Can’t see it? Neither can I! Under all that foliage is St. Andrew’s Church in Bircham Tofts, England. It was abandoned in the 19th century when parishes were consolidated, but you can still get in, if you know how. There are photos of the interior stonework as well as more exterior shots at Urban Ghosts. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Gary Troughton)

In 1956, 12-year old Jim Berger wanted to build a house for his dog. So he asked the Frank Lloyd Wright to design one.

In Berger’s favor, Wright had designed his family’s house. So he knew Berger and was on good terms with the kids’ family. The famous architect composed a complete set of plans for a dog house that would fit the same style. Berger never built it, but his family did in 1963. The family dogs, however, disapproved of its organic style and refused to live in it.

Link -via Flavorwire | Photo: Architects + Artisans

This mesmerizing structure is an arrangement on display at the 2012 Light Festival of Ghent, Belgium. The Italian firm Luminarie De Cagna carefully arranged its 55,000 LEDs. The apparent height of the ceiling is no camera trick. It’s twenty-eight meters high and visitors can walk right in.

Link -via Colossal | Photo: Stijn Coppens

(YouTube Link)

If watching Return Of The Jedi left you with a longing for a life in the trees, a yearning for an Ewokian lifestyle that just won’t go away, then you’ll want to visit Oregon, where builder of dream houses Michael Garnier runs his Out ‘n’ About Treehouse Treesort.

The Ewok village inspired bed-and-breakfast is best described as “woodsy”, with nine treehouses connected by bridges and staircases and the ultra fun sounding zipline option, for getting around in a heroic hurry.

Enjoy the video tour, and see how treehouses can be an unusual yet fun vacation option.

Link  –via DesignTAXI

You’ve probably seen the ad for this underground missile base in New York state that’s been on the market for some time. Now you have a chance to take a virtual tour! Scout from Scouting New York went to the site and the owners were gracious enough to let him look around and take plenty of pictures. There’s a nice house on top, and part of the underground has been renovated for use as a modern living area. Then there are parts that recall the facility’s original use during the Cold War. Link -via the Presurfer

When designing their newest hotel to be built in downtown Kansas City, the fine people at Hyatt Regency wanted all the bells and whistles in it. The architectural firm in charge of the building design came up with a series of aerial walkways suspended from the ceiling so that guests could people-watch from a heightened vantage point. All in all, it was a pretty nifty feature. Until it suddenly collapsed and killed more than a hundred people.

Now they know what design flaw caused it, and my mouth dropped open to see how simple it was. Read the rest of the story and others at Cracked. Link -via Digg

The Chinese construction company Broad Group built a 30-story hotel in just 15 days (360 hours) in December. This time-lapse video shows the process. See another, longer video showing more details at Geekosystem. Link

The Treehotel is a group of unusual tree houses in northern Sweden that guests can rent. All six sides of this one are mirrored, creating beautiful images as the sky and trees reflect on the surface. Others look like a bird’s nest and a flying saucer.

Link -via My Modern Met | Official Website | Photo: Peter Lundstrom

How would an architect design houses from fairy tales? Let's find out: Fairy tale author and editor Kate Bernheimer and architect Andrew Bernheimer collaborated to take a look at houses and structures from fairy tales, as seen through the lens of architecture.

Take Rapunzel's tower, for instance, as it's designed by Guy Norden and Associates:

What are the key elements of your architectural design and how is it sited?

As structural engineers we were instantly drawn to the “tower that stood in a forest and had neither a door nor a stairway, but only a tiny little window at the very top” featured in the Brothers Grimm version of “Rapunzel,” and we looked to our previous design for the Seven Stems Broadcast Tower for inspiration. We were able to meet the Grimms’ strict design requirements by employing a slender tower design of vertical cylindrical stems that are joined by intermittent outrigger beams with a reinforced space at the very top for Rapunzel’s long captivity.

View more at Design Observer: Link | More in the series: Baba Yaga and Jack and the Beanstalk

Can you guess which iconic buildings are recreated using books and other everyday objects in this clever video by Luis Urculo?

Hit play or go to Link [vimeo] - via Fast Company

Built in the 1950s, this bunker in Wiltshire could house and feed 4,000 people for three months. The United Kingdom designed it to house the government if the worst happened during the Cold War. Watch this video tour of its facilities and make an offer. It’s up for sale.

