Unusual Life

Photos from the 2006 Mashed Potato Contest

Via Sellsius:

The Woodpecker Hotel in Vasteras, Sweden is perched 43 feet up a 130 year old oak tree like a lone nest. It’s the creation of Mikael Genberg, who also designed the Otter Inn, a hotel which floats on Lake Malaren.

More strange accommodations on Unusual Hotels of the World.

One of LA’s most unusual homes: This pioneering work of vertically interconnected spaces defies domestic convention, using ideas once promoted in The Whole Earth Catalog now staples of architecture and sustainable design. Flexible live-work arrangements are accommodated within the lower levels, illuminated by a dozen skylights, earth sheltered and topped by a green roof for maximum thermal efficiency. The geodesic dome above shelters a vast interior studio volume for meditation, art, rehearsal, performance, or entertaining. Views of the valley and mountains from the house, decks and grounds are panoramic. Interior area totals approximately 1812 square feet on a site of nearly 1/4 acre. Suitable for an individual or couple comfortable in an alternative living environment.

Dome House for Sale

Eve’s Garden is an organic Bed and Breakfast and Ecology Resource Center, located in the high mountain desert of West Texas, at the gateway to Big Bend National Park, in Marathon, Texas. It features a research level organic gardening demonstration site and an urban hacienda, combining to provide a comfortable Bed and Breakfast environment and a conversational forum to address issues regarding the ecology.

This Taipei restaurant might consider it a compliment to be called an outhouse as the Modern Toilet diner is one of chain of themed eateries appealing to largely young clientele with a toilet humor.

All 100 seats in the crowded diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs. Sink faucets and gender-coded “WC” signs appear throughout the three-storey facility, one of 12 in an island-wide chain of eateries with a toilet theme.

Customers eat from mini plastic toilet bowls. They wipe their hands and mouths using toilet rolls hung above their tables, which may be glass-topped jumbo bathtubs.

Owner Wang Tzi-wei opened his first Modern Toilet in 2004 after being inspired by a Japanese cartoon featuring restroom images and the toilet themes run through the food and drinks menus.

Please take a seat.

The New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas was imploded to make way for The Plaza, a multi-billion dollar resort which will open in 2011. Elvis made his Las Vegas debut at the New Frontier in 1956 in the futuristic new showroom – the Venus Room.

From the Western-themed hotel that had opened as the Frontier in 1942, the resort was re-modelled in 1955 and renamed the New Frontier with a décor that encompassed the nations growing curiosity with space travel, featuring planets and flying saucers in the Cloud Nine dining room and celestial chandeliers hovering over the casino, where six alien figures headed towards its entrance.

The Venus Room, where Elvis appeared, was a circular showroom and could seat up to 972 people, who surrounded the revolving stage, but Elvis’ appearance did little to excite the stuffy Vegas clientele, when he was used to performing to screaming teenagers. Elvis was reportedly paid $12,500 a week, during an era when headline acts could command double that amount in other resorts.

It was at the New Frontier where agent Bill Miller, who was booking acts for the Dunes at the time, spotted Elvis and is quoted as saying ‘Boy, some day I’m going to fire up this guy’s career.’

So, at the close of the next decade as the booking agent for Kirk Kerkorian’s International Hotel, Bill Miller booked Elvis for his famed Las Vegas comeback in 1969 and the rest, they say, is history.

Cool set of New Frontier Hotel photos from LeavingLV.net

Plain apartment houses decorated in graffiti and Japanese-style anime designs on Damn Cool Pics.

Scarabike, a bicycle producing company – which offers customized products -presented a sofa and a stool made of bicycle seats.

From 2007 Tokyo Designer’s Week.

Since 1994, the Museum of Bad Art has been dedicated to bad art. It is only through the efforts of the worldwide Friends of MOBA that we have been able to carry out our mission: to bring the worst of art to the widest of audiences.

MOBA maintains this web site as well as a bricks-and-mortar museum in the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre in Dedham Square, MA. Through traveling exhibits, special events, and changing exhibits, they share the best bad art ever assembled in one museum.

www.MuseumofBadArt.org