No place like home: world’s weirdest houses

Lone House

A lone house is seen at the construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, an Istanbul neighbourhood in the Asian part of the city. The house, known as “lone house”, belongs to a family who had refused to allow its demolition, bringing the project to a standstill for months.

REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Lone House

The owner of the house has finally reached an agreement with the construction firm behind the project, paving the way for the building’s demolition, local media reported.

REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Lone House

A lone house is seen at a construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, Istanbul.

REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Lone House

An excavator demolishes the lone house at the construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, Istanbul. Click through to see more examples of unusual homes.

REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Unusual Homes

A house built on a rock on the river Drina is seen near the western Serbian town of Bajina Basta. The house was built in 1968 by a group of young men who decided that the rock on the river was an ideal place for a tiny shelter, according to the house’s co-owner, who was among those involved in its construction.

REUTERS/Marko Djurica

Unusual Homes

A house partially built in the shape of an aeroplane is seen in Abuja, Nigeria.

REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Upside Down House

The Upside Down House in Szymbark, Poland, was created by Daniel Czapiewski to reflect the uncertainties of the post-communist era. Visitors enter the furnished interior through a rooftop window and tour the house by walking on its ceilings.

Robert Kwiatek/AFP/Getty Images

Upside-down bathroom

Flush with care: A woman stands inside the bathroom of a house that was built upside down as a tourist attraction by Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozhanski in the western Austrian village of Terfens.

Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters

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Unusual Homes

The Heliodome, a bioclimatic solar house is seen in Cosswiller in the Alsacian countryside near Strasbourg, eastern France. The house is designed as a giant three-dimensional sundial, set on a fixed angle in relationship to the sun’s movements to provide shade during the summer months, keeping the inside temperature cool. During autumn, winter and spring sunlight enters the large windows as the sun’s position is lower in the sky, thus warming the living space.

REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

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Unusual Homes

Thierry Atta sweeps the courtyard of his house built in the shape of a crocodile in Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan.

REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon

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House in the clouds

Built as a water tower in 1923 with a clapboard exterior in keeping with the prevailing local architecture, the House in the Clouds, in Thorpeness, England, was converted into a five-bedroom home in 1979. It’s now available for holiday rentals.

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Unusual Homes

A man takes a picture of the one of the world’s narrowest buildings, built as an artistic installation wedged between two existing buildings, in Warsaw, Poland.

REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

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Teahouse

Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori climbs the ladder to the tree house teahouse he built in Chino, Japan. It’s supported by the trunks of two chestnut trees that were cut down and moved to the site.

Kurita Kaku/Gamma/Getty

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Unusual Homes

Benito Hernandez stands outside his home near San Jose de Las Piedras in Mexico’s northern state of Coahuila. For over 30 years, Hernandez and his family have lived in an odd sun-dried brick home with a huge 40 metre diameter rock used as a roof.

REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

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Unusual Homes

A view of about seventy dome houses, which were built by US based Domes for the World, for villagers who lost their houses to the earthquake in Sumberharjo village, near Indonesia’s ancient city of Yogyakarta.

REUTERS/Dwi Oblo

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Klein Bottle House

The Klein Bottle House, a vacation home in Mornington Peninsula, Australia, is an exercise in experimental geometry.

Courtesy of McBride Charles Ryan

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Mr. Toilet House

The Haewoojae, or Mr. Toilet House, in Suwon, South Korea, is a private museum dedicated to former Mayor Sim Jae-duck, who established the World Toilet Association in 2007. Loosely translated, “Haewoojae” means “a house to relieve anxieties.”

Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters

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Haines Shoe House

Suitable for a well-shod little old lady: Built in 1948 for Mahlon Haines as an ad for his shoe company, the Haines Shoe House sits in the middle of a cornfield in Hellam Township, Pennsylvania where it’s open for tours.

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Free Spirit Spheres

Tom Chudleigh, a Canadian carpenter, designed these hand-crafted, eco-friendly houses, which can comfortably sleep four. The Free Spirit Spheres are made of wood and coated in waterproof fibreglass.

WENN

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Casa do Penedo

Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s home in Bedrock has nothing on Victor Rodrigues’ residence near Pereira, Portugal. Casa do Penedo, or House of Stone, was built in 1974 between immense boulders. The Stone Age-style house has become such a tourist attraction that Rodrigues is no longer able to live there.

JSome1/WENN

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UFO House

Built in 1973, this 2,000-square-foot home in Signal Mountain, Tennessee looks as if it landed from a galaxy far, far away. The UFO House has three bedrooms, two baths, a bar and an entertainment area for your extraterrestrial guests.

Paul Meecham/www.flickr.com/nashboro

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Habitat ’67

Like living in Legoland: Habitat ’67 was built as a pavilion for Expo 67 in Montreal by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It was contructed with 354 identical, prefabricated concrete forms to create 146 residences.

Arcaid/UIG via Getty Images

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Container City 2

Container City 2 is a mixed-use development in London’s Docklands consisting of studios fashioned from stacked shipping containers.

Arcaid/UIG via Getty Images

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Dancing House

The Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, was designed by Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry and completed in 1996.

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House NA

Residents of the House NA in Tokyo, designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects, might think twice before throwing stones – or taking a shower.

Sou Fujimoto Architects

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House NA

The interior of the House NA offers living areas on multiple levels. Curtains act as partitions and provide privacy.

Sou Fujimoto Architects

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Fallingwater

Fallingwater, the famous home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, was built over a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania, about 43 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

Regis Duvignau/Reuters

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Bubble House

The Palais Bulles, or Bubble House, designed by Antti Lovag near Cannes, France, is Pierre Cardin’s beloved getaway and party palace. Built in 1989, the house features 28 round rooms.

