Unusual Life

This is the Fennell Residence in Portland, Oregon, designed in 2001, completed in 2005.

The Fennell residence, as a floating house, presented a unique opportunity for design.

The imaginative use of curved glue lam beams evoke the poetry of the ripples and contours of a river. The expansive glass facade embraces the river and frames the sunset, and one accesses the deck via an expansive sliding glass door.

A master bedroom sits over a study and looks out over the living dining area and out to the river beyond.

The curvilinear forms create spacial differentiation that enhance the experience of time as light plays through the daily and seasonal changes.

Robert Harvey Oshatz, Architect

The Heidelberg Project is an outdoor community art environment located in Detroit. The elements of the canvas contain recycled materials and found objects, most of which were salvaged from the streets and each work of art is carefully devised to tell a story about current issues plaguing society. As a whole, the Heidelberg Project is symbolic of how many communities in Detroit have become discarded.

The HP is the brainchild of native Detroit artist, Tyree Guyton. It began in 1986 and was originally designed as a creative response to ongoing blight and decay in the neighborhood in which he grew up.

The Heidelberg Project, as it came to be known, developed into a block long environment consisting of free standing found-object constructions and abandoned buildings and trees adorned with found objects. Much of the area and works are are simplistically painted upon with multi-colored polka dots being the signature icon.

The Heidelberg Project

Cakeland is a sculptural installation resembling a collection of perfect delicious cakes– wall mounted, hanging and standing– a walk-through cake environment complete with its own lighting. It is a sweet refuge, an endless kaleidoscopic landscape of cake, a respite from the grinding realities of the outside world.

The sculptures have all of the appeal of the best cake you have ever tasted, but can never be eaten. Whereas the nature of edible cake is fleeting, lasting only as long as the brief celebration it was made for, these cakes last as long as the artist or society have the wherewithal to preserve them, in order that they remain a place of pilgrimage, a seemingly idyllic oasis.

Cakeland was created by Oakland artist Scott Hove.

The Wilkinson Residence is located in Portland, OR and is designed by architect Robert Harvey Oshatz.

Located on a flag lot, a steep sloping grade provided the opportunity to bring the main level of the house into the tree canopy to evoke the feeling of being in a tree house.

A lover of music, the client wanted a house that not only became part of the natural landscape but also addressed the flow of music.

This house evades the mechanics of the camera; it is difficult to capture the way the interior space flows seamlessly through to the exterior.

One must actually stroll through the house to grasp its complexities and its connection to the exterior. One example is a natural wood ceiling, floating on curved laminated wood beams, passing through a generous glass wall which wraps around the main living room.

Dornob: Design Ideas Daily

The official name is Hang Nga Guesthouse and gallery, but all locals refer to it as the crazy house. And when you stand in front of its entrance it is easy to see why: this house is indeed strange.

The house is owned by the daughter of the ex-president of Vietnam, who studied architecture in Moscow.

It does not comply with any convention about house building, has unexpected twists and turns, roofs and rooms. It looks like a fairy tale castle, it has enormous “animals” like a giraffe and a spider, no window is rectangular or round, and it can be visited like a museum.

The Craziest Getaway: Hang Nga Guesthouse from Apartment Therapy

Crazy House from Touristino

Book the Hang Nga Guesthouse

Mexican architect Senosiain Arquitectos created “Nautilus” for a young couple with two children who after living in a conventional home wanted to change to one integrated to nature.

The land, with upward topography, is limited to the south, north and east by high buildings. The west adjoining provides a wide view of the mountains. The model work generated numberless changes until achieving the volume needed by the construction: the Nautilus.

The metaphor was to feel like an internal inhabitant of a snail, like a mollusk moving from one chamber to another, like a symbiotic dweller of a huge fossil maternal cloister. This home social life flows inside the Nautilus without any division, a harmonic area in three dimensions where you can notice the continuous dynamic of the fourth dimension when moving in spiral over the stairs with a feeling of floating over the vegetation.

Via Geekologie

Cool facade projection on a building in Germany.

You can in Costa Rica if you book a night in The Fuselage Suite – one of “ten wild places to lay your head” that the London Guardian features on its website. “Bringing a whole new meaning to the term crash pad, The Hotel Costa Verde, overlooking the Pacific beaches of Manuel Antonio National Park, has salvaged a vintage 1965 Boeing 727 airframe from its resting place at San Jose airport and turned it into a two-bed suite for guests to live out their Lost fantasies,” the Guardian writes. The hotel’s website features a full spread of The Fuselage Suite.

Hotel: San Alfonso del Mar, Algarrobo, Chile

Why It’s Cool: You can take small sailboats out on this saltwater pool that Guinness World Records calls the largest in the world. At two thirds of a mile in length, the massive stretch of water has room for several man-made sand beaches. For nighttime swimming, head to the temperature-controlled beach inside the pool’s centrally located glass pyramid—the water and the sand are heated.

Amazing Hotel Pools Slideshow

This is an amazing set of guest residences located in Taiwan. Where Hello Kitty Hell sees pink, I see a charming and unique vacation spot.

Uni-Resort site in Taiwan

Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, CA

This image is unidentified, but is on a great design blog called Home Sweet Home featuring dozens of whimsical and creative interiors. Tip o’ the hat to Dan Dean!

Sent in by Frank Synopsis. Thanks Frank!

The PCI Residence glows, literally — the home’s exterior is made up of 100 percent recyclable polycarbonate walls, which illuminate the home from dawn to dusk, as well as a custom LED lighting system. Chris Pardo, co-founder of Pb Elemental Architecture, says the design plan behind this home “was based on the concept of interacting with and utilizing nature.” Among other green building techniques, the PCI Residence incorporates rooftop solar panels, in-floor radiant heat, a rainwater-harvesting system and low-impact materials such as raw concrete, raw steel, glass, concrete board and bamboo.