Amazing buildings and structures of the world. The most unusual architectural structures of the planet

Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by architecture. Five of the Seven Wonders ancient world are buildings. Architects have always tried to create something original, unusual, they wanted to go beyond the possible and amaze the imagination. We offer an overview of the most stunning architectural sights in the world.

The Colosseum is also called the Flavian Amphitheater, and it is located in Rome (Italy). This large elliptical amphitheater is considered the largest in the world. Construction began in 70 AD. during the reign of Emperor Vespasian and was completed in 80 AD. under Emperor Titus. The building was used as a stage for gladiatorial fights, battles and executions, and accommodated up to 80,000 spectators.

Cathedral of the Intercession Holy Mother of God, which is on the Moat, also called St. Basil's Cathedral - a famous Orthodox cathedral, which is located in the very center of Moscow. The shape of the building resembles a fire flame that rises into the sky. This is the only example of architecture in this style in Russia. The temple, built by order of Ivan the Terrible in honor of the Kazan campaign, was consecrated in 1561.

This masterpiece of architecture is also known as the Blue Mosque. The iconic building is the historical value of Istanbul. The mosque was built between 1609 and 1616 during the reign of Ahmed I. Here is the tomb of the founder. The mosque has one main dome, 6 minarets and 8 middle domes. The name "Blue Mosque" comes from the color of the tiles found on the interior walls of the building.

The Taj Mahal is a masterpiece built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The architectural structure combines elements of Persian and Indian cultures. Its most famous part is the white domed marble mausoleum. The construction of the Taj Mahal was started in 1632 and completed in 1653. In 1983 he became the object world heritage UNESCO.

The White House in Washington DC is the official residence and workplace every US president since John Adams (1800). It has been the residence of every President of the United States. It was designed by Irish architect James Hoban and built between 1792-1800 in a neoclassical style. Today, the complex includes the executive office, west wing, east wing, and other buildings.

The tower is known around the world as Big Ben, although the real name of the building is the Elizabeth Tower, in honor of Queen Elizabeth II. Big Ben is the nickname given to the big bell that is in the clock. This name is also used in reference to the clock tower. Designer Charles Barry designed the tower as part of a new palace to replace the old Palace of Westminster, which had been destroyed in a fire in 1834.

The tower is known for its drawback - tilting to one side. It all started during construction, when a wobbly foundation couldn't support the weight of the structure and caused the building to tilt. The angle of inclination increased until the structure stabilized in the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Sagrada Familia (full name Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família) is located in Barcelona (Spain). This is a huge Roman Catholic church designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. The construction of the temple is not completed, but despite this, in 2010 the temple became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Gaudí started his project in 1882-1883 and the temple is scheduled to be completed in 2026.

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most famous buildings in the world. It got its name from the architect Gustav Eiffel. The tower was built in 1889 and to this day is considered the tallest building in Paris. The tower is 324 meters high and consists of three floors for visitors. The iron structure weighs approximately 7,300 tons. The entire tower as a whole weighs approximately 10,000 tons. The ground floor contains two restaurants and a cinema hall.

The magnificent building, which is located in Barcelona (Spain), was designed by architect Antoni Gaudi. The construction of the house lasted from 1906 to 1912. The design of the house is considered the most original and bold because of the wavy stone facades, decorated with wrought iron. The building is in two parts built around two courtyards and has a roof topped with skylights, fans and chimneys.

The Chrysler Building is a huge skyscraper in New York City. Until 1931, it was considered the tallest building in the world. It was built in an Art Deco style and was used as the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from the 1930s until the mid-1950s. Construction began in 1928 and lasted until 1930. At that time, the building was considered the tallest structure made by human hands, because its height exceeded 300 meters.

Opera House, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, is located in Sydney Harbour. It is one of the most iconic buildings of the 20th century and also one of the most famous concert halls in the world. In 2007, this architectural masterpiece received the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Construction began in 1958, and the official opening took place on October 20, 1973.

The Palace of the Parliament is located in Bucharest (Romania) and is the largest and darkest civil building in the world. Its construction began during the Ceausescu regime, and this multifunctional building is the seat of both houses of the Romanian Parliament. The total area of ​​the building is 340,000 square meters.

