The world is filled with strange buildings, the result of unconventional architects trying to express themselves with brick and mortar. Skyscrapers reaching for the clouds and giant metal structures are common sights in almost every corner of the world. We offer an overview of the most amazing and strange buildings in the world.

The National Center for the Performing Arts (National Opera House) is located in Beijing. Constructed of glass and titanium, the building is surrounded by an artificial lake. It was created by the French architect Paul Andreu. Construction began in 2001 and lasted six years. The first production was the Russian historical opera “Prince Igor” by A.P. Borodin, performed by the orchestra, choir and soloists of the Mariinsky Theater under the direction of Valery Gergiev. The architectural complex includes a building, underground and underwater corridors, an underground parking lot, an artificial lake and green spaces. The construction of the main dome required 18,000 titanium plates and over 1,200 sheets of glass; its length is 212 meters, its width is 144 meters, and its height is 46 meters. The underground part of the building goes to a depth of approximately 32.5 meters. The area of ​​the entire complex is 118,900 square meters. The three halls of the theater with an area of ​​12,000 square meters are designed for 5,452 spectators.

In Rotterdam and Helmond Cube Houses you can find unusual, not to say strange, cube houses. They were created by Piet Blom, based on the desire to create a forest in the middle of the city, houses would grow as trees. In 1984, a complex of 38 buildings appeared on Overblaak Street, striking in their appearance.

Each house consists of four floors. On the first floors of the houses there are mainly offices, hairdressers, shops, etc. The area of ​​the three-story apartments is approximately 100 square meters, but the living space is much smaller, because the walls and floor are inclined at an angle of 54.7 degrees. The layout of the apartment is as follows: the first floor - kitchen and living room, the second floor - two bedrooms and a bathroom, on the third floor there are guest rooms, offices, and winter gardens.

The Biosphere is a museum dedicated to environmental protection issues. It is located in Jean-Drapeau Park on St. Helena Island right in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. It was once the US exhibition pavilion at Expo 67. The design, reminiscent of a huge soap bubble, was so striking and original that they decided to keep it. The outer “shell” of the Biosphere is a dome 62 meters high and 76 meters in diameter. The author of the project, which brought its creator worldwide fame, is Richard Buckminster Fuller.

Forest Spiral is a twelve-story residential complex built in the 1990s. The author of the idea was the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and the architect Heinz M. Springmann brought it to life together with the Bauverein Darmstadt company. Construction of the building lasted from 1998 to 2000. The "Forest Spiral" complex with multi-colored frames and a curved facade resembles a huge snail. 1048 windows of unique sizes and shapes help create the image of a fairytale house. Trees grow from some of the windows, and tenants are required by the lease to care for them. The building has 105 apartments and a cozy courtyard with playgrounds, artificial lakes, shaped paths and bridges, shops, parking and a pharmacy.

Habitat 67 is a residential complex created by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. This was his graduation project. It is located near the St. Lawrence River on Avenue Pierre-Dupuy. The house is recognized as a landmark of the city, and the country as a whole.
The building resembles a structure made from children's blocks, however, it is absolutely reliable and comfortable for living. For a house of 146 apartments, 354 cubes were needed, built on top of each other. Each apartment has several such cubes, up to five pieces. The windows of all apartments offer views of three cardinal directions and you can admire the Montreal harbour. Moreover, the house has many open terraces and glazed passages.

Also known as Casa Mila, the building is located in the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona. It was built by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi in 1906–1912 for a married couple. The house is amazing and notable for the fact that there is not a single straight line in it. It was a controversial design for the time, with bold forms of undulating stone façade and wrought iron decorations on the balconies and windows, created mainly by José Maria Jujol, who also designed some of the plaster ceilings. The house is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors can climb to the top floor, attic and roof and take a close look at this masterpiece.

The Museum of Contemporary Art is located in the Brazilian city of Niteroi and is one of the main local attractions. The building looks like an unidentified space object arriving from unknown worlds. It was built in 1996 according to the design of Oscar Nimeiro and Bruno Contarini. The height of the building is 16 meters, the diameter of the dome is 50 meters, and the supports are 9 meters. Area 817 square meters.

Stone house, Fafi (Portugal)

A stone house in the north of Portugal in the Fafi Mountains resembles the home of the Flintstones from the American cartoon. The basis of the house was taken from two huge boulders, which were connected to each other using concrete mortar. As a result, in 1974, a two-story house in a prehistoric style with a fireplace and a swimming pool appeared, attracting thousands of tourists.