Link -via Boing Boing

Think the old woman who lived in a shoe had weird taste in housing? It turns out she was just ahead of her time. Buildings can look like all sorts of things, even…

AN IGLOO

(Image credit: City Profile)

Crouched on the Parks Highway about 180 miles outside of Anchorage, Alaska, is a hulking, four-story igloo. Its dome can be spotted from an airplane flying at 30,000 feet. Built in the 1970s, the igloo was meant to give tourists a chance to visit a “real” Alaskan igloo. Igloo City, as it’s known, has been a convenience store, a gas station, a makeshift triage clinic for a man attacked by a grizzly bear, and an emergency airplane refueling stop (a small plane once landed on the highway and and taxied in for gas). But other than part of the ground floor, the igloo itself has never been used. It was supposed to be a motel, but the couple who built it forgot something important: building codes. The structure never passed inspection, and its owners went broke.

…THE WORLD’S LARGEST CHEST

In the 1920s, the High Point, North Carolina, Chamber of Commerce built its first building-size chest of drawers. Twenty feet tall, the chest served as the Chamber’s Bureau of Information and helped to promote the city’s image as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” In 1996 the chest was augmented, making it 38 feet tall. In 2010, upset with the city’s refusal to help with the upkeep of the landmark, Pam Stern, the building’s owner, had the chest measured for a giant bra: 20 feet of silk, Spandex, and underwiring. (Get it? A chest of drawers.) HanesBrands, Inc., maker of Playtex bras, sent engineers over to take the chest’s measurements. Whether the city will permit the chest to wear the bra remains unknown at this time.

…A CHICKEN

(Image credit: Flicker user Brent Moore)

A 56-foot tall chicken head juts from the roof of the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the corner of Roswell Street and Cobb Parkway in Marietta, Georgia. Locals use it as a landmark when giving directions: “Turn right, after you pass the Big Chicken.” The architectural whimsy, built in 1963, was a Johnny Reb’s Chick, Chuck and Shakes fried-chicken restaurant until 1966, when the owner, Tubby Davis,  sold it to his brother, who turned it into a KFC. In 1993 the chicken suffered wind damage and might have been demolished were it not considered too important to be axed. Reason: pilots use the building as a reference point when approaching Atlanta and nearby Dobbins Air Reserve Base.

…A NAUTILUS SHELL

In 2006 a young family in Mexico City decided to ditch their conventional home and build one more in harmony with nature. From above, their new house looks like the perfect spiral of a nautilus shell. From the lawn, it looks like a soft-serve ice cream sundae. The frame for the building consists of  steel-reinforced chicken wire that’s covered in a two-inch layer of stucco. Stained glass bubbles in the walls sparkle like sunlight on water. A stone walkway spirals from room to room on a bed of live plants, creating the sensation of floating above the ocean floor. The bathroom’s sandy walls and blue tile offers user the illusion of being underwater. Family members say the Nautilus House makes them feel “like a mollusk in its shell, moving from one chamber to another.”

…MR. ROBOTO

(Image credit: Oran Viriyincy)

In 1986 Thai architect Sumet Jumsai designed the new Bank of Asia in Bangkok to reflect the computerization of banking going on at the time. Result: the $10 million, 20-story building looks like a giant LEGO robot. The “robot” has two antennae that serve as lightning rods, and glass eyes with louvered metallic lids that serve as windows. Jumsai wanted the building to “free the spirit from the present architectual intellectual impasse and propel it forward to the next century.” The inspiration for what has been called a post-high-tech miracle? His son’s toy robot.

…AN EGG

(Image credit: vercruysse frederik)

The owner of a European ad agency wanted to add an office next to her lakeside home in Belgium, and hired the design firm dmvA to come up with something organic-looking that could be built without cutting down a single tree. Local authorities refused to issue a building permit because city council members thought the design was too weird: The building -nicknamed “the blob”-  looked like a giant white egg. To get around the council, the designer turned the egg into a mobile unit so it would qualify as a work or art, not a building. The structure consists of a wooden frame covered with a polyester skin and an ultra-modern grid of niches molded into the interior for storage. The interior features lighting, a sleeping shelf, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The pointy end of the egg (the egg is on its side)opens up to create a porch. After the project, known as the Blob VB3, was completed, the unique structure appeared in a Belgian newspaper under the heading “Art skirts building regulations.” The next day, some at the building council showed up to warn the owner that if the egg was placed near the house, there would be consequences. Dubbed the “rovin’ ovum” by its fans, the Blob VB3 went on the auction block in 2010. (No word as to whether anyone has the huevos to buy it.)