An observation and communications tower known as the CN Tower is located in Toronto, Canada. It was built in 1976. At the time, it was the tallest tower in the world. In 1995, this architectural masterpiece was declared one of the seven modern wonders of the world.

The luxury hotel is located in Dubai. Its height is 321 meters, and it takes the 4th place in the list of the highest hotels in the world. The hotel, designed by architect Tom Wright, is considered the only 7-star hotel in the world. The construction of the hotel began in 1994. According to the original design, the building was supposed to resemble a dhow sail, a type of Arab ship. The luxurious building was officially opened in December 1999.

Located in Los Angeles, California, this amazing building is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. The concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. The official opening took place in 2003. The project actually began in 1987 when Walt Disney's widow donated $50 million to build the concert hall. The final cost of the entire project is estimated at $274 million.

The pyramid can be seen in the main courtyard of the Louvre Palace in Paris. Great Pyramid, made of glass, is surrounded by three smaller pyramids and serves as the main entrance to the Louvre. The architectural composition, designed by architect I. M. Pei, was built in 1989. It reaches 20.6 meters in height and consists entirely of glass segments.

Tower with a height of 829.8 meters this moment is the tallest structure ever created by man. Construction of the building began in 2004 and ended in 2009. The official opening took place in 2010. The tower was created by architects and designers from Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The architects drew inspiration for the tower from Islamic culture, but they developed an innovative building system structure that is able to hold such a huge height.

"Shard of Glass" or simply "Shard" is a huge 87-story skyscraper in London, part of London Bridge (London Bridge). Its construction began in 2009 and ended in 2012. Currently, it is the tallest building in the European Union (its height is 306 meters). The project of a skyscraper resembling a shard of glass belongs to the architect Renzo Piano.

The Zin Mao Tower is located in Shanghai and until 2007 was considered the tallest building in China. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in a postmodern style with traditional Chinese architectural details. The exterior of the building is made of glass, steel and granite. looks even more original and incredible.

"It's a crazy, crazy world," you say when you see these strange and even shocking houses. 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 boundless, and sometimes crazy imagination, whose goal is to create among millions of houses, one that would stand out not only across the country, but throughout the world.

Piano house 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 go up to the "piano". The structure is made of transparent and black glass. The building was built primarily as a landmark to make the city stand out from many other unremarkable Chinese cities. In the same building there is an exhibition complex, which demonstrates the plans of streets and districts of the city.

Basket House. Longaberger Basket Building. Newark, USA
This is perhaps the strangest administrative building in the world. The basket and wicker company Longaberger built its headquarters in a replica of the real product it produces, the wicker basket. The building occupied 180 thousand square meters, two years of construction, and cost $30 million. Experts have repeatedly discouraged the owner of the company Dave Longberger from changing the layout of the building, but apparently he made the right choice - thanks to this idea, his company became known to the whole 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 bermuda triangle, in a highly secret laboratory, under the guidance of Professor Wonder, a process was developed to create artificial tornadoes and use the resulting energy. During this experiment, something went wrong and the force of the tornado hit the lab itself. This created a swirling vortex that was strong enough to rip the lab off its foundation. It was carried thousands of miles and landed "upside down" at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Central Library in Kansas. Kansas City Public Library. State of Missouri, USA.
Do you think the library is a boring place? Take a look at the Kansas Central Library! Probably, if all libraries were built in such a design, then they would not have a shortage of readers. With the construction of the Central Library in the form of a shelf with books, the authorities of the city of Kansas City in the USA not only decorated the business center of the city, but also supported the reading spirit of the townspeople. The facade of the building is designed in the form of spines of the most influential and popular books in Kansas.

Humpback house.The Crooked House. Sopot, Poland.
Translation from Polish sounds different: "Crooked", "Hunchbacked" or even "Dancing". It was built by Polish architect Szotynscy Zaleski in 2004 in Sopot. The architect was inspired by the illustrations for fairy tales by the artist Jan Marcin Szancer. There is an unusual house on the main street of the city of Sopot, Monte Cassino. The building houses a shopping center.