The shopping center in Sopot attracts not only shoppers, but also thousands of tourists. And all thanks to its unusual appearance - no straight lines or angles. The crooked house was built in 2004 by architects from the firm Szotyńscy & Zaleski, inspired by the fabulous drawings and illustrations of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg. Area approximately 4000 square meters. There are small shops, cafes and restaurants here. The shopping center occupies the first floor, and the offices of two radio companies are located on the second.
Modern architects are building original houses not only on land, they have begun to conquer reservoirs of all sizes, offering projects

Unusual architecture of houses - what is it, a departure from generally accepted standards or creative self-expression of their designers, striving to distinguish their creations from the gray mass of ordinary buildings?

Dancing House in Prague

This amazing building is located in the very center of Prague on the embankment of the Vltava River, in the area of ​​Reslova Street. The exact address of the Dancing House: Rasinovo nabrezi, 80.
The history of the building is quite interesting. The house that previously stood on the site of the Dancing House was destroyed in January 1945 during an American air raid. For half a century the place was vacant until Czech President Vaclav Havel intervened. The fact is that the house next to the destroyed one was built by the grandfather of the Czech president and before nationalization was the property of the Havel family. Now it is difficult to say whether this circumstance or another was the reason for the start of construction, but be that as it may, the Czech president decided to build another house on the site of the vacant lot, designed by a Czech architect with Croatian roots, Vlado Miluni?. However, the insurance company that bought the land required that some famous Western architect take part in the project. The choice fell on the famous Canadian-American deconstructivist architect, Pritzker Prize winner, Frank Gehry. The construction of the “drunken house” took place from 1994 to 1996, under the personal supervision of Vaclav Havel. The main architectural idea of ​​the building was an analogy with the famous dance duet of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, known as “Ginger and Fred”. Even a quick glance at the building is enough to see this architectural design. One of the two cylindrical parts, the one that expands at the top, symbolizes a male figure (Fred), and the second part of the building visually resembles a female figure with a thin waist and a fluttering skirt (Ginger). In my opinion, the implementation of the idea was fully successful. However, the conceptual name “Ginger and Fred” did not catch on, and this amazing structure in everyday life began to be called simply “dancing” or “drunk”. Currently, the building is a business center housing the offices of several international companies. There is a French restaurant on the roof with an amazing view of Prague. When you look at this building for the first time, especially in photographs, you get an absolute feeling of the fragility of the structure. However, this was the first time I saw “Dancing House” live, and not in photos. During our trip to the Czech Republic, we observed this house for some time from afar, from various angles, and one fine day we purposefully went to take a closer look. It must be said that up close the feeling of fragility completely disappears. But the views of the building become even more exotic. You can see for yourself. It would be interesting to visit inside the “Drunken House” and look at the layout of the premises and the views from the windows. They say they are simply great! I hope I will be able to do this on my next trips, because the Czech Republic is worth going there several times!

Floating Castle in Ukraine
But there is really no structure or support for this. The flying castle literally hangs in the air.
It would seem that the laws of gravity are a common thing for everyone, and no matter how you twist them, be kind enough to follow them, otherwise the building will collapse. But there are people who sneeze at all these forces of gravity and build houses that onlookers look at and say, “How come they don’t fall?!” Let's take a look. This mysterious levitating farmhouse, standing on a single support, belongs in a science fiction film. It is believed that this is an old bunker for excess mineral fertilizers, but we believe that alien architects clearly had a hand (paw? tentacle?) in its design.

Upside Down House (Syzmbark, Poland)

An unusual work by artist and architect Daniel Czapiewski was built in the village of Szymbark, Poland. The main unusual thing about the design is that it completely imitates an inverted house, right down to the “grass” and “ground” under (that is, above) the stone foundation. At the same time, the house is quite stable and fully adapted for living. Construction of the upside down house took 114 days. Local builders were very surprised by the strange project, but they completed it without errors. Now the house has become one of the most popular attractions in Poland; not only ordinary tourists, but also architects come here to learn from a talented colleague.

Forest Spiral in Darmstadt

An unusual house with the intriguing name “Waldspirale (Forest Spiral)” was built in Darmstadt, Germany between 1998 and 2000. The creation belongs to the hand of the famous Austrian architect and artist, well known for his revolutionary, colorful architecture. The architect's designs very often borrow their shapes from nature - for example, an onion-shaped dome. This building with 105 apartments, as if “wrapped” around the courtyard, among other things, has a comfortable restaurant with a cozy cocktail bar

Basket house in the USA

This is perhaps the strangest administrative building in the world. Basket and wickerwork company Longaberger built its headquarters in a replica of its actual product, a wicker basket. The building took 180 thousand square meters, two years of construction, and cost 30 million dollars. Experts have repeatedly dissuaded company owner Dave Longberger from changing the layout of the building, but apparently he made the right choice - thanks to this idea, his company became known throughout the world.

