Unusual Architecture

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Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States)



The impressive bookshelf covering the Kansas City Public Library parking garage is definitely our pick for number 7. The 480-car garage, at 10th Street and Baltimore Avenue, was completed in 2004. Its south façade looks like a giant’s book shelf, with 22 nearly 30-foot tall book spines sandwiched between glass-surrounded stairwells made to look like bookends. Designed for the people, for a real library experience. Nice!

Dancing Building (Prague, Czech Republic)

This interesting building was constructed between 1992-1996, and is somewhat of a rarity in Prague: a modern, glass building surrounded by historic architecture. Dancing House has daring, curvy outlines, which led its architects, Vlado Milunc and the American Frank O Gehry, to initially name it the “Astaire & Rogers Building”, after the legendary dance duo. Like-minded Czechs tend to call it The Dancing Building, while less appreciative viewers have names for it like: “terrible“ and “looks like a crushed can of Coke“ to name but a few. Ouch!




The Basket Building (Ohio, United States)


The Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio is 2nd most strangest building in the world ! The 180,000-square-foot building is a replica of the company’s famous market basket, cost $30 million and took two years to complete. I guess the CEO of the company who envisioned this building can now rest assure that all employees are ‘touched’ by the

product.


Hang Nga Guesthouse/ Crazy House (Vietnam)




The famous attraction in Dalat, often called The Crazy House, is a bizarre network of caves, cubbyholes and hidden stairwells, with precarious bridges leading from one concrete tree house to another. It was designed by eccentric architect Hang Nga, also the daughter of former president Truong Chinh. Most tourists leave before dark, but if you like it you can rent a room there, and you may expect to go to sleep with the giant girafe’s red eyes on your window. BOOO!

Keywords: Unusual houses and architecture, Dancing Building ,Kansas City Public Library, Chapel in the Rock, Container City,Cubic Houses,Nautilus House

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House Attack ,Viena, Austria



On number 6 we have Erwin Wurm – House Attack; it was a temporary installation during the Erwin Wurm exhibition in the end of 2006. This building is an outdoor sculpture at the Museum Moderner Kunst (MuMoK) in Vienna. Architects: Ortner & Ortner, 1998–2001.



Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands)


The original idea of these cubic houses came about in the 1970s. Piet Blom developed a couple of these cubic houses that were built in Helmond. The city of Rotterdam asked him to design housing on top of a pedestrian bridge and he decided to use the cubic houses idea. Blom’s vision was to create a kind of village. Now you can still see the shops on the ground floor, while upstairs families live in strange-shaped little homes.



Container City (London, UK)


The adaptive reuse of shipping containers for building purposes has been around for a little while now, but it's still so impressive to see the kind of spatial and material variation these basic building blocks can create.


Chapel in the Rock (Arizona, USA).




The unique architecture and location of the Chapel of the Holy Cross are the inspirations of Marguerite Bruswig Staude, who went on a trip to New York City in 1932. She observed that a cross could be seen in the newly constructed Empire State Building when viewed from a certain angle, and was inspired to built a church based on that design.

Staude kept an eye out all over Europe and the USA for the ideal location, and she was especially struck by the beauty of Sedona. She decided to build her chapel here, which would be "a monument to faith, but a spiritual fortress so charged with God, that it spurs man's spirit godward." The Chapel of the Holy Cross was completed in April 1956.

Keywords: Unusual houses and architecture, Dancing Building ,Kansas City Public Library, Chapel in the Rock, Container City,Cubic Houses,Nautilus House

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Forest Spiral



This building is called “Forest Spiral” and it’s located in Darmstadt, Germany. Its designer is Friedensreich Hundertwasser , and was built in between 1998 and 2000. The architect is renowned for his colorful designs which incorporate irregular, organic forms in an incomparable individualism. The structure of the altogether 12 floors has 105 apartments’. The roof is formed by a garden of beech, maple, and lime trees.



Nautilus House (Mexico City, Mexico)



Built using mainly chicken wire & concrete, this quite unique home claims to not only be earthquake proof but also maintenance free. Inside, the Nautilus House is all about smooth surfaces & gleaming bathroom fixtures. Nautilus Shell House was build for a Mexico City couple by Javier Senosiain


Keywords: Unusual houses and architecture, Dancing Building ,Kansas City Public Library, Chapel in the Rock, Container City,Cubic Houses,Nautilus House

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Floating house









Keywords: Unusual houses and architecture, Dancing Building ,Kansas City Public Library, Chapel in the Rock, Container City,Cubic Houses,Nautilus House

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Upside Down House






This unusual inverted house was designed by Polish architect and businessman Daniel Chapevski in the village of Shimbark, Poland. The designer believes this house symbolizes the communist era, and overturning it is his way of saying that communism is over in Poland.





Keywords: Unusual houses and architecture, Dancing Building ,Kansas City Public Library, Chapel in the Rock, Container City,Cubic Houses,Nautilus House, upside down house