Upside down house. Szymbark, Poland
An unusual work of the artist and architect Daniel Chapievsky was built in the village of Szymbark, Poland. The main unusual design is that it completely imitates an upside-down house, right down to the "grass" and "earth" under (that is, above) the stone base. At the same time, the house is quite stable and fully adapted for life. The construction of the upside down house lasted 114 days. Local builders were very surprised at the strange project, but they managed without mistakes. Now the house has become one of the most popular attractions in Poland, people come here not only simple tourists, but also architects - 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 formerly stood on the site of the Dancing House was destroyed in January 1945 during an American air raid. For half a century, the seat was vacant until Czech President Václav Havel intervened. The construction of the "drunk house" was carried out from 1994 to 1996. The main architectural idea of ​​the building was an analogy with the famous dance duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, known as "Ginger and Fred". One of the two cylindrical parts, the one that expands upward, symbolizes a male figure (Fred), and the second part of the building visually resembles a female figure with a thin waist and a skirt fluttering in dance (Ginger).

Sheikh Hamad's mobile home. Abu Dhabi. UAE
A member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi in the UAE, Sheikh Hamad designed a house to move through 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 desert travel mobile home in the shape of the globe and fits there four floors of living space, 6 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms. Height - 12m. The sphere is one millionth of the size of the Earth. With this, he got into the Guinness Book of Records.

Attacked house. house attack. Vienna, Austria.
And this house, which "unfortunately fell" on the Vienna Museum of Modern Art, is non-residential. This is a work of art by Austria's most important sculptor of the present, Erwin Wurm. This work is Erwin's protest against the dominance of modern architecture"typical houses, faceless as shoeboxes!"

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

Banknote house. 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 by no means symbolize the omnipotent 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 collect all these pieces, so that in the end the house-banknote in Lithuania received such an unusual appearance. Due to the fact that the facade of the building is completely glass, there was no need to create windows in itself. The glass itself, produced in Europe, is covered with a special composition that does not allow it to deteriorate from adverse weather conditions. On the facade of the building there is a 1000 litas banknote of 1926.

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

House with a glass in Moscow
The merchant Filatov lived in Moscow, and he began to drink so much that he almost went bankrupt. Then he changed his mind, stopped drinking, and his affairs improved. And with the funds that appeared, in 1907-1909 he built a profitable house on Ostozhenka. The Art Nouveau house for the merchant Filatov is decorated with a corner turret with a roof in the form of an inverted glass. So the merchant decided to show the whole of Moscow that he had “tied up” everything, and finally knocked over the glass. This glass is more than 3 meters in height.

Crazy House. Crazy House. Dalat, Vietnam
This incredible building is a hotel in Dalat, the author's 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 follow any of the generally accepted concepts of housing construction and looks like a fairy-tale castle, with a huge belly of a giraffe or a spider. The house is open to tourists.

Cybertectural Egg. Mumbai, India.
It's highly intelligent business center established in Mumbai in 2010. Designers from James Law Cybertecture International, led by James Low, are used 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 architectural projects 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. Built-in sensors everywhere monitor the state of human health, at any time they can measure blood pressure and body temperature. The very shape of the building in the form of an egg 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 take excess heat from the surface of the glass walls.

Stone house or Troll House.Stone house. Guimaraes, Portugal
A very colorful building that looks entirely carved out of 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 building 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 right into one boulder.

Lotus Temple. New Delhi, India
The temple is a Bahá'í House of Worship and is open to all, regardless of religion. There is not a single fresco or image inside the temple, only snow-white walls greet visitors, and only on the ceiling is there an inscription in Arabic - “God is above all”, so that every believer can turn to his deity. The construction of the Lotus Temple was carried out from 1978 to December 1986. The project was led by an architect of Iranian origin from Canada - Fariborza Sahba.

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

cube houses. Kubuswoning. Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Cube Houses or Cube Houses is a series of houses built in Rotterdam and Helmond according to an innovative project by architect Piet Blom in 1984. Blom's radical decision was that he turned the box of the house 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 with respect 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 that are at an angle.