…A HOUSE ON STILTS

Architect Terunobu Fujimori has a weird way of getting approval for his unique designs. He invites clients to join him in his tiny Takasugi-an -his “Too-High Teahouse.” Perched 20 feet in the air, the 30-square-foot private teahouse in Chino, Japan, balances on two forked tree trunks that resemble spindly chicken legs. Once clients have climbed the ladders to the house, he shows them his hand-drawn plans. “If they don’t like my design, I shake the building!” he says with a laugh.

…A PEACH

The 150-foot-tall water tower outside Gaffney, South Carolina, was built to catch the eye of motorists speeding by along I-85. It looks like a gigantic peach. In 1981, when the tower went up, the local economy depended on peach orchards. Townspeople wanted it known that Cherokee County, where Gaffney is located, grew more peaches per year than the whole state of Georgia (the “Peach State”). Macro-artist Peter Freudenberg studied local peaches for many hours and used 50 gallons of paint in 20 different colors to make the peach hyper-realistic. Features include a 7-ton, 60-foot-long leaf, and an enormous vertical cleft in its backside, leading to the nickname “Moon over Gaffney.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from the newest volume of the Bathroom reader series, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Dutch architects MVRDV designed these skyscrapers planned for South Korea. It’s called The Cloud, and is described as “a pixelated cloud” with towers rising through it.

Okay, now that you’ve seen the picture, what are you thinking? The architectural firm was caught off-guard by complaints from those who looked at the plan and saw the World Trade Center towers exploding. That’s the first thing I thought of, but MVRDV insists that the resemblance is coincidental. Read more about the controversy at Co.Design. Link -via The Daily What

In response to the earlier item on chicken coops, Neatoramanaut NickDanger3dEye let us know about the 12-sided coop he and his son built.

I got the basic idea for a plywood dodecahedron from a late 60s Popular Science magazine article I read in my youth. The author of that article built it as a meditation space, with a circular hole cut in one panel. Instead, we hinged one panel and put a hook and eye at the top, so we could lock up the chickens overnight, safe from raccoons and other varmints.

One other point, we hung a heat lamp from the top to warm the chickens during the winter. At night, the red light leaks through the vertices.

My son’s friends have been unpersuasive in trying to talk us into painting numbers on the side to make it look like a D12.

I would throw my vote to paint it as a die! An octahedral laying box was his next attempt at working his way through all the Platonic solids. Link to Flickr page.

All over the world, cities are cutting budgets, and zoos are often high on the hit list. The result is often abandoned facilities that cost too much to tear down. Thanks to urban explorers who are also photographers, we get to see these formerly fine facilities in their decaying abandoned states. Let’s just hope all the animals have a better place to live now. Pictured here is the zoo in Charleroi, Belgium, which was a victim of recessions that affected the entire city. See the rest at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Peter Van den Bossche)

Just a concept now (although one that can be demonstrated), buildings of the future might be put together by flying robots. Which sounds like a great idea, but I’d still want a real human building inspector! -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Twist Bridge in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, was built for bicycles and pedestrians to cross the canal, but it’s also a work of art! Made of 400 steel tubes, the matrix that covers the bridge is eye-catching and also absorbs vibrations. See more pictures at Amusing Planet. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Theo Lagendijk)

You would think that Japan’s overpopulation problems would force them to hang on to every bit of inhabitable land they own, but these images show otherwise. Hashima Island, nicknamed Ghost Island, was abandoned entirely after the mine which had been running for over 80 years was closed in 1974.

The black and white photos add a sense of despair to the abandoned cityscape, and although Hashima Island has been covered before here on Neatorama, I think the beautiful photographs in this gallery warrant a second look.

Link

Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, Italy is famous for a flock of “monsters” on top of its garden walls.

The house was built in 1715, and immediately hailed as an architectural achievement, and one of the finest works of Sicilian Baroque on the island. But the Villa didn’t acquire the strange touch which made it world-famous until 1749, when the deranged Prince of Palagonia ordered a set of gargoyles to line its garden walls. Legions of dragons, soldiers, hunchbacks and freaks of nature look down on visitors from atop stony perches. According to legend, the most freakish faces are meant to caricature the many lovers of the prince’s promiscuous wife.

