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

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

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

Figural forms built out of architectural elements, these illustrations by Sean Edward Whelan look like sculptural cityscapes from a science fiction movie. Full of finely illustrated detail, you will continue to see more and more of what makes up each figure as you look over them.

It’s easy to get lost in the clutter of objects, so try to keep your eyes firmly planted in your skull.

Link –via BuzzFeed

Looking at some of the most beautiful libraries in the world, like the Wiblingen Monastery Library in Ulm, Germany seen above, is truly fascinating. But if you’re like me, it might also make you feel depressed about the sad state of your town’s library.

Link

Los Angeles architect David Hertz built a house so stylish that it almost looks like it could fly. Almost, but not for the lack of wings.

You see, he built the house using parts from an old 747 airplane:

The 4,000-square-foot Wing House, as it has become known, is made from an old plane that was 230 feet long, 195 feet wide and 63 feet tall, but cost David barely nothing. The plane had enough raw materials — 4.5 million of them — to help build most of the entire home. And it seems as though Hertz knew exactly which parts of the plane to keep intact as architectural features. The main residence uses the wings and tail section as roofing elements. There’s also an art studio, guest house, and animal barn all made from the fuselage. A meditation pavilion was also created from the cockpit.

Check out more at Design Milk: Link

That’s right, if you’ve always wanted to see the stunning Indian landmark, you’d better make plans to see it soon because experts are warning that it could fall down in as little as two years thanks to a crumbling wooden foundation. Cracks are already showing up in the monument’s marble walls.

Have you seen the Taj Mahal? If so, is it worth a visit in your opinion?

Link Via Flavorwire

Have you ever wanted to see what a haunted LEGO house would look like? Well, Mike Doyle’s abandoned LEGO houses are probably just about as close as you can get. He has three great ones on his site, including the one above, aptly titled “Three Story Victorian With Tree.”

Link Via CraftZine

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

I know you guys like tree houses based on how many of you comment every time we share links like this, so I’m really happy to get to share this great collection of tree houses with you guys. Which one is your favorite? I like the middle one on the bottom row of the pics above.

Link

There isn’t too much info on all of these amazingly weird buildings over on Bored Panda, but the name of each building is there if you want to learn more about the places. For example, this is The Crooked House in Poland.

Link

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

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)

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

Though a WWI British warplane appears to have just landed on top of 77 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, the antique plane has resided on top of the office building since 1969. Film location scout Nick Carr only recently uncovered why: the owners of the building just figured they might as well do something interesting with the otherwise unused top of the building. In fact, other buildings owned by the William Kaufman Organization also sport interesting but completely unnecessary details, including a three-story chess board on 767 Third Avenue.

Link via Laughing Squid

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

The Seasteading Institute is positive that someday in the future, we’ll have to migrate away from land and into renewable-energy powered floating cities. So sure, in fact, that they ran a competition for seastead designs for permanent, stationary structures that would allow for long-term ocean living. From the off-shore floating research laboratory shown above to a Jetsons-esque enclosure, WebUrbanist has a detailed round-up of the five winning entries.  Link

Image credit: Team 3DA

The city of Lille, France had a beautiful municipal swimming pool. It was an Art Deco masterpiece built between 1927 and 1932 by the architect Albert Baert. But over the years, the support underneath the pool was weakened, and it was declared unsafe in 1985. Instead of abandoning the building, the city undertook an extensive renovation project, turning the facility into a museum called the La Piscine-Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André Diligent. The locals just call it La Piscine. See more pictures of this beautiful building at Kuriositas. Link

(Image credit: Flickr member graham chandler)

Typically a stolid brick-and-mortar institution, these new architectural designs (some built, some in progress) are taking banking to a new level of cool. From Tokyo to Oslo (my favorite), these banks incorporate open planning, natural light, cool angles and plenty of interest. (See what I did there?) The full gallery of the 13 coolest modern bank designs is on WebUrbanist. Link

Image: dezeen

Christian Schallert has a 258 square foot apartment in Barcelona. With some imagination and design help, he remodeled it into a transformable space. Everything is stored away. He opens doors to use the kitchen, and moves things around to have a dining area or bedroom. Link -via Buzzfeed

The Metropol Parasol in Sevilla, Spain, is the largest wooden structure in the world!  The 150 x 70 meter wooden grid covers an archaeological site, a farmer’s market, a plaza, and bars and restaurants to serve tourists who come to see it. Read about this amazing construction and see lots more pictures at Kuriositas. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Turismo de Sevilla)

Bompas and Parr: Return of the Jelly Knights from Gestalten on Vimeo.