Walt Disney Concert Hall. Walt Disney Concert Hall. Los Angeles, California, USA.
This grandiose hall is the fruit of the efforts of the famous Frank Henry. Built 16 years - 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, the interior rooms are also with “upturns”. For example, in the interior, the signs are upside down. There is a coffee shop inside the building, but coffee is served in cups and is not spilled on guests.

Atomium. Brussels, Belgium
Built for the World Exhibition in 1958, a 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.

Eden Project. eden project. Great Britain
This is a botanical garden located in Cornwall, UK. It includes a greenhouse, consisting of several unusual geodesic domes, with a total area of ​​22,000 square meters. Under the "pimpled" domes of the greenhouse, a unique collection of plants from all over the planet is collected. Geodesic domes are assembled from several hundred hexagons, very similar to honeycombs, and several pentagons, connecting the structure into an integral structure. The architect of the project was Nicholas Grimshaw, the idea belongs to Tim Smith, the construction lasted three years, and the opening of the project took place in 2001.

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

Ideal palace. Le Palais Ideal. France
The ideal palace amazes travelers not only with its mixture of unusual styles of the Middle East, Algeria, China and a noticeable imitation of Antonio Gaudí, but also with its history. The building was built by an ordinary French postman who did not have any special education. Ferdinand Chevalet 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, rise 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. The construction of the building was started in 1997 and completed in 2003, an unusual concert hall cost investors 72.3 million euros. The main highlight unusual building, which fit perfectly into the landscape of the coast, became a "wing" rising above the main building and lined with ceramics. Thanks to this “decoration”, the concert hall looks like a giant sailboat, a shell or a spaceship. There are two halls in the building - for 1.6 thousand and 400 seats, it is possible to adjust the acoustics of the premises for the performance of opera singers, there are shops and cafes in the hall, and from the open terraces you can admire the expanses of the sea.

Music Center. Experience music project. Seattle, USA

The house "you've never been in". The Never Was Haul. Berkeley, California, USA

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 Djenne. Mali, West Africa

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

Museum of Arts. Graz Art Museum. Graz, Austria

Zucchini on a barrel. 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

House-panorama. Edificio mirador. Madrid, Spain

Shoe house. Pennsylvania, USA

Boat house. house boats. Kerala, India.

UFO house. The Ufo House. San-zi, Taiwan

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

Apartments. Wozoco Apartments. Amsterdam, Holland

Torre Galatea Figueres. The Torre Galatea Figueras. Spain.

Esplanade Theaters Hotel. Singapore

Department for Problems of Extraction and Supply of Natural Gas. Gas natural headquarters. Barcelona, ​​Spain.

Modern Art Museum. Niteroi, Brazil

Thin residential complex. London

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

Garden house in Belgium

Lou Ruvo Brain Health Center Las Vegas

Twisted house in American Indianapolis

(40 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 now!

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

Mind House is a building located at the entrance to Park Güell, designed by architect Antoni Gaudí, 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 Polish fairy tale illustrations by 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 Baha'i 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 (Brazilia, Brazil) map

Catholic Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Brasilia. It was built in the modernist style by 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

A residential building built in 1906-1910 in Barcelona by architect Antoni Gaudi for the Mila family, 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 allows you to abandon air conditioners, interior partitions in each of the apartments in the house can be moved at your discretion, there is an underground garage.

7 Atomium/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 Waterkeyn 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 style of modernism. The building took five years to build and was completed in 1996. A sixteen-meter concrete smooth cylindrical structure on a thin leg with a glass belt at the same time looks like a UFO and an exotic plant that has grown on the edge of a cliff.

9 Kansas City Central Library/Kansas City Library (Missouri, USA) map

For a time, the facade of the Kansas City Central Library was designed as a bookshelf made up of various books. Looked amazing)

10 The Hobbit House (Wales, UK) map

The house was built with the utmost regard for the environment and gave a unique opportunity to live close to nature.

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

The choice of the site for the construction of the Guggenheim Museum fell on a site adjacent to the huge green massif of Central Park between 88th and 89th streets on Fifth Avenue. When designing the building, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright departed from existing models and invited the audience to take the elevator to the top floor and descend along the internal continuous spiral, examining the exposition along the way, both on the ramp itself and in the halls adjacent to it.