Get a closer look at these eccentric works and get a tour of the villa at For 91 Days. Link -Thanks, Juergen!

John Diamond’s 1792 design for the Capitol was topped with a weathercock. Jim Allegro and Doug Michels wanted to build the National Sofa across the street from the White House so that hundreds of people could watch the President on an enormous television. John Russell Pope proposed that the Lincoln Memorial take the form of a step pyramid. Throughout the history of Washington, D.C., architects have proposed both grand and eccentric building ideas. View a slideshow at the link of some of these that were thankfully never built.

Link -via NotCot | Image: National Archives

The site is in Italian, which I’ve run through Google Translate, but as I understand it, the LEAP (Living Ecological Alpine Pod) is a ski cabin design. Heavy-lift helicopters move prefabricated modules into position, which are then bolted together. The modules are interchangeable, so you can select which sections you need for your mountain cabin.

Link (Google Translate) -via American Digest | Photo: Fuoriserie Sas

The architects at AllesWirdGut Architektur took an old steel mill in Luxembourg and converted it into a public park while leaving some of the original infrastructure in place. The results have a lovely Brutalist feel.

I know: a lot of people despise Brutalism. But it’s an acquired taste that I’ve acquired. You can see eight pictures of the park at the link. I especially like this clever bench design — perfect for enjoying the outdoors while staying out of the rain.

Link -via Colossal | Photo: Roger Wagner

A monument to communism sits in the middle of Bulgaria in Buzludzha National Park. Like many oversize Soviet-era constructions, it is falling into ruin. But what’s amazing about this building is that it is only 30 years old! Kuriositas has a look inside at the once-glorious architecture with its massive propaganda artwork and the poor condition it has fallen into only ten years after its abandonment. Link

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Infobgv)

Photographers have taken pictures of Paris in every way imaginable, but photographer Philipp Klinger aims to show us all just how symmetrical and full of patterns the City of Light really is, if you see the city through his viewfinder.

There’s an optically pleasing gallery of images to be seen at the DesignTAXI link below, try to keep your eyeballs in your head!

Link –via DesignTAXI

Seven churches devoured by lava? Maybe someone is trying to tell them something! No, actually many more homes and businesses are devoured by lava, but churches are built to last forever, so often we still have the ruins after a volcanic eruption, whereas other buildings are totally destroyed. Shown is the church in San Juan Parangaricutiro, Mexico, that was half-buried by a volcanic eruption in 1943. See lots more at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user · YeahjaleaH ·)

So here’s the story: it’s 1728 and you live in Amberg, a little Bavarian town somewhere north of Munich. You and your lady friend really, really want to get married, but there is a little snag; the council laws permit only homeowners to marry, and you’re still stuck renting a place. But all is not lost! You pick up a little strip of empty land between two other buildings – just 2.5 meters wide. You run up a quick wall on the front, another on the back, slap a roof on top, and presto – you’re a homeowner. The council falls for it, and allows you to get married.

But now what? Well, it’s not liveable, so you head back to the rental place to live, but you recoup your investment by selling the Eh’häusl (Little Wedding House) to the next couple with the same problem.

Link to story. Link to hotel site.

(Image: Google Street View)

Feast your eyes on some fantastic old architecture in New York City. The Trinity Building was built in 1904-1907. It is flanked by the U.S. Realty Building, constructed at the same time (making them the original “twin towers”) and the older Trinity Church, rebuilt in 1800. The Trinity Building has classic Art Deco detailing that gives it a timeless look. The three buildings have all been photographed extensively over the last 100 years, which you can see at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

From the beaches of Thailand to the deserts of the U.S, for a variety of reasons, some very expensive vacation resorts were deemed a loss, and no longer worth the trouble of upkeep. Years later, the photographs fascinate by illustrating their falls from grace. Environmental Graffiti shows us places that were once luxurioius playgrounds for tourists and celebrities, but are now being reclaimed by nature. Shown is a resort in Famagusta, Cyprus, which was permanently emptied when Turkey invaded in 1974. Link

(Image credit: Julienbzh35)

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center may be gone, but they live on in film. Dan Meth put together this supercut of the buildings’ many appearances in movies. Here’s a list of the movies the towers were seen in.  -via The Desonesto Doctrine

41-year old Gregory Kloehn lives in a dumpster. But it’s not that bad! This artist in Berkeley, California, has modified his dumpster with running water, electrical power, a stove, an oven, and a toilet. Kloehn’s home will be on display at San Francisco’s Fringe Festival through September 18.