Anyone can slap some Jell-0 in a decorative mold and serve it up for dessert. But Sam Bompas and Harry Parr (AKA Jellymongers) have taken gelatin design to a whole new level. Using the jiggly, edible medium, Bompas and Parr sculpt intricate models of really complicated architecture like St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Gherkin in London. This video doesn’t reveal their secrets entirely, but it does give a better look at their process and some of their other fascinating work.

Link via the Atlantic

San Francisco’s planning commission is strict about changing the look of historic buildings. But a parking garage adds a LOT of value to a home in a city where there are very few places to park. Beausoleil Architects figured out a way to make everyone happy. Link -via The Daily What

In 1973, architect Ricardo Bofill bought an abandoned cement factory in Barcelona and converted it to use as his business offices, creative studio, and home. He spent two years remodeling: tearing down some buildings, converting others, and leaving some of the original equipment in place for its charm. The result is an inspiring and overwhelmingly spacious headquarters. See more pictures at yatzer. Link -via b3ta

Chicago grew up fast. In 1840, it was a quiet settlement of 4,500 people. Three decades later, it had grown to a vibrant metropolis of 300,000. Unfortunately, the city planners didn’t take much stock of the materials they were using. From the planks of the sidewalks to the shingles on the roofs, the new city was built almost entirely of wood. And in the autumn of 1871, all of that came to a head.

On October 8, during a particularly dry and windy spell, the wood and weather combined to make combustion history. That night, the Great Chicago Fire broke out in a DeKoven Street barn. (The O’Leary family owned it, but their cow had nothing to do with the fire.) The flames advanced quickly, engulfing nearby lumberyards and the city’s downtown, and they burned for 36 hours straight. In the end, 18,000 structures were destroyed, as many as 300 people were killed, and nearly one-third of the population was left homeless.

Yet, the enduring legacy of the Great Chicago Fire is not its destruction, but the amazing rebirth that took place after it.

The rebuilding of Chicago began with Joseph Medill, managing editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who personified the city’s indomitable spirit. Even though the blaze had partially leveled his newspaper’s headquarters, Medill cranked out a special edition two days later, affirming the city’s resolve with an editorial stating, “Cheer up … Chicago Shall Rise Again.” It was more than empty encouragement. One month later, Medill was elected mayor on the city’s “Fireproof” ticket. He immediately ushered in safety reforms that set the stage for rapid development and a new wave of construction.

Within 10 years, the population of Chicago had nearly doubled. Soon, there was no more land to build on, and overcrowding was setting in. But in 1883, architect William Le Baron Jenney came up with a novel solution. He designed the innovative, 10-story Home Insurance Building -widely considered to be the world’s first skyscraper. The Home Insurance Building had the steadiness of a cathedral, but at a third of the normal weight. Jenney’s genius was in using a light steel frame covered in hollow terra cotta tiles to prevent the spread of fire. His skyscraper inspired architects to think vertically and gave rise not just to Chicago’s skyline, but also to new skylines across the globe.

CITY MEETS WORLD

By 1890, less than two decades after the Great Fire, more than 1 million people were living in Chicago. It surpassed Philadelphia in population, and became America’s “second city”, next only to New York. Despite its size, many saw Chicago as a glorified hick town. To change that perception, Chicago competed with New York to host the world’s Columbian Exposition, a fair to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in America. At the time, World’s Fairs were serious business. They had the power to thrust a host city into the global spotlight and bring in enormous revenue and prestige.

While New York had financial titans like J.P. Morgan and William Waldorf Astor bidding in its corner, Chicago had something more compelling -a collective sense of purpose. Department store mogul Marshall Field, who’d lost his original building in the blaze, and industrialist Cyrus McCormick, who’d also lost his factory, pledged a combined $15 million to underwrite the fair. Then an even more surprising thing happened: The taxpayers voted for a referendum pledging an additional $5 million. To them, the World’s Fair wasn’t just a celebration; it was a chance at rebirth.

In the end, Congress decided that Chicago’s bid was stronger than New York’s, and the city went on to host one of the most successful World’s Fairs in history. The 1893 event introduced the world to ragtime music, shredded wheat, hamburgers, postcards, neon lights, and the Ferris wheel. It also influenced architecture for decades to come. The fairground’s classical buildings inspired the nationwide City Beautiful movement, which led to the creation of the National Mall in Washington, DC, and the fair’s layout inspired modern amusement parks, such as Disneyland. The buildings even sparked the imagination of writer L. Frank Baum, who created the Emerald City in their image in his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

On October 9, 1893, on the 22th anniversary of the Great Fire, 716,881 people visited the World’s Fair in one day, shattering all previous Fair attendance records. In just 22 years, Chicago had risen from a pile of rubble to the height of civilization -and the world was there to celebrate.

