Unusual Life

Artists Madeline Gins and Arakawa say that their house in East Hampton, N.Y., opposes death and may extend life. Originally called the Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa), they say its architecture makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that will stimulate their immune systems.

The couple also built nine “reversible destiny” loft-style apartments in Mitaka, Japan.

The house on Long Island, which cost more than $2 million to build, is their first completed architectural work in the United States - and, as they see it, a turning point in their campaign to defeat mortality.

The house, which is still unoccupied, was commissioned in the late 1990s by a friend who sold the property to an anonymous group of investors after the project dragged on and costs mounted. But it is ready, Arakawa and Ms. Gins said, to begin rejuvenating whoever moves in.

In addition to the floor, which threatens to send the un-sure-footed hurtling into the sunken kitchen at the center of the house, the design features walls painted, somewhat disorientingly, in about 40 colors; multiple levels meant to induce the sensation of being in two spaces at once; windows at varying heights; oddly angled light switches and outlets; and an open flow of traffic, unhindered by interior doors or their adjunct, privacy.

All of it is meant to keep the occupants on guard. Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.

A House Not for Mere Mortals from the New York Times

Immortality House Audio Slideshow

(Thanks to Earl and Rhonda Brown for the tip!)

Photos of Saddam Hussein’s palace in his hometown of Tikrit.

New cultural buildings by big-name ‘starchitects’ have been going up around the country. Here are recent highlights from nine cities.

Amazing museum photo tour

One-time Russian gangster Nikolai Sutyagin’s home is certainly unusual. The eccentric former convict’s seemingly accidental 15-year project begun in 1992 stands 13 floors, 144 feet high. He claims he was only intending to build a two-story house - larger than those of his neighbours to reflect his position as the city’s richest man.

Read the story here.

Burj Dubai is now taller than any building in both the Middle East and Europe. Having reached 110 stories high (380 meters) it has the largest number of floors of any building, and when completed, will be the tallest in the world.

There are only 38 other buildings in the world that reach over 300 meters high, with 3 of them now being in Dubai.

Incredible skyskrapers from Frog View

Skyscrapers in HDTV

“For the most part Soviet architecture and design is remembered for its heavy block buildings and functionally Spartan designs. Its overpowering desire for conformity left little room for individual creative freedom. A notable exceptions to this is in the transportation sector. One can admire this creativity in the Metro stations of cities like Moscow and Tashkent where the coldness and sterility of typical soviet urban architecture is abandoned and costs are not spared as creative freedom is unleashed. While many of us are aware of the elaborate splendor of the Moscow underground, it is easy to overlook the phenomenon of the common roadside bus stop as an example of soviet art and design letting loose and becoming a little weird and crazy.”

Soviet Roadside Bus Stops

A cool collection of photos of organic architecture around the world.

Haute*Nature

Built primarily in the ’50s and ’60s, the dingbats are usually simple two- to four-story wood and stucco structures which are balanced on small beams or poles to accommodate parking spaces on the first level. They are found throughout the country, but primarily in California and the West.

Most dingbats are remarkable only in their complete lack of any distinguishable qualities. The builders of some dingbats, however, chose to decorate their flat facades with all sorts of gaudy decorations like tikis, cutout fish, planets and stars. Others sought to achieve individuality by giving them unusual or elegant names.

You’ve probably drove past them for years and never gave them a moments thought, but they’re beginning to garner some attention, no doubt because of the rise in popularity of Mid-Century Modern style.

Artist Lesley Marlene Siegel is a photographer, and she began her series, “Apartment Living is Great”, in the early ’90s, as the photographic documentation of apartment building names, bringing to light their importance in landscape and community history.

Mark Frauenfelder, a writer and co-founder of BoingBoing wrote the first article I ever read about the architectural style, How I Came to Love the Dingbat, first published in the LA Weekly. (Mark, who is also an artist and illustrator, is currently showing at Seattle’s Roq la Rue Gallery, where he has unveiled a series of paintings done in a storybook style with a dash of children’s manga and secret arcane symbolism, and is on view through December 2nd.)

The Dingbat on Wikipedia

More Seattle Dingbats on Unusual Life

Via Grow-a-Brain: Architects in the Eastern European country of Albania have solved the problem of ugly air contioners ruining the look of their buildings. By placing white blocks of color randomly over the exterior of their buildings, they’ve masked and blended the random existence of the real air conditioners and created an icon in their city.

You can build incredible homes with ferro cement. It is extremely strong and durable and the thing we love most is that you can build the whole building – walls, roof, gutters, cabinets, etc. – out of the same material.

You build a cement home by first building the frame, which is made of metal. You wire rebar, remesh and lathing tightly together. You can make the design as fanciful as you wish.

Stage two of the process is stucco, covering the frame with concrete. Stucco goes on in layers. The first is called a scratch coat, for which the concrete should be a little drier than the subsequent coats. It’s called a scratch coat, because you have to scratch it up before the mud sets. This gives the second coat something extra to grip to.

The finishing coats are called brown coats. The stucco needs to be almost runny. It goes on a lot faster than the scratch, and can even be applied with a hopper gun.

Want to build your own ferro cement home? Start here at FerroCement.com

Via The Phoenix Real Estate Guy comes this picture of a very crooked building. Apparently, it’s a bar located in Sopot, Poland.

Crooked

More crooked

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

Marvel Glass offers fabulous mobile glass buildings, glass stairs and other glass details for interior and exterior applications.

Beautiful glass house examples from Period-Homes

Seattle sunroom company, Seattle Sun. Our sunroom, in our old house on Federal Ave. E. near Volunteer Park, is on Page 4.

A Yurt is a traditional felt home of the nomads who live on the cold, barren steppes of Central Asia. In the U.S. today, yurts are made using hi-tech materials and are used year-round as comfortable homes. Want to get a taste of yurt life without the yurt commitment? Try a yurt-based vacation.

Vacations in a Yurt link

Dog Sled Tours and sleep in a yurt.

Yurt Park in Washington State.

Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park’s Yurt City