Link -via Doobybrain | Festival Website

This is a real house in Portugal called Casa do Penedo, which means “house of stone.” Built in 1974, the current resident had to reinforce the house with security doors and window bars because of the many visitors and occasional vandals. Casa do Penedo is just one of a list of Ten Strange Places Where People Live, some of which may induce vertigo. Link -via J-Walk Blog

On a hill called Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain) near Berlin, an abandoned facility complete with “radar domes” stands. It was once used as a listening station for the US to intercept Soviet communications, and then abandoned when West and East Berlin were reunited. It was built over top the remains of a Nazi war college. Exploring this station is difficult, as it is deteriorating. One of the dangers is an open 10-story elevator shaft! See a set of pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Nate Bolt)

It’s hard to believe that people once thought we’d all be living in domes by the year 2000, but this delightful retro article from Popular Science confirms that the future is a lot squarer than people in the 60s and 70s thought it would be. The geodesic dome was the brainchild of R. Buckminster Fuller, who felt that the simplicity of design and ease with which it could be built would catch on like wildfire across the country, and claimed rather ambitiously that it could replace all manner of traditional housing. However, Fuller hadn’t taken the cost of repairs into consideration, nor the problems that would be encountered bringing the dome up to code, and the awkward shape of the panels made replacing them a real pain, so the geodesic dome fad fell along the wayside, becoming nothing more than a vision of the future that was never meant to be. If you want to read more about the “dome of the future”, follow the link to PopSci, where you’ll find lots more info, and pages from past Popular Science articles detailing the rise and fall of the housing dome fad.

Link

When George Bernard Shaw began designing his ideal writing hut, he decided to construct it on top of a rotating Lazy Susan. It was drawn as a simple 8′x8′ square with two large windows on one side for lighting and heat. With ascetic efficiency, the building’s windows could be turned towards the sun during the winter–allowing solar energy to warm up the room–and turned away for the summer. I would’ve guessed that the hut was built within moderate climate if it wasn’t for the fact that “it has a sloping roof to shed rain and snow build up.”

Not only was he a literary visionary, but a clever engineer. (One might even say that he Shaw solutions…)

Link via Home Design Find

Dietrich Wegner made this 20-foot tall children’s playhouse out of polyfill, rope, wood, and steel. It’s entitled Homeland and is a convincing imitation of a nuclear detonation. Remember: your kids are never too young to start learning post-nuclear apocalypse survival skills. Link -via reddit | Photo: Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery

Photo Credit: Alexander Belenkiy

One of my favorite things is to come across abandoned buildings and do a little exploring–legally of course. If you like abandoned buildings, then English Russia has a good deal of items for you to peruse, from elaborate and abandoned houses in the Tagia to planetariums–this one in particular is being demolished–the last wooden planetarium in existence. It’s located in the city park of Penza, Russia and actually has some pretty nifty stuff in it, along with some pretty… um, shall we say interesting dioramas, plenty of cosmonaut history, and lots and lots of propaganda about Pluto being a planet and all (so last decade). Not somewhere I’d take the kiddies on a field trip, but interesting to rifle through.

Link

As we previously covered Saudi Arabia has been planning the construction of the world’s tallest building on the out   Now those plans have moved into the actual construction phase. The Kingdom Tower when completed will be two thirds of a mile tall at 3,280 feet and feature top of the line hotels, condominiums and premium office space. The whole project is in an effort to boost the Saudi’s economy.

Link

If you want a really roomy place, you can live in a 90-square foot apartment. But Luke Clark Tyler, an architect in Manhattan, figured that he could do just fine with a cozier place. His apartment, which includes furniture that he designed and built for it, is only 78 square feet in floor space. Tyler has a murphy bed, a couch, a microwave, a refrigerator, and a closet.