Piano shaped building. Huainan city, China.

This "musical" house is located in the Chinese city of Huainan. A huge violin serves as the entrance to the building and there is an escalator in it to ascend to the “grand piano”. The structure is made of transparent and black glass. The building was built primarily as a landmark to distinguish the city from many other inconspicuous Chinese cities. The building itself houses an exhibition complex, which displays plans for streets and districts of the city.

Central Library in Kansas (Kansas City Public Library). State of Missouri, USA.
Probably, if all libraries were built in such a design, then they would not have a shortage of readers. By building the Central Library in the form of a book stand, the city authorities of Kansas City in the USA not only beautified the business center of the city, but also supported the reading spirit of the citizens. The building's façade is designed to resemble the spines of Kansas's most influential and popular books.

Stone House. Guemaraes, Portugal.

Great Mosque of Djenn? Djenné, Mali, Africa
The Djenne Cathedral Mosque is the largest adobe building in the world and is considered by most architects to be the greatest achievement of the Sudanese-Saheil architectural style, although with certain Islamic influences. The mosque is located in the city of Djenne, Mali on the floodplain of the Bani River. The first mosque was built in the 13th century, but this mosque has been under construction since 1907. It is one of the most famous landmarks in Africa. Along with the "Old Towns of Djenne". The mosque was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.

The Neverwas Haul. Berkeley, California, USA

This steampunk-style mobile home looks like it came out of a fairy tale or fantasy stories by Jules Verne. And those who watched the cartoon “Howl’s Moving Castle” will certainly appreciate this wonderful house. This three-story house was created by a group of 12 steampunk fans, giving it the name Neverwas Haul. It took four months of painstaking work to bring the unusual home to life, but it is still very far from completion. To begin with, the creators want to equip their brainchild with a proper steam engine instead of the diesel engine that is currently used.
Also within the framework of the project, it is planned to construct a number of devices for processing waste into fuel for the engine, a camera obscura, which will be installed in the tower, as well as a stage in the Victorian style to demonstrate new products “from the forefront” of the steampunk movement with the help of a magic lantern and various performances. However, out of everything planned at the moment, only the distillation boiler is ready.

“This is a crazy, crazy world,” you will say when you see these strange and even shocking houses. The unusual buildings from all over the world collected in this publication are surprising because they are also buildings! Houses, hotels, museums, libraries, offices, apartments - all this takes place inside these unusual structures. The thing is that these buildings were designed by talented architects with limitless and sometimes crazy imagination, whose goal was to create, among millions of houses, one that would stand out not only across the country, but throughout the world.

House-grand piano with violin.Piano shaped building.Huainan city,China.
This "musical" house is located in the Chinese city of Huainan. A huge violin serves as the entrance to the building and there is an escalator in it to ascend to the “grand piano”. The structure is made of transparent and black glass. The building was built primarily as a landmark to distinguish the city from many other inconspicuous Chinese cities. The building itself houses an exhibition complex, which displays plans for streets and districts of the city.

Basket house. Longaberger Basket Building. Newark, USA
This is perhaps the strangest administrative building in the world. Basket and wickerwork company Longaberger built its headquarters in a replica of its actual product, a wicker basket. The building took 180 thousand square meters, two years of construction, and cost 30 million dollars. Experts have repeatedly dissuaded company owner Dave Longberger from changing the layout of the building, but apparently he made the right choice - thanks to this idea, his company became known throughout the world.

Upside Down House. Wonder works. Pigen Forge, USA
This is the main attraction in the provincial town of Pigeon Forge. The legend of its creation is interesting. On one of the distant islands in the Bermuda Triangle, in a top-secret laboratory, under the leadership of Professor Wonder, a process was being developed for creating artificial tornadoes and using the resulting energy. During this experiment, something went wrong and the force of a tornado hit the laboratory itself. This created a swirling vortex that was strong enough to tear down the laboratory along with its foundation. She was carried thousands of miles and landed upside down in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Kansas Central Library. Kansas City Public Library. State of Missouri, USA.
Do you think the library is a boring place? Check out the Kansas Central Library! Probably, if all libraries were built in such a design, then they would not have a shortage of readers. By building the Central Library in the form of a shelf of books, the city authorities of Kansas City in the USA not only beautified the business center of the city, but also supported the reading spirit of the citizens. The building's façade is designed to resemble the spines of Kansas's most influential and popular books.

