Unusual Life

The “Flexible House” that we wrote about in an earlier post (“Free House – You Haul”), has finally found a home.

Faced with demolition, the Mount Baker house built in the future fantastic, “Jetsons”-esque spirit of the 1962 World’s Fair has been saved by a Gig Harbor couple.

The Seattle Times reports “I saw it on the news, I called the Realtor handling it and then went up and looked at it,” said Tom Shuler, a real estate agent. “I thought it would be a fun project.”

Dr. Kingman Ho, the owner of the property and, by default, the house that employs modular mobility inside a simple, 1,000- square-foot box design, sorted out the serious from the suspect in finding the Shulers. Ho bought the property with the intent to build a new, bigger house for his young family, so the flexible house had to go, one way or another.

Glad to hear this unique house was saved.

Japanese architect and designer Shigeru Ban is a pioneer of paper tube structures (PTS). He investigated the substance and found that not only could recycled cardboard be molded into load-bearing columns, bent into beautiful trusses and quickly assembled, but it could also be made waterproof and fire resistant.

Shigeru Ban Paper Loghouse

He Builds With Paper from Time

Shigeru-Ban

Unusual Homes, Unusual Architecture

Manmade Beach in Japan — Ocean Dome

If you can’t find a nearby crowded beach, make one! Only in Japan…

Ocean Dome is known as the world’s largest indoor water park
with a retractable roof. The air temperature is always kept around 30º C and the water temperature is kept at around 28º C.

The name Seagaia is a combination of the words “sea” and “gaia”, which is Greek for earth. It’s located near the Pacific Ocean on Kyushu Island.

Impact Lab’s photos of Ocean Dome

More photos of Seagaia

More photos here of Ocean Dome