12 Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain) map

The museum building was designed by American-Canadian architect Frank Gehry and opened to the public in 1997. The building was 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 is also compared to a bird, an airplane, Superman, an artichoke, and a blossoming 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 the Expo 67 exhibition, 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 of the apartments have a private garden on the roof of the neighbor downstairs. The building style is brutalism.

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

The concert hall designed by Rem Koolhaas historical center Porto, where three city orchestras are based. 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 the performance of Porto as the European Capital of Culture. The project proposed by Koolhaas received wide recognition in the architectural community. Thus, The New York Times architectural critic 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/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. Largest stadium in Canada.

16 Nautilus House / Nautilus House (Mexico City, Mexico) map

The design of the house is very innovative, unusual and daring. Architect Javier Senosiain decided to bring nautical 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 73.6 m high rhombicuboctahedron (23 floors) and weighs 115,000 tons (excluding books). Unusual is the illumination of the building, which is a giant multi-color screen based on LED clusters, which turns on daily at sunset and works until midnight. The design and patterns on it are constantly changing.

18 National Performing Arts Center/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 Zhongnanhai Lake. The three main halls of the theater can accommodate at least 6,500 spectators.

The architect was the Frenchman Paul Andre; 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 in terms of its inconsistency 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 display of his surreal blend of summerhouse and unique underwater aesthetic.

20 House Attack (Vienna, Austria) map

Erwin Wurm is known for his unusual, sometimes humorous and sometimes cryptic work. He created just such an intriguing installation, to the surprise of passers-by.

21 Library of 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 from the University of Alexandria. The complex is characterized by 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 tilted to the north. The glass surfaces of the north-sloping roof let northern light 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 decision was that he installed the house's box not on the edge, as usual, but on the top, and with this top he 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 resembling an impossible triangle.

23 Postman Cheval's Ideal Palace/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 an assistant baker, in 1867 he received the position of a rural postman. Delivering mail, he made a daily journey of 25 km, putting stones of an unusual natural shape into a wheelbarrow. Of these, for 33 years alone in his spare time, day and night, in any weather, with the help of the most unpretentious tools, he realized his dream - a palace beyond imagination.

24 Hallgrímskirkja Church (Reykjavik, Iceland) map

The project 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 greenhouse area is 22,000 sq. m. The domes are made of hundreds of hexagons and several pentagons connecting the entire structure. Each of the six- and pentagons is made of durable translucent plastic. Tropical vegetation is represented in the first greenhouse, Mediterranean vegetation is presented in the second one.

26 The Museum of Play (Rochester, USA) map

Interesting architectural solution National Museum games in Rochester. The museum provides a huge interactive collection of exhibits dedicated to the history and exploration of games. 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 1539 rooms. Initially, the dome cells were with acrylic inserts, but after the fire in 1976, only a metal frame remained. Now the Biosphere has become a recognizable symbol of the city. The house is in the neoclassical style, standing upside down. In WonderWorks, you can eat well, have a lot of laughs, lie on a yoga bed, ride a virtual roller coaster, control a ball with your mind, find yourself in the middle of a desert or inside a soap bubble, and much more. In total, WonderWorks has about one hundred and fifty interactive entertainment. Longaberger's headquarters was built in the form of one of the company's products - a wicker basket. The building has seven floors, huge handles weigh almost 150 tons. Museum, gallery of contemporary art, opened as part of the program " cultural capital Europe" in 2003. The concept of the building was developed by London-based architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier. The informal name is a friendly alien. The building was built in the blob style, which contrasts sharply 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 such cultural buildings in major cities. The interior, 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 form 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”. Wooden 13-storey house built in Solombala (northern Arkhangelsk) by businessman Nikolai Sutyagin. The house was partially dismantled in December 2008 by a court decision as an unauthorized building. 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, yielding in height to some tiered wooden churches.

Modern architecture strikes our imagination. Looking at some buildings and structures, which are difficult to call even buildings, you simply wonder how people can live and work in them? Indeed, most of them are residential buildings or shopping and office centers, and some are exhibition complexes and concert halls. They were designed by designers and architects with a really wild imagination, and then you should look at them and find out more. We offer you the ten most unusual architectural structures of our planet.