The Crooked House. Sopot, Poland.
The translation from Polish sounds differently: “Crooked”, “Humpbacked” or even “Dancing”. It was built by Polish architect Szotynscy Zaleski in 2004 in Sopot. The architect was inspired by illustrations to fairy tales by artist Jan Marcin Szancer. There is an unusual house on the main street of the city of Sopot, Monte Cassino. There is a shopping center in the house.

Upside down house. Szymbark, Poland
An unusual work by artist and architect Daniel Czapiewski was built in the village of Szymbark, Poland. The main unusual thing about the design is that it completely imitates an inverted house, right down to the “grass” and “ground” under (that is, above) the stone foundation. At the same time, the house is quite stable and fully adapted for living. Construction of the upside down house took 114 days. Local builders were very surprised by the strange project, but they completed it without errors. Now the house has become one of the most popular attractions in Poland; not only ordinary tourists, but also architects come here to learn from a talented colleague.

Dancing House.Prague Dancing House. Prague, Czech Republic.
This amazing building is located in the very center of Prague on the embankment of the Vltava River. The house that previously stood on the site of the Dancing House was destroyed in January 1945 during an American air raid. For half a century the place was vacant until Czech President Vaclav Havel intervened. Construction of the “drunken house” took place from 1994 to 1996. The main architectural idea of ​​the building was an analogy with the famous dance duet of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, known as “Ginger and Fred”. One of the two cylindrical parts, the one that expands at the top, symbolizes a male figure (Fred), and the second part of the building visually resembles a female figure with a thin waist and a fluttering skirt (Ginger).

Mobile home of Sheikh Hamad. Abu Dhabi. UAE
A member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Hamad designed the house to move around the desert. Sheikh is famous for his passion for motorhomes. There is a huge 21-foot Willys Jeep in the rich man's garage. Built a mobile home for desert travel in the shape of a globe and fits four floors of living space, 6 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms. Height – 12m. The size of the ball is one millionth the size of the Earth. This got him into the Guinness Book of Records.

Attacked house. House Attack. Vienna, Austria.
And this house, which “unsuccessfully fell” on the Vienna Museum of Modern Art, is uninhabited. This is a work of art by Austria's most important sculptor of the present time, Erwin Wurm. This work is Erwin’s protest against the dominance in modern architecture of “standard houses, faceless like shoeboxes!”

Montreal Biosphere.Montreal Biosphère. Canada
The Biosphere Museum of the Environment in Montreal, dedicated to the environment and water resources. Located in Parc Jean-Drapeau on St. Helena Island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. The museum is housed in the former American pavilion at the World's Fair, Expo 67, which was created by American engineer and architect Richard Buckminster Fuller and features one of the most famous geodesic domes that brought Fuller worldwide fame.

House-banknote. Kaunas, Lithuania
The project itself, according to which the banknote house was built in Lithuania, belongs to the young architect Rimas Adomaitis. In an instant, the famous specialist explains that this building should in no way symbolize the almighty power of money and universal admiration for it. Initially, the banknote house in Lithuania was conceived in this form in order to make this office center very respectable and prestigious. The facade of the building consists of 450 thousand pieces of glass of various colors. The builders had to manually assemble all these pieces so that the banknote house in Lithuania would eventually have such an unusual appearance. Due to the fact that the façade of the building is completely glass, there is no need to create windows in itself. The glass itself, produced in Europe, is coated with a special compound that does not allow it to deteriorate due to adverse weather conditions. On the facade of the building there is a 1000 lita banknote from 1926.

Forest Spiral. Darmstadt, Germany
An unusual house with the intriguing name “Forest Spiral” was built between 1998 and 2000. This building with 105 apartments, as if “wrapped” around the courtyard, among other things, has a comfortable restaurant with a cozy cocktail bar.

House with a glass in Moscow
A merchant Filatov lived in Moscow and he began to drink so much that he almost went bankrupt. Then he came to his senses, stopped drinking, and his affairs improved. And with the funds that appeared, in 1907-1909 he built an apartment building on Ostozhenka. The Art Nouveau house for the merchant Filatov is decorated with a corner turret with a roof in the shape of an inverted glass. So the merchant decided to show all of Moscow that he was done, and finally knocked over the glass. This glass is more than 3 meters in height.

