Do it yourself skyscraper

For the one-time gangster who built it, it is nothing less than "the eighth wonder of the world". The less charitably disposed dismiss it as a glorified barn, fire hazard and eyesore.

But on one thing everyone agrees: Nikolai Sutyagin's home is certainly different.

Nikolai Sutyagin's home
A jumble of planking rising 144ft forms Sutyagin’s record-breaking ‘eighth wonder of the world’

Dominating the skyline of Arkhangelsk, a city in Russia's far north-west, it is believed to be the world's tallest wooden house, soaring 13 floors to reach 144ft - about half the size of the tower of Big Ben.

The house that Sutyagin built is also crumbling, incomplete and under threat of demolition from city authorities determined to end the former convict's eccentric 15-year project.

When Sutyagin began work on his dacha in 1992, he claims he was only intending to build a two-storey house - larger than those of his neighbours to reflect his position as the city's richest man, but certainly not a contender for the Guinness Book of Records.

However, convinced by a trip to see wooden houses in Japan and Norway, he concluded that he had not used roof space efficiently enough and decided to keep building.

"First I added three floors but then the house looked ungainly, like a mushroom," he said. "So I added another and it still didn't look right so I kept going. What you see today is a happy accident."

There were other motives too. Having grown up in a Soviet communal flat, Sutyagin said he felt lonely living by himself.

Not only would his house make a perfect love nest for his molls, it could also accommodate the 18 executives at his construction company.

He even built a five-storey bath house in the garden, complete with rooms where he and his colleagues could have a little bit of privacy with their girlfriends. But Sutyagin was never to complete his dream. In 1998 he was handed a four-year prison sentence, his third jail term, on racketeering charges. He says he was set up.