Unusual Life

Interior Seattle Public Library, originally uploaded by michael_troeger2001.

Here are a few cool photos of the Rem Koolhas designed Seattle Public Library. Following the photos of this library is a tour of other amazing libraries around the world, from Huffington Post.

Most Amazing Libraries in the World Part 1

Most Amazing Libraries in the World Part 2

David Fisher’s Dynamic Tower is the world’s first building in motion, where each floor of the Tower rotates independently at different speeds, in different directions, resulting in a unique and ever-evolving shape.

The Dynamic Tower is a self-powered Green building with the ability to generate electricity for itself through the use of horizontal wind turbines and solar panels.

The first skyscraper to be built entirely from pre-fabricated parts custom-made in a factory, the assembly process of the Dynamic Tower will reduce construction time, offer cost savings, provide an environmental construction site and increase safety for workers on site.

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 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

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.

Link to Unusual architecture in Michigan

• Architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R’s more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.

The Klein Bottle House is located in Rye, Australia and designed by Rob McBride. the unusual home design was inspired by its namesake: the klein bottle. this 19th century invention is used to describe a form which has no distinguishable inside or outside. the architects also wanted to move away from the paradigm of designing buildings based on orthogonal methods and instead imbrace the complexity inhernt with computer aided design (cad). while the desigm imbraced mathematics and digital design it also references
the vernacular australian cement sheet beach house. the house recently won the Harold Desbrowe-Annear award in architecture. it is made from concrete sheets and black metal, which are both folded and twisted
to create the multitude of angles.

Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old mansion in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, survives through the love and hard work of family and friends. Via Grow-a-Brain

This custom, 3,200-square-foot home in pricey Redondo Beach, Calif., was built mostly from shipping containers in an attempt to hold down building costs. The home, designed by Peter DeMaria, still retains the marine-grade plywood floors originally found in the six containers, which serve as bedrooms and bathrooms.

Shipping containers provide home in a box

Is Apple the Newman of Microsoft ?

Well, Microsoft has released two milestone announcements today.

The first, which most readers may be aware of with today’s media coverage, is that Microsoft has negotiated a $10 million dollar deal with Jerry Seinfeld, who will appear as a key celebrity pitchman in ads along with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in an effort to invigorate it’s image in the ongoing Apple Inc. young hip dude versus the Microsoft Corp. stodgy old-fart guy.

This new $300 million ad campaign, one of the largest in Microsoft’s history, and pitting it against Apple will no doubt insure minimal market “shrinkage” for a company which identifies itself only as Microsoft.

We here at Unusual Life are devout lifetime fans of Jerry, attend his sold-out shows at the Paramount, and watch Seinfeld reruns incessantly, so we salute you Bill for crashing at Jerry’s place or whatever you’re going to do in the ads. This sounds like great fun and I want to sit in on those ad brainstorming meetings.

As much as this excites us however, The second bit of news Microsoft announced today is the release of the much anticipated Photosynth online software.

Photosynth is an amazing new way to share and experience photography in a 3D environment.

Our introduction to Photosynth here at Unusual Life happened a couple of months ago when we were contacted by our pal Janet Galore, asking if Microsoft Live Labs could film at our home for a new top secret software project called Photosynth to be released soon.

Apparently, for their Photosynth “How To” software release video they were looking for an interesting home with some cool art, and the right amount of synthy quality…?

Of course!, we replied, and the film crew with talent Laura Foy arrived two days later for the shoot, which was lots of fun. I immediately began researching Photosynth, and realized that in the near future I would have a new tool that would fundamentally change the way that I thought about taking photos in a most profound way. At the shoot, my initial conversation with David Gedye set my mind spinning with creative possibilities and practical applications of synthing photos together in 3D environments: online virtual galleries, travel, real estate, anything to do with sharing visual information.

Like the best of any viewer created online community, it opens the doors to a whole new experience in open community visualization and interactive possibilities.

And guess what?

You can create your own synth - fast, easy, and free.

Here’s the Photosynth release video, featuring our living room. Here is a Flickr Set of the Photosynth shoot at our place, and the actual Synth that was created of our “92% Synthy” home by Photosynth group manager, David Gedye.

MoMA’s Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling

New World of Coca Cola — Atlanta

Quench your thirst for information about a quintessential American beverage at the New World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. This multisensory, multistory museum includes a 4-D theater (combining 3-D with graphic special effects) and a display of the world’s largest collection of Coke memorabilia, including an original Coca-Cola-themed Norman Rockwell painting. There’s also a pop-culture art gallery, a fully-functioning bottling line and a tasting room with more than 70 Coca-Cola products on tap.

Food Museum Slide Show