Crazy House. Crazy House. Da Lat, Vietnam
This incredible building is a hotel in Da Lat, the signature hotel of Mrs. Dang Nga, the daughter of the ex-president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. At one time, this Vietnamese lady studied architecture in Moscow. The building does not comply with any of the generally accepted concepts of house building and looks like a fairy-tale castle, with a huge belly of a giraffe or a spider. The house is open to tourists.

Cybertexture Egg. Mumbai, India.
This highly intelligent business center was created in Mumbai in 2010. Designers from James Law Cybertecture International under the leadership of James Law are accustomed to surprising with their masterpieces. But the egg-shaped house amazes not only the inexperienced viewer, but also specialists. The scientific bureau is engaged in projects of architecture of the 22nd century and works not so much on the form as on the internal content of buildings. As a result, the new home is a cyber-architecture, which includes all the latest developments that fill human life with the highest comfort. Sensors built throughout monitor the state of human health and can measure blood pressure and body temperature at any time. The egg-shaped building itself protects employees from direct sunlight and also saves space. At the top of the egg, where the roof should be, there is a garden, which, in addition to the traditional one, has another task - to remove excess heat from the surface of the glass walls.

Stone house or Troll house.Stone house. Guimaraes, Portugal
A very colorful structure that looks entirely carved from stone. However, in fact, the Portuguese “Troll House” is simply “inscribed” between two huge boulders, and the outer walls are made of small stone of the same composition and color, so the structure fully justifies its name - Stone House. Even the roof of the building is a monolithic stone slab covered with tiles. The Stone House was built by Victor Rodriguez in 1973. The pool is carved directly into one boulder.

Lotus Temple. New Delhi, India
The Temple is a Baha'i House of Worship and is open to everyone, regardless of religion. There is not a single fresco or image inside the temple; visitors are greeted only by snow-white walls and only on the ceiling there is an inscription in Arabic - “God is above all,” so that every believer can turn specifically to his deity. Construction of the Lotus Temple took place from 1978 to December 1986. The project was led by an Iranian-Canadian architect, Fariborza Sahba.

Burj Al Arab Hotel. "Arab Tower". Dubai, UAE
The tallest hotel in the world - 56 floors, 321 m, built in the sea, 280 m from the shore on an artificial island with which a bridge connects it. The building has an unusual architecture, in the form of a mast with a sail, lined with double glass coated with Teflon. The Burj Al Arab is visible from almost anywhere in the city and is rightfully considered the symbol of Dubai.

Cube houses. Kubuswoning. Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Cube Houses or Cube Houses are a series of houses built in Rotterdam and Helmond according to the innovative design of the architect Piet Blom in 1984. Blom's radical solution was that he turned the parallelepiped of the house by 45 degrees and placed it at an angle on a hexagonal pylon. Some residents offer tours of their extraordinary homes. The walls and windows are inclined at an angle of 54.7 degrees in relation to the floor. The total area of ​​the apartment is about 100 square meters, but about a quarter of the space is unusable due to the walls, which are at an angle.

Walt Disney Concert Hall. Walt Disney Concert Hall. Los Angeles, California, USA.
This grand hall is the fruit of the efforts of the famous Frank Henry. It took 16 years to build - 1987-2003.

Upside down house. Matsumoto, Japan
In the Japanese city of Matsumoto, a house was built at an angle of 135 degrees. The roof of this upside-down house is bright pink, and the interior also has upside-down interiors. For example, in the interior the signs are upside down. There is a coffee shop inside the building, but the coffee is served in cups and is not spilled on guests.

Atomium. Brussels, Belgium
Built for the 1958 World's Fair, this model of the iron molecule, enlarged 165 billion times, is one of the attractions of Brussels. If you take the elevator to a height of 122 meters, you will have a panoramic view of Brussels.

Project "Eden". Eden project. Great Britain
This is a botanical garden located in Cornwall, Great Britain. It includes a greenhouse consisting of several unusual geodesic domes, with a total area of ​​22 thousand square meters. Under the “bumpy” domes of the greenhouse there is a unique collection of plants from all over the planet. Geodesic domes are assembled from several hundred hexagons, very similar to a honeycomb, and several pentagons that connect the structure into a complete structure. The architect of the project was Nicholas Grimshaw, the idea belonged to Tim Smith, construction lasted three years, and the opening of the project took place in 2001.

