This Bible story lent an air of defiant romance to a Southern California ziggurat that supplied grist for my childhood daydreams.

That geography is part of why the actual Biosphere 2 building looks so striking: Two ziggurats made of tessellated glass triangles are connected by a long, glass rectangular structure.

Arquitectonica’s beachfront apartment house, the Babylon, for instance, with its multiple interwoven ziggurat wings, was condemned before it reached age 40.

The ziggurat's iron frame became supercharged as the bolts hit it again and again.

“There’s also influence from Egypt, from Mesopotamia’s ziggurat architecture, from Aztec architecture and from World War II bunkers, which is the first thing Denis showed me,” Vermette says.