__________________________

The article by Christopher Zara is reprinted from the May- June 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine. You can order back issues of mental_floss or get a subscription to have each issue delivered to you!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

The idea of rather simple: take most of the planets in the solar system, chew them up, and then turn them into a ring as long as Earth’s orbit, as wide as the planet, with 1000 mile high edges to keep the air in. A Ringworld would certainly give you lots of extra space – something on the order of three million earths – and, like Globus Cassus, it would be spun to make fake gravity. You could even make parts of it higher off the surface if you like your air a bit thinner, and if missed days and nights then you could put a row of black squares in an inner orbit to cast shadows.

This is just one of the megastructures you’ll see at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

(Image credit: Stephan Martiniere)

At first it looks as if the Tetris L block has messed up your game in this Czech building. However, upon further investigation, the block was planned to fall this way in order to keep the bottom floors of the building from being wiped out. See more views with Google Street View. Link -via reddit

Foolproof advertising is when your entire building brags about your product -and it’s visible from far away. Still, it may tend to limit your customers when you sell the location. Mental_floss takes a look at ten such attention-grabbing buildings from this milk bottle ice cream stand to an 85-foot chest of drawers! Link

If my designs are seen as over-the-top wacky, they are nonetheless call attention to a serious question of how to design buildings that survive serious flooding of the sort that occurred in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in late 2005. In the future, home power will increasingly move away from an externally-sourced grid of pipes and wires, toward on-site-generated systems. At that time, some of my proposed buildings could remain partially underwater while still supplying residents with their own power. Sewage and water would need to be handled as for a large motor home. Until that day arrives, some of my concepts like Ring Toss Homes leave unaddressed the matter of utility services that are underwater during a flood.

(Image credit: FEMA)

Visit Steven M. Johnson at his website.

The City Hall subway station in New York City was built to be beautiful, as a showcase for the entire train system. But it was closed in 1945. However, passengers on the 6 train can see it if they don’t disembark on the last stop -the train turns around in the closed station. If you’re not in New York, you can see it in pictures at Jalopnik. Link -via Evil Mad Linkblog

(Image credit: John-Paul Palescandolo, Fred Guenther)

This building which houses the health department in BilBao, Spain is described as “origami-like”. I can see that, but my first impression was that some special-effects giant monster is trying to burst out of it! The unique design is not just for looks. The city building code requires multi-story buildings to have stepped setbacks, so they incorporated that into an artful design. There are also environmental benefits from the folded glass appearance. Read about it and see more pictures at Jetsetta. Link

A San Francisco architect who developed sudden blindness has carved out a successful career as a consultant to architectural firms.

Shortly before he was laid off, Downey had found a blind computer scientist who had devised a way to print online maps through a tactile printer; it worked for architectural drawings too… then I realized that the way he reads his drawings is not dissimilar to the way we experience space. He’ll be walking through a plan with his index finger, discovering things, and damn, he’s walking through the building!”  They talked through other issues. Load-bearing columns that seemed likely to snag a cane. A dramatic staircase that would deposit patients in the center of a big, disorienting room…

The rest of the story is at The Atlantic.

Link.  Photo credit Don Fogg.

Faulders Studio has designed a building called GEOtube that, if built in Dubai, would develop its own outer surface from salt! The building plans include a lattice of pipes on the outside, which would grow solid from salt deposits over 15-30 years.

The GEOtube building is covered in a vascular pipe system following a grid of structural lattice and is situated in a salt-water pond, carried to the building from the adjacent Persian Gulf via an underground viaduct. Utilizing floating solar panels for power, the seawater is pumped from basement level to the rooftop and is then gravity-fed through the vascular system.

The lace-like skin forms once the seawater, misted onto its exposed mesh, evaporates and leaves a layer of salt behind. Because the Persian Gulf has the world’s highest salinity for oceanic water, the salt deposits accumulate quickly, making the transparent skin take on a new crystalline appearance.

Once the building is covered, salt could be harvested for other uses. Of course, this project is just a concept for now. Link

Marseille-born and based artist Lionel Scoccimaro is a photographer and sculptor whose work encompasses many different art genres and utilizes various unusual materials. One of his most interesting series are his sugar cube sculptures in the forms of buildings, water towers and igloos.

Link – Via If It’s Hip It’s Here

Leaning Tower of Pisa Building Blocks - $44.95
Coliseum Building Blocks	Pyramid Building Blocks	Russian Cathedral Building Blocks

These aren't your run-of-the-mill building blocks - turn your kids into lil' architects with these architectural building blocks from the NeatoShop. Link: Master Builder Set

The personal home, a project that began in 2003 is a 900 square foot, 3 story livable home inspired by the Bug, by builder Markus Voglreiter . The 36 year old master builder spent £750,000 to create the 3 story structure which is based on the original Beetle produced by Porsche in 1935.This unusual homage to the VW Beetle, not only exists as a personal residence built in 2003, but inspired a larger version four years later that is now a restaurant and bar by the same builder.