1. Ark Nova, Japan

The name of this building translates as " New Ark”, it is nothing more than a concert hall. However, this is not just a hall, but the world's first inflatable and mobile performance hall. It was designed in the form of a huge purple-pink drop, which in its design is an air cushion. The authors of the project are British sculptor Anish Kapoor and Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. The first performance at Ark Nova took place in October last year, and it was built on east coast Japan - especially to support the spirit of people affected by the tsunami. Even the seats and benches here are made from pieces of trees damaged during a natural disaster. This should become a symbol of the fact that after any trouble you need to be reborn and live on. According to the architects, the Ark Nova Hall will be the largest inflatable concert hall in the world. The Ark Nova is 18 meters high, 35 meters wide and can accommodate about 500 spectators. The main advantage of the unusual hall is the ease of transportation - it is enough to blow off the air and transport the hall to another place.

2. Solar Dome, Michigan, USA

An unusual construction resembling a honeycomb in the Michigan City Exposition Pavilion consists of many circles. They, in turn, are made of a special material - archil - very light and flexible, which contains fiberglass and carbon. The so-called "Solar Dome" illuminates the entire pavilion with its ghostly multi-colored light, which comes from the elements at the base of the structure. These elements store solar energy throughout the day and then project light onto the dome. The installation was created by the art studio "Loop.pH" and, according to the creative director of the studio, it is fundamentally new way construction, based on the technique of textile weaving. The size of the "Solar Dome" is 8 by 4 meters, and the weight is about 40 kilograms. This portable structure looks surprisingly harmonious in any environment.

3. Mirror House, Flint, USA

Would you like to live in a mirror house, and even hovering above the ground? Hardly. That is why no one lives here, and the house of mirrors in the city of Flint is a kind of monument to home comfort. It was built by London-based architects from the firm "Two Islands", who dedicated their creation to the thousands of demolished houses in the city of Flint, residents who were forced to leave this city. It was in Flint that the once legendary automobile company General Motors was born, later it began to transfer production to other regions and countries, and the city began to slowly fade without it. The English name of the building “Mark's House” (“Mark's House”) arose from the story of an imaginary resident of Flint, Mark Hamilton, whose family lost their home during the mentioned economic crisis. The brilliant house, towering on a pedestal, weighs almost two tons. its half - 882 lightboxes, which contain hundreds of photographs of faces, in particular, portraits of those who supported the initiative to create the "Mirror House" financially - and, unfortunately, there were no more than 90 such people around the world.

4. Lotus Dome, Jerusalem, Israel

There are many in Jerusalem mysterious places. One of them is Zedekiah's cave - the largest and most mysterious cave in the northern part of the Old City wall. It is named after the last Jewish king Zedekiah, and during the time of King Solomon, limestone was mined here. In the very center of the cave there is a very unusual dome lamp "Lotus Dome", made of several hundred aluminum flowers, which open their petals, turning towards people. The huge flower remains motionless until the first visitors appear in the hall. As soon as people enter the room, the petals begin to bloom one by one, illuminating the entire surrounding space with light streaming from the center of the dome. The closer the visitors come to the installation, the more noticeable the movements of the metal petals become - and now the whole "organism" of this huge silver ball becomes mobile. The author of the project is the Dutch designer Dan Rosegarde, his installation attracts tourists to the cave.

5. Smart eco-house, Sweden

But in such a house you definitely would not refuse to live, although the area it occupies is only 750-0_bgblur_10 square meters! The author of this project was the Swedish architectural company Tengbum Architects. According to the developers, this house will be an excellent alternative to student dormitories, moreover, it is very environmentally friendly. The house is designed for one person, the developers managed to place in it a kitchen, a bathroom, a place for studying and sleeping, that is, everything necessary for a full-fledged life of a student. Light colors with bright color spots contribute to the creation of a comfortable atmosphere for living. Successful planning, the presence of two levels, the use of natural glued wood made it possible to reduce not only rent but also harmful effects on the environment.