Skyscraper "Cucumber". Gherkin building. London. England
Tower, 40 floors high. Construction of the building took place during 2001-2004, the project was designed by the famous architect Norman Foster. Construction costs exceeded $400 million. The Gherkin has become a decoration of the financial center of the capital of England; it houses the headquarters of Swiss Re, several restaurants, and the first floors are open to all visitors. The height of the “Cucumber” is 180 meters; “green” technologies were used during construction, thanks to which the building consumes 2 times less electricity than conventional skyscrapers.

An ideal palace. Le Palais Ideal. Hauterives, France
The ideal palace amazes travelers not only with its mixture of unusual styles from the Middle East, Algeria, China and notable imitation of Antoni Gaudi, but also with its history. The building was built by an ordinary French postman who had no special education. Ferdinand Chevale built his Ideal Palace for 33 years - from 1879 to 1912, using individual stones collected by him in the area where he lived. All the walls of the palace are decorated with inscriptions - sayings of Christ, Buddha, all kinds of figures, baskets, limestone carvings, rising into the air various decorations; the building looks especially impressive at night.

Concert hall Tenerife Auditorium. Canary Islands, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
The developer of another unusual project was Santiago Calatrava. Construction of the building began in 1997 and was completed in 2003; the unusual concert hall cost investors 72.3 million euros. The main highlight of the unusual building, which fit perfectly into the coastal landscape, was the “wing” that rises above the main building and is lined with ceramics. Thanks to this “decoration”, the concert hall looks like a giant sailboat, shell or spaceship. The building has two halls - for 1.6 thousand and 400 seats, it is possible to regulate the acoustics of the rooms for performances of opera singers, shops and cafes are located in the hall, and From the open terraces you can admire the sea.

Music Center. Experience music project. Seattle, USA

A house “you’ve never been to.” The Never Was Haul. Berkeley, California, USA

A house with a crack. Ontario, Canada

Modern Art Museum. Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Nice, France

National Theatre. National Theatre. Beijing, China

Sand and clay Mosque of Djenné. Mali, West Africa

Big pineapple. Hotel-Casino Grand Lisboa. Macau, China

Museum of Art. Graz Art Museum. Graz, Austria

Zucchini on a side. Kyiv, Ukraine

House of fashion and shopping. Fashion Show Mall. Las Vegas, USA

Quarry house. Barcelona, ​​Spain.

Cactus house. Cactus House. Rotterdam, Netherlands

Nautilus. Nautilus house. Mexico City

Panorama house. Edificio mirador. Madrid, Spain

Shoe house. Pennsylvania, USA

Houseboat. House Boats. Kerala, India.

UFO house. The Ufo House. Sanzi, Taiwan

Gateway to Europe or Torres KIO office. Torres KIO. Madrid, Spain.

Apartments. Wozoko Apartments. Amsterdam, Holland

Torre Galatea Figueres. The Torre Galatea Figueras. Spain.

Esplanade Theaters Hotel. Singapore

Department for problems of production and supply of natural gas. Gas Natural headquarters. Barcelona, ​​Spain.

Modern Art Museum. Niteroi, Brazil

Slim residential complex. London

Temple of Truth. Pattaya, Thailand
Made entirely of wood.

House-garden in Belgium

Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas

Twisted house in Indianapolis, USA

(39 Votes)

Judging by these photographs, give the architect free rein and he will be able to design a building of any shape and size. We have collected 33 extraordinary houses to show you and for each you can see the position on the world map so that you can visit them live 😉. Join us!

1 Surreal House/Mind House (Barcelona, ​​Spain) map

Mind House is a building located at the entrance to Park Güell, designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

2 Crooked House/Krzywy Domek (Sopot, Poland) map

Located in the Polish city of Sopot, this building is a popular landmark for tourists and photographers. The inspiration for the unusual shape of the building came from the Polish fairytale illustrations of Jan Marcin Szanser and Per Dahlberg.

3 Stone House/Casa do Penedo (Portugal) map

The house got its name because it was built on the basis of four large boulders, which serve as its foundation, walls and ceiling. Construction began in 1972 and lasted about two years until 1974.

4 Lotus Temple (New Delhi, India) map

The main temple of the Bahai religion in India and neighboring countries, built in 1986. A huge building made of snow-white marble in the shape of a blooming lotus flower.

5 Cathedral/Catedral Metropolitana de Brasília (Brasilia, Brazil) map

Catholic Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Brasilia. Built in the modernist style according to the design of the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer. When designing, Oscar Niemeyer was inspired by Liverpool Cathedral. The building itself consists of 16 hyperboloid columns, symbolizing hands raised to the sky.