I’ve never wanted to live in a car but Voglereiter’s house and reataurant may have changed my mind. The photos are fabulous.

Link

Terreform One, a New York non-profit design group led by 38-year-old architect Mitchell Joachim, offers answers to almost everything to do with cities and sustainability. Its prolific output of ideas includes blimps creeping nose-to-tail around cities, with seats hanging off them just above the ground so that people can jump on and off at will.

The company has designed soft cars, so no one is killed in a car accident ever again, and proposed a way of training trees so that they can be grown to form houses – a theoretically zero-carbon technique. It also wants to put houses on to big trucks, and rebuild America’s roads so that they are packed with “intelligent renewable infrastructure”, into which the mobile houses can be plugged.

Link

Today the architectural world remains divided. Should the cathedral be completed in a less ambitious contemporary style? Or should it be left, unfinished, as an original creation?

One exhibit in the Paris Exhibition of 1910 stole the show. It was a plaster model of a church designed by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi – a design so daring and outrageous that it was difficult to believe anyone seriously consider building it.

An extraordinary fusion of Gothic and Art Nouveau in style, the model was painted in vibrant colors that further enhanced the exuberant design. The plans called for spotlights to direct shafts of light into parts of the interior. Three sets of bell towers, housing both manually operated and electronically controlled tubular bells, were to be topped by stone statues of cherubim with wings that would move in the wind.

One hundred years later, the project is still unfinished. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Wolfgang Staudt)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by MrGhaz.

The gas station turns up in photos as late as 1940. Nighthawks is dated 1942. So perhaps the gas station was demolished and replaced with a diner in 1941. The city’s taxmen photographed the corner again in 1980. In that photo, there is still no diner and no remnants of it, though the Esso station buildings were still standing there, graffitied and abandoned beneath a painted advertisement for London’s Hard Rock Cafe.

Link - Via Violins and Starships

Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti [Atlantic, 1975]

Architectural album covers inspired by David Byrne’s recent TED talk.

What spaces do musicians picture when they are making their music? What is the intended venue? While we may never know, a clue could come in the form of the architecture and places sometimes represented on album covers. Though many times designed by others, these both mimic the music and prove visual clues about what the music is like.

Link – Via Design Observer

The Flatiron building was one of the first skyscrapers in New York, and its iconic shape, an extremely narrow triangle, is recognized throughout the world as a unique and interesting building.

The New York Times has an indepth profile of the building this week, and points out that though the exterior is awesome, the interior can be quirky, as much space is taken up by the elevators, furniture is hard to fit, and one floor is accessible only via another floor!

Nonetheless, the Flatiron building is an important part of New York and provides tourists with great pictures, locals with a reference point, and occupants with a special form of comfort.

Because of its footprint and location, the Flatiron has problems and perks that other buildings do not. The swirling winds generated by its shape are said to have inspired the phrase “23 skidoo” — what police officers would say as they dispersed the men who gathered outside to linger and watch for women’s skirts to blow up as they passed.

Link – via gothamist

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

La Granja De San Ildefonso is a smaller version of the world famous Versailles in France. Built in the Baroque style, this 18th century palace attracts tourists from all over the world with its exquisite decor and massive ornamental fountains and grounds. Take a look around in this post at Factoidz.

Link

(Image credit: Ignacio Revuelta)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

Experimental housing is usually pretty minimalist, exemplifies interesting design ideas, and fits into a compact space. Roll It, a new design by the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, is a great example of this. The house is a giant cylinder, sectioned into different "rooms." The outside is covered in a translucent material that serves as windows in certain parts of the cylinder and adspace on the rest.

Roll It, a cool experimental house, resulted from the collaboration among different institutes within the University of Karlsruhe. This cyclindrical design is a modular protype that provides flexible space within a minimum housing unit. Three different sections are dedicated to different functional needs: there’s a bed and table in section, an exercise cylinder, and a kitchen with a sink.

Link – via kottke

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

The gem castle was made in Italy and contains over 2000 semi precious stones including jade, agate, rose quartz, tiger’s eye, and malachite. The castle was once owned by the founder of Ethan Allen, Nat Ancell. It had been lost for years until it turned up in an old Ethan Allen warehouse in 1994.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

How do you fit 24 rooms into an apartment of only 330 square feet? Architect Gary Chang, designer of the "Domestic Transformer," showcases the many, many shapes of this modern architectural marvel!

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sal.

BUILD takes a serious look at dozen of structures built from couch cushions in a two-part post. Each are carefully graded. For the above fort:

The crisp, clean, white planes, drawing clear influences from Richard Meier, are balanced with a splash of color offered by the roof membrane. The disciplined interiors offer relief to the eyes with a subtle yet intentional blue tone. Grade B+

Link -via Laughing Squid