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Crazy House

Nicknamed the Crazy House, the Hang Nga Guesthouse in Dalat, Vietnam, is a work by Vietnamese architect Dang Viet Nga. Visitors can book any of 10 themed rooms for a stay in one of the world’s more surreal travel accommodations.

Rob Whitworth/Corbis

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Unusual Homes

An octagonal, three-bedroom, family home built on a rotating platform near Wingham, north east of Sydney. The house can complete a full rotation in about thirty minutes according to its owners.

REUTERS

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Mushroom House

This quirky one-bedroom home in Cincinnati was built by the late Terry Brown, an architect and adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.

The Cincinnati Enquirer, Michael E. Keating/AP

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Crazy House

Part of the Crazy House was designed to resemble a banyan tree.

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Dar Al-Hajar

Dar Al-Hajar, or the Rock Palace, is built on top of an enormous rock in Wadi Dahr, Yemen. The original structure dates back to 1786. The upper story and annexes were constructed in the 1930s

Ahmad Gharabali/AFP/Getty Images

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Steel House

Architect and sculptor Robert Bruno designed this Space Age pad dubbed the Steel House in Lubbock, Texas. The home, perched on wood and steel poles on the edge of a rocky canyon, is made of 110 tons of steel and took 23 years to build.

WENN

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Kirsch House

This concrete, single-family home in Oak Park, Illinois built in 1982, was designed by Errol Jay Kirsch to keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter while minimising energy use.

Creative Commons/www.flickr.com/zol87

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Turf Houses

A variation on the Nordic longhouse, these turf houses in Laufas, Iceland, use design elements dating back to the 14th century. Timber frames were erected over stone foundations and thick blocks of cut turf were used for walls and roofs.

Arcaid/UIG via Getty Images

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Cano´s Castle

In 1981, Donald Cano Espinoza, a Native American and a Vietnam veteran, began building Cano’s Castle from beer cans, hubcaps and other scrap materials in thanks for his life being spared in Vietnam. He continues to add to the structure in Antonito, Colorado.

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Flinstone House

This 2,300-square-foot home in Lamy, New Mexico was designed by Norah Pierson to blend into its rocky surroundings. The exterior is polyurethane spray foam tinted to match the landscape.

Creative Commons/www.flickr.com/chippenziedeutch

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Round Tower near Cirencester, England

The original limestone Round Tower dates to the 18th century and may have originally been the base of a windmill. The crenulated rooftop is a 19th century modification. Today, an underground extension has turned it into a multi-level home.

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Round Tower near Cirencester, England

An aerial view of the Round Tower showing its swimming pool.

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Unusual Homes

General view of a tree-house in Le Pian Medoc, south-western France. France’s Natura Cabana company rents various cabins perched in the trees for ecological holidays.

REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

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Castel Meur

Castel Meur, a stone cottage built in 1861, sits nestled between rock formations on the Cote de Granit Rose in Brittany, France.

Frank Lukasseck/Corbis

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El Capricho

The luxurious villa called El Capricho, or the Caprice, was one of the great Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi’s earlier works, commissioned for a wealthy bachelor in Comillas, Spain, in 1883.

Nikki Bidgood/Getty Images

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Portable Dwelling

Liu Lingchao, 38, carries his makeshift dwelling as he walks along a road in Shapu, China in May. Liu decided to walk back to his hometown in Guangxi from Shenzhen, where he was a migrant worker. With bamboo, plastic bags and bedsheets, Liu made himself a “portable room,” weighing about 132 pounds, to carry with him as he walks an average of 12 miles a day.

China Stringer/Reuters

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Portable Dwelling

Liu Lingchao smiles as he sits in his portable home.

China Stringer/Reuters

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Musical House

Created by sculptor Annette Paul and designers Christoph Rossner and André Tempel, a system of drains and funnels turns this house in Dresden, Germany, into a musical instrument when it rains.

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Nautilus House

Designed by architect Javier Senosiain, the Nautilus House in Naucalpan, Mexico, evokes the spiral-chambered shell of the sea mollusc. The private home was built in 2006.

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Nautilus House

A stained-glass window dominates the garden-like interior of the Nautilus House

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Nautilus House

Living room of the Nautilus House.

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Dick Clark House

The late Dick Clark owned this grotto-like home in Malibu, California. The house was built on 22 acres on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

via http://aka.ms/designrulz

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Dick Clark House

The cosy cave-with-a-view features one bedroom and two baths.

via http://aka.ms/designrulz

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Wine vat shelters

A Bulgarian woman looks inside her wine vat home in Socuellamos, Spain. Migrant workers who come to the vineyards of Socuellamos to pick grapes during the six-week annual harvest sleep at night in 20 or so overturned wine vats – oversized concrete barrels.

Andrea Comas/Reuters

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Fortified earthen building

Huaiyuan Lou is a tulou, or fortified earthen building, constructed in 1909 in Fujian Province. Similar fortified structures to defend against outside dangers have protected the Hakka people since the 11th century. In 2008, 46 tulous in Fujian were added to the World Heritage Site list by UNESCO.

Reuters

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Unusual Homes

Potential buyers stand with an agent on the balcony of a three-bedroom home made from four old shipping containers in Sydney.

REUTERS/David Gray

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Unusual Homes

Treehouses are seen in Stanton Lees, Derbyshire, England.

REUTERS/Kieran Doherty

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Unusual Homes

Tourists pose with an upside-down house in Tamparuli in Malaysia’s state of Sabah on Borneo island.

REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad