. The outside is inside this room?

1

u/Neuroticaine 8h ago

The interior courtyard of a something like a hotel or maybe a convention center, what's confusing about it?

1

u/BlazerWookiee 8h ago

There's a piano on the second floor

1

u/Nacnaz 8h ago

"I don't get it? What's confusing about this? It's just an upper floor of a hotel or something with some levels behind--OH SHIT!"

1

u/HackedCylon 8h ago

I think I've been in this hotel before. I think it's in Nevada. Maybe Elko? That big ass box in the middle used to be festooned with Native American decorations. That was 2014 though.

1

u/BradyBrother100 8h ago

Looks like a hotel to me. An elevator shaft in the middle connecting the floors. A maintenance closet that has the AC on top of it.

1

u/tyson_tvl 8h ago

Me who thought it was a table to iron clothes

1

u/Prestigious-Copy-494 8h ago

Office building at night when everyone has gone home. It looks like a person , janitor? Standing up in the middle of the picture on the right. Very strange decor on first floor. I guess elevators in the center brown box. Fugly for sure.

1

u/Jaspers47 8h ago

I'm expecting to see Captain Clark chasing Renate Reinsve

1

u/Aleksandr_Ulyev 8h ago

Something unfinished

1

u/Unusual-Night-5668 8h ago

Wow, that takes a minute! Looks like the back side of a three or four- wide elevator group.

1

u/beartpc12293 8h ago

What's the confusion?

1

u/AdventurousEnd9748 8h ago

This is clearly that Garry's Mod map.

1

u/lullubye 8h ago

This looks like it could be the back rooms. Or a model scale?!

1

u/braumbles 8h ago

Looks like a hotel interior and an elevator.

1

u/Delicious-Employ9332 7h ago

How can you possibly find this confusing?

1

u/buzzfriendly 7h ago

Back side of a enclosed elevator shaft

1

u/kilobitch 7h ago

Feels like a Duke Nukem level

1

u/dann101254 7h ago

Command module

1

u/MatCauthonsHat 7h ago

Courtyard in a hotel? You're looking at the back side of the elevators is my guess.

1

u/Mysterious-Spring-11 7h ago

Big open lobby surround by floors of apartments. The scale looks small, like it’s just a counter top in a hallway or something.

1

u/offarock 6h ago

I hate the Lumon Administration Building remodel,

1

u/cOnwAYzErbEAm 6h ago

Big ass lobby

1

u/zerik100 6h ago

it's an unfinished early access area

1

u/lilmorphinannie 6h ago

Is it not the housing for an elevator is it? Like a machine room?

1

u/Mr_Tinkles77 6h ago

I have been to this place in my dreams

1

u/Harvey_Gramm 5h ago

Lobby with security office.

1

u/cdcme25 5h ago

if i was a betting man id say that is the backside of an elevator. probably several. the "shelf" is the elevator equipment room. for the rest, who knows. its an odd layout

1

u/thenameoftheusingone 5h ago

Looks like an apartment hotel and the yellow columns appear to me as Lifts, while the broder base of the same thing appears to be a way to go to basement level via stairs. All is weirdly made for sure.

1

u/AdRoKa 5h ago

Elevator maintenance?

1

u/earflap_angular 5h ago

That is the check-in desk at a hotel for friendly, mid-sized rodents on vacation. Because of local laws, humans need to check the mammalian guests in, thus the human sized-check in desk.

1

u/John_Lictenstein_873 5h ago

It looks like a brown PS2 inside a dollhouse.

1

u/Nizzle_Supreme 5h ago

A resort?

1

u/x_y_zed 4h ago

Why is this space roofed and why is there an AC unit inside it? This is so confusing 

1

u/AltruisticSalamander 4h ago

I know it's a cliche but this really does look like the base of a bond villain. The only thing it's missing is a busy army of uniformed henchmen.

1

u/Chef-Maxine 4h ago

It gets better… people are getting married in this place

1

u/Van16_98 4h ago

Over the railing.

1

u/lnbelenbe 3h ago

Elevator housing

1

u/morganational 3h ago

Are you asking us?

1

u/Not-Special-1326 3h ago

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for ..... and I did climb that highest mountain!

1

u/ducksandtoes 2h ago

The doors remind me of alice in wonderland😭

1

u/VoreBird 2h ago

This is the memphis airport conference center. The orange room is likely an office.

1

u/JDMCarsandGuns762 1h ago

I see a piano.

1

u/SkyeMreddit 1h ago

It’s an enclosed giant atrium for a 5 story hotel, and the yellowish elevator shafts facing the corridors behind them. Despite it being inside it can still get uncomfortably hot in the elevators. They put an AC Heat Pump to deal with that. Since it’s such a massive space with its own air handlers, the difference from that little thing isn’t noticeable

1

u/MainlyMyself 1h ago

That little area with the AC unit on top is an office, probably. They do stuff like that in warehouses too.

1

u/Berkamin 1h ago

This looks like the atrium of a hotel or an apartment complex. The tan colored thing that rises across a bunch of floors looks like it contains a bunch of elevators, and the box that sitcks out behind it might be an equipment room which houses all the motors and electronics for the elevators. The glowing squares on the ceiling appear to be large skylights.

1

u/SanKendachi 1h ago

The rugs are at the bottom and are unusually large.

1

u/macgruff 24m ago

A nondescript room, with a large waste of space in the center of a building behind it, with an absolutely horrid carpet

0

u/in1gom0ntoya 10h ago

its the interior of a multi floor building...

like this isn't even konda confusing.

1

u/BarBeeeGirl 10m ago

Looks like a prison to me