6 Casa Mila/La Pedrera (Barcelona, ​​Spain) map

The residential building, built in 1906-1910 in Barcelona by the architect Antoni Gaudi for the Mila family, is one of the attractions of the Catalan capital. The design of this Gaudi building was innovative for its time: a well-thought-out natural ventilation system makes it possible to avoid air conditioning, interior partitions in each of the apartments of the house can be moved at your discretion, and there is an underground garage.

7 Atomium (Brussels, Belgium) map

One of the main attractions and symbol of Brussels. The Atomium was designed for the opening of the 1958 World's Fair by architect Andre Waterkein as a symbol of the atomic age and the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

8 Museum of Contemporary Art (Niteroi, Brazil) map

The famous architectural creation of Oscar Niemeyer in the modernist style. The building took five years to construct and was completed in 1996. The sixteen-meter-tall concrete smooth cylindrical structure on a thin leg with a glass belt simultaneously looks like both a UFO and an exotic plant growing on the edge of a cliff.

9 Kansas City Central Library (Missouri, USA) map

For a time, the façade of the Kansas City Central Library was designed as a bookshelf composed of various books. It looked impressive)

10 “The Hobbit House” (Wales, UK) map

The house was built with maximum consideration for the environment and provided a unique opportunity to live closer to nature.

11 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA) map

The choice of site for the construction of the Guggenheim Museum was on a site adjacent to the huge green area of ​​Central Park between 88th and 89th streets on Fifth Avenue. When designing the building, architect Frank Lloyd Wright moved away from existing models and invited viewers to take the elevator to the top floor and go down in an internal continuous spiral, examining the exhibition along the way, both on the ramp itself and in the adjacent halls.

12 Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain) map

The museum building was designed by American-Canadian architect Frank Gehry and was opened to the public in 1997. The building is immediately recognized as one of the most spectacular deconstructivist buildings in the world. Architect Philip Johnson called it "the greatest building of our time"

Located on the waterfront, the building embodies the abstract idea of ​​a futuristic ship, perhaps for interplanetary travel. He has also been compared to a bird, an airplane, Superman, an artichoke and a blooming rose.

13 Habitat 67/Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada) map

Residential complex in Montreal, which was designed by architect Moshe Safdie in 1966-1967. The complex was built for the start of Expo 67, one of the largest world exhibitions of that time, the theme of which was houses and residential construction.

The cube is the basis of this structure. 354 cubes stacked on top of each other made it possible to create this gray building with 146 apartments. Most apartments have a private rooftop garden for the neighbor below. The style of construction is brutalism.

14 House of Music/Casa da musica (Porto, Portugal) map

Designed by Rem Koolhaas, the concert hall in the historic center of Porto is home to the city's three orchestras. The construction of a building of an unusual shape required the implementation of new engineering solutions. It was carried out in 2001-2005. in connection with Porto's functions as the European Capital of Culture. The project proposed by Koolhaas received wide recognition in the architectural community. Thus, the architectural critic of The New York Times Nikolai Urusov called the House of Music “the most attractive” project of Koolhaas, comparing it with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

15 Olympic Stadium (Montreal, Canada) map

It was built as the main sports arena for the 1976 Summer Olympics. It hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games. Canada's largest stadium by capacity.

16 Nautilus House (Mexico City, Mexico) map

The design of the house is very innovative, unusual and daring. Architect Javier Senosiein decided to bring marine forms into architecture and created a house in the shape of a shell.

17 National Library of Belarus/National Library of Belarus (Minsk, Belarus) map

The building is a rhombicuboctahedron 73.6 m high (23 floors) and weighs 115,000 tons (not including books). Unusual is the lighting of the building, which is a giant multi-color screen based on LED clusters, which turns on every day at sunset and runs until midnight. The design and patterns on it are constantly changing.

18 National Center for the Performing Arts/国家大剧院 (Beijing, China) map

It is an ellipsoidal dome made of glass and titanium, rising in the middle of an artificial reservoir, across the road from Lake Zhongnanhai. The three main halls of the theater can accommodate at least 6,500 spectators.

The architect was the Frenchman Paul Andreux; construction lasted from December 2001 to December 2007. The construction of such a huge futuristic building in the historical center of the Chinese capital caused great controversy, both from the point of view of its incompatibility with the urban environment, and because of the exorbitant and constantly increasing costs during construction.