6. Bamboo house, Vietnam

Vietnam has very insidious natural conditions. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that it was here that they conceived and brought to life the creation of the strongest bamboo house in the world, which is able to withstand a flood with a water level of 1.5 meters. The authors of the project - the Vietnamese architectural studio H&P Architects - do not intend to stop there and are checking whether the house can withstand a water height of three meters. The building is multifunctional and can be not only residential, but also public - a school, a hospital, etc. The building materials that were used for the house are bamboo, fiberboard, coconut leaves. The roof can be opened and closed, depending on the weather conditions. Downstairs is a bedroom and living room, and upstairs you can arrange an office. The building is modular, costing about $2,500, and the buyer can assemble it himself in just 25 days.

7. House with a slumped facade, Margate, UK

Walking through the British city of Margaret, you can be incredibly surprised when you stumble upon a three-story house with ... a facade that has moved down. The first floor with the entrance door seems to lie directly on the ground, and the upper floor is open. Do not be surprised, the reason for this “sliding” facade from its place is not at all a natural cataclysm and not construction flaws, but just a wild imagination of designer Alex Chinnak. By the way, it took him almost a year to create the installation. The house had been abandoned for a long time. The building was once purchased by the municipality and was planned to be turned into social housing. But time passed, and the building more and more fell into disrepair and collapsed. The designer removed the facade from the old three-story building and replaced it with a new wall. The new façade opens the crumbling top floor of the house, twists near the ground and sits comfortably on the ground in front of the building.

8. Banknote House, Kaunas, Lithuania

A very unusual and very realistic structure in the form of a folded banknote issued by Lithuania during the years of independence, in fact, is a large business center called "Office Center 750-0_bgblur_1000". It is quite natural that two largest Lithuanian banks were located in it. The project was fully developed and implemented by RA Studija and a young Lithuanian architect, Rimas Adomaitis. One day, a famous specialist says that this building should never symbolize the power of money over people and universal admiration for it, which is why not a modern, but a historical bill was taken. The facade is decorated with glass tiles of various shapes and sizes, made in Holland. The house has no windows in the usual sense of the word, because the entire facade of the building is made of glass. Outside, the glass has a special coating that protects the design from adverse weather conditions. It was assembled by hand by a large number of builders, it was a big and painstaking work.

9. Atomium, Brussels, Belgium

Not only the most modern sculptures, buildings and structures can capture our imagination. What can you say about the sculpture built back in 1958? This is one of the main attractions of Brussels and a real symbol of the city called the Atomium. It was designed for the opening of the 1958 World's Fair by architect André Waterkeyn as a symbol of the atomic age and the peaceful uses of atomic energy, and built under the direction of architects André and Michel Polakoff. The majestic sculpture is a huge model of an iron crystal. Initially, the structure was covered with aluminum, and after a major overhaul in 2750-0_bgblur_0750-0_bgblur_06 - a strong and durable steel shell sparkling in the sun. The height of the Atomium is 1750-0_bgblur_02 meters, the weight is about 2400 tons, and the diameter of each of the nine spheres is 18 meters. The spheres are interconnected by 23 m long pipes containing escalators and corridors. In total, there are 20 connecting pipes between the balls. In the middle of them there is an elevator that can take visitors to the restaurant and observation platform located in the highest ball of the Atomium in 25 seconds.

750-0_bgblur_10. Art Museum building, Graz, Austria

At first glance at this unusual building, it is hard to believe that it houses an art museum. However, this is true, and the locals call the Kunsthaus affectionately and with humor - "pregnant cow". The Gallery of Modern Art was opened as part of the European Capital of Culture program in 2750-0_bgblur_0750-0_bgblur_03, the title of which was awarded to Graz. The concept of the building was developed by London-based architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier. Architectural style buildings defy any classification and contrast sharply with the surrounding buildings. But what is unique about the building is that it can communicate with the outside world. The facade of the museum is designed as a 900-square-meter media installation consisting of luminous elements that can be programmed using a computer. Despite its relatively short existence, the museum building won a lot of sympathy. local residents and tourists and is recognized as a symbol of the city and its modern life.