The Lego House
I can confidently wager that some of you have spent a fair amount of time building miniature cities with Legos at some point in your lives. I know I did. Not only cities, but spaceships and boats, and forts, and . . . well, you get the picture. But James May, a toy fanatic from [...]

House on the Water
Our friends from formodesign sent us House on the Water, a self-sufficient house for nomadic life offshore. Designed as a rental house for people who want to be independent it’s available only through water. It is located by Navagio beach, NW coast of the Greek Zante island. (Pics)
 

MercuryHouseOne
Rome, Toulouse and Munich practice Architecture and Vision have designed a pod-like mobile living room with a Carrara marble shell. (Pics)
 

Amazing art installations and building modifications
When does a building transform from a shell into a work of art within itself? Can artists improve even beautiful architectural wonders, turning them into something more creative and meaningful? Some architectural art installations are done out of necessity because the work is simply too large to be contained. Others use the [...]

Former oil rig worker David Reynolds made this outstanding matchstick replica of the Bretn Bravo oil platform. It is 21 foot long, 12 foot high and it weights a half of ton. It is made with more of 4 millions matchsticks.
 

Here’s a time-lapsed video showing the Manhattan Bridge creaking and yawing under the weight of subway cars.
 

I believe you could truthfully say that whomever created this must have spent lot of time alone in a dark room watching old horror movies.
Now that you’ve seen that $10 million dollar train set that looks like the real deal, think of this: What if it was invaded by zombies? LEGO zombies?

Making measurement cool
Well, that took long enough. Designers Shay Shafranek and Oded Webman have cooked up an electronic ruler concept that doesn’t do away with that classic wood aesthetic. On the outside, at least. It’s actually a wooden sheath that covers the circuitry inside.

Gourd and squash artifacts were recovered from the sunken pit and platform in the Fox Temple at the Buena Vista site in central Peru
The party was over more than 4,000 years ago, but the remnants still remain in the gourds and squashes that served as dishware. For the first time, University of Missouri researchers have [...]

If you think doors are wasted simply as a barrier to keep people out and you fancy your hand at the occasional bout of table tennis, albeit on a reduced scale, then a novel design by Tobias Fränzel might be right up your alley. The Ping Pong Door transforms a normal everyday door into a [...]

Plantagon
Lots of cities have farmers markets, but most — if not all — of the produce comes from rural farmers that use oil-intensive methods of transportation to cart around their food. With 80% of all people on the planet projected to live in cities by 2050, food production will have to move into cities if [...]

Upside down house
An installation of an upside down house in Trassenheide Germany was opened to the public two weeks ago and was designed by Polish partners Klaudiusz Golos and Sebastion Mikuciuk for the Edutainment exhibition company. (Pics)

A collection of unusual and creative giant objects from all over the world. (Pics)
 

Overall Winner: The Swimming City — András Gyõrfi
The Seasteading Institute, committed to the ongoing development of ocean communities, has just announced the winners of their first annual design content. Could people really end up living in these hypothetical off-shore communities? (Pics)

Sears Tower Skydeck 
The Sears Tower Skydeck opens its lure for thrill-seekers Thursday. It’s called the Ledge and it gives the illusion of standing on air a few feet outside the building, 103 stories off the ground. (Pics)
 

BubbleTree Treehouse 
A tree house is a romantic hideaway close to nature and it does bring out the child in you again. Enter BubbleTree, a company offering a trendy habitat that will appeal to both the nature lovers and those on the hunt for unusual creations. It’s a small wooden platform installed in a tree, which [...]

 
Spanish architects Jose Selgas and Lucia Cano of Selgascano have designed an office for their own practice, located in the woods near Madrid in Spain. (Pics)

Capital Gate 
Capital Gate, the iconic leaning building in Abu Dhabi, reached halfway point. The building, designed by international architects RMJM, will lean 18 degrees westward, 14 degrees more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Taking your office with you reaches a whole new level
Need to carve out some personal space but can’t afford to hire Frank Gehry for the renovation? No problem. Modular wall kits let you be the architect-without really knowing what you’re doing.

 
Autonomous Living Unit
Designer Eduardo McIntosh has proposed a way of putting all the functions of a home into a single chair. (Pics)

Example of a BioWall 
We’ve all seen them in action (sort of), so now it is time to check them out on a new level and get at least a cursory look at the different off-the-shelf options out there for living walls. A few select companies are offering systems that are available to North American buyers [...]

Vertical farm for Vancouver’s 2030 Challenge 
Vertical farms are one of our favorite future-forward concepts for creating sustainable cities. Providing locally-grown produce and food will not only help us reduce our carbon emissions significantly, but also help us become healthier. Romses Architects recently came up with an amazing concept for a vertical farm in Vancouver as part [...]

Unusual bus stop designs
Creative and unusual bus stop designs that make the time you spend waiting for the bus a bit more bearable. (Pics)

A safer alternative for our fowl friends.

What do you do if you build a wind farm smack dab in the middle of a major bird migration route, and want to avert the anger of conservationists? Put up a radar system that’s designed to shut down the entire thing when it detects a mass of birds [...]

 
If you can’t afford to buy your own tropical island paradise, why not build your own? That is exactly what Richie Sowa did back in 1998, from over a quarter-million plastic bottles. His Spiral Island, destroyed years later by a hurricane, sported a two-story house, solar oven, self-composting toilet and multiple beaches. Better yet, he [...]