19 Conch Shell House (Isla Mujeres, Mexico) map

The house was designed by Octavio Ocampo, one of Mexico's most famous artists, and his brother. The house is a perfect manifestation of his surreal blend of summer house and unique underwater aesthetic.

20 House Attack (Vienna, Austria) map

Erwin Wurm is known for his unusual, sometimes humorous and sometimes mysterious works. He created such an intriguing installation that surprised passersby.

21 Library Alexandrina/ مكتبة الإسكندرية الجديدة ‎ (Alexandria, Egypt) map

The idea of ​​building a library on the site of the ancient Library of Alexandria arose in the early 1970s and belonged to a group of professors at the University of Alexandria. The complex has a very expressive architecture. The concept of the library building is based on the symbolism of the south. The building is like a solar disk, raised to the south and inclined to the north. The glass surfaces of the north-sloping roof allow northern light to flow down into the library.

22 Cube Houses/Kubuswoning (Rotterdam, Netherlands) map

A series of houses built in Rotterdam and Helmond to an innovative design by architect Piet Blom in 1984. Blom's radical solution was that he installed the parallelepiped of the house not on the edge, as usual, but on the top, and with this top it rests (visually) on the hexagonal pylon. In Rotterdam there are 38 such houses and 2 more super-cubes, and all the houses are articulated into a single structure. From a bird's eye view, the complex has an intricate appearance, reminiscent of an impossible triangle.

23 The ideal palace of the postman Cheval/Le Palais idéal (France) map

The creator of this most impressive monument of naive architecture is Joseph Ferdinand Cheval. From the age of 13 he worked as a baker's assistant, and in 1867 he received the position of rural postman. Delivering mail, he traveled 25 km every day, putting stones of unusual natural shapes into a wheelbarrow. Of these, for 33 years, alone, in his free time, day and night, in any weather, with the help of the most simple tools, he realized his dream - a palace beyond all imagination.

24 Hallgrímskirkja Church (Reykjavik, Iceland) map

The design of the church was developed in 1937 by the architect Gudjoun Samuelson. It took 38 years to build the church. The church is located in the center of Reykjavik, and is visible from any part of the city. It has become one of the main attractions of the city.

25 Eden project (Cornwall, UK) map

Botanical garden in Cornwall, UK. Includes a greenhouse consisting of several geodesic domes, under which plants from all over the world are collected. The area of ​​the greenhouses is 22,000 square meters. m. The domes are made of hundreds of hexagons and several pentagons connecting the entire structure. Each of the hexagons and pentagons is made of durable, translucent plastic. The first greenhouse features tropical vegetation, the second - Mediterranean vegetation.

26 The Museum of Play (Rochester, USA) map

Interesting architectural design of the National Museum of Play in Rochester. The museum provides a huge interactive collection of exhibits dedicated to the history and exploration of gaming. A resort complex on the artificial island of Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. The complex consists of two buildings and a bridge connecting them, which housed 1,539 rooms. Initially, the dome cells had acrylic inserts, but after the fire of 1976, only the metal frame remained. Now the Biosphere has become a recognizable symbol of the city. The house is in the neoclassical style, standing upside down. At WonderWorks you can have great food, laugh a lot, lie on a yoga bed, ride a virtual roller coaster, control a ball with your mind, find yourself in the desert or inside a soap bubble, and much more. In total, WonderWorks has about one hundred and fifty interactive activities. Longaberger's main office was built in the shape of one of the company's products - a wicker basket. The building has seven floors, huge handles weigh almost 150 tons. The museum is a gallery of contemporary art, opened as part of the European Capital of Culture program in 2003. The building concept was developed by London architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier. The unofficial name is Friendly Alien. The building was built in a blob style, sharply contrasting with the surrounding buildings. The base of the building is made of reinforced concrete, the outer shell is made of bluish plastic panels. The Kunsthaus looks decent despite the very low budget for similar cultural buildings in large cities. The interior decoration, according to Colin Fournier, should resemble a magician's black box. The facade is implemented as a programmable media installation. A residential complex in Darmstadt in the shape of a spiral, designed by the Austrian architect and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and characterized by the complete absence of rectangular shapes. Other names are “Wooden Skyscraper”, “Solombala Skyscraper”. A wooden 13-story house built in Solombala (north of Arkhangelsk) by businessman Nikolai Sutyagin. The house was partially dismantled in December 2008 by court decision as an unauthorized construction. On May 5, 2012, the remaining part of the wooden skyscraper was destroyed by fire. It was one of the tallest private wooden buildings in Russia, although inferior in height to some tiered wooden churches.