Did I mention that Tyler works from home? That tiny space is also his office. -via Doobybrain

Abandoned places can be creepy. Morgues are always creepy to most people. Put them together, and you’ve got some really creepy places -and even more so when you know their history. Environmental Graffiti has a photo collection of abandoned morgues in hospitals, asylums, municipalities, military bases, and even this one from Ellis Island. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Vilseskogen)

In 1975, Marcia Weber bought a caboose made in 1909. Over the past thirty-six years, she’s gradually turned it into a functional home with indoor heating and plumbing. There are beds, a full kitchen, and even a washer and dryer. See more photos of this amazing home conversion at the link. Link -via Craft | Photo: Marcia Weber

Castles on cliffs are the stuff of fairytales. And sure, it was a security measure, building the kingdom’s stronghold in the least accessible location, but that doesn’t make these seven beautiful castles located on cliffs any less impressive or fairytale-like. The one above is Alcazar in Segovia, Spain, built in the 12th century and now open to tourists year round and home to the Spanish General Military Archives. Link

You may not be able to get (the impossibly proportioned) Barbie figure, but you can one day live in the house of little b.... londe that has everything.

The American Institute of Architects is holding a design competition where architects and designers are invited to submit their designs of the Barbie Dream House: Link

What kind of a house would you build for a pro skateboarder? A skateable one, of course!

Here's what Los Angeles-based architect Francois Perrin and designer Gil Lebon Delapointe did for Pierre Andre Senizergues, a former world skateboard champion:

The house is divided into three separate spaces. The first one includes the living room, dining area and kitchen, the second one includes a bedroom and bathroom and the third one a skateboard practice area. Each space is skateable as the ground becomes the wall then the ceiling in a continuous surface forming a tube of a 10ft diameter.

The furniture is also skateable, whether it is integrated in the curve like the sitting area, the kitchen or the bathroom or just as standing object like the dining table, the kitchen Island or the bed. Closets and drawers could be integrated in the curve too.

The PAS house is the first house to be entirely used for skateboarding as well as being a traditional dwelling. It is the ultimate dream for generations of skateboarders who wanted to bring their practice into their home.

Link - via The Awesomer

The River Fleet in London is a tidal river that once provided water for many industries. Over the years, it became quite polluted, then was consigned to flow underneath the city as London grew, until it was eventually incorporated into the sewer system. But the river is still there, filling its tunnels at high tide and ebbing to a trickle at low tide. Read about what happened to the River Fleet and see plenty of pictures at Kuriositas. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user sub-urban.com)

While the Sistine Chapel is gorgeous, it’s not the only notable ceiling in the world. WebUrbanist has a great collection of stunning modern ceilings for your viewing pleasure.

Link

This Japanese language video shows a house that is only 67 inches wide, yet is quite comfortable and equipped. The kitchen is tiny, but it has a full-size bath and one of those super high-tech toilets. It’s two stories tall and features a lovely skylight with rooftop access. -via Doobybrain

Home Designing recently featured an incredible new vacation home by architect Victor Canas. The 4,500 square foot home was designed for a young couple and their son. The home is unique in the fact it has pools on both the inside and the outside of the home, including one that serves as the stair landing on the bottom floor. This was the most beautiful house I have ever seen, I was absolutely gob smacked by it. Link

Just one of Victor Enrich’s mind-blowing 3D illustrations and visualizations. Beginning at the age of ten, the artist focused on unreal city scapes down to the last detail including bus stops and subway lines. Today, he specializes in making the ordinary surreal. He has a wide body of work that can be seen at Arch Daily. Notice that the building has a McDonald’s on the ground floor. Link

(Image credit: © Víctor Enrich)

When I was a youngster, I thought firefighters were the coolest people alive…not because they were heroes, but because they got to slide down a pole to go to work. These days, while I respect the heck out of firefighters (anyone who lives in Southern California knows just how important they are), I have to say the people who own this house filled with slides might just be the coolest people on earth.

Link

How do you turn a small space into a huge cash cow? Fill it with the most claustrophobic living quarters imaginable, call its lack of width a feature, then rent it out to artists as a living/workspace. That’s just what architect Jakub Szczesny and team are doing with the skinny space between an old tenement block and a tower block in Warsaw, Poland. The design allows for a bedroom, lounge, bathroom and kitchen within the tiny space, all accessible by ladder. Read more about to Warsaw design and other skinny houses on Daily Mail. Link

via Dvice