Designing a weird building is pretty simple: choose a form in which buildings are not usually built (a top hat, a strawberry, male genitalia etc) and then build that building. It has come to the point that most of us are not phased anymore by weird, unusual structures, but even so, there still are a few interesting architectural choices out there which will stop you in your tracks and make you nod your head while going “Yeah, that’s pretty cool.” For example:
Stone House (Fafe Mountains, Portugal)
The Stone House is one of the most famous “weird houses” on the internet and for good reasons. One of those reasons is “FREAKING LOOK AT IT MAN!” It’s a house made from stone, in case the name confused you. Well, actually it’s a house made from two huge boulders linked together with cement and an imagination that rivals that of a bed ridden child with cancer.
Rumor has it that this house was inspired by the Flintstones cartoon, but luckily the theme has not been taken to any extremes, considering the use of windows and (hopefully) modern toilets. We can tell you from experience that using pelicans or whatever to collect your poop very rarely ends on a positive note. Let’s just leave it at that.
The Beetham Tower (Manchester, UK)
The Beetham Tower is the tallest building in Manchester, standing proudly at 47-stories tall like a big middle finger made out of glass and steel poking God in the eye. Well, a finger that has been ran over by a bicycle maybe, what with the… the…. Damn, we can’t even properly describe the type of weirdness that is going on here. It’s nothing spectacular, just that the upper part of the Beetham tower protrudes slightly to one side. So why exactly does it make the list? Compare it to this picture:
Some of you (you know who you are) probably just experienced a nerdgasm. The above is the Combine Citadel, a level in the game Half Life, and a serious contender for the inspiration of the Beetham Tower. Oh sure, it’s probably nothing more than a coincidence. We’re definitely not suggesting that the Beetham Tower will be the future HQ of an impending alien invasion. We’re certainly not saying that. But that’s only because they might be listening.
Fuyuhito Moriya’s House (Tokyo, Japan)
You probably didn’t even thought about it before, but did you know that Japan is smaller than the state of California? Yup, an entire country, smaller than just one American state, and with a population equaling roughly 40% that of the US’ you can see how space would be scare over there. Actually Japanese land prices are the highest in the world, and that’s why tiny housing is pretty common in the land of the Rising Sun. But then there’s Fuyuhito Moriya’s house, build literally atop of ONE parking space.
The plot Moriya owns is only 30 square meters, and yet, he managed to build a multi-story, fully functional house for himself and his mother on it. Moriya’s room is only the size of a walk-in closet, and almost everything inside has been designed to save space, from triangle staircases (oh yeah) to giant windows letting in as much light as possible, so as to not make you feel like you’re living in a giant coffin. Incidentally, the house cost Moriya half a million dollars, but in the center of Tokyo, that’s considered a bargain.
Kubuswoningen (Rotterdam/Helmon, The Netherlands)
Kubuswoningen means Cube Houses which are (and we hope you’ve braced yourselves) houses in shape of cubes. “Now wait a minute,” you might be thinking, “aren’t all houses ‘cube-like’ in shape? Also, how did you know what I was thinking? Are you aliens?!” Ha, ha, ha… no. We’ve just sold our souls to the Devil (standard practice over at WeirdWorm). Anyway, what’s weird about the Dutch Cube Houses is that they are cubes BUT tilted at a 45 degree angle and placed atop of pylons. Why? Because ‘why not?’
We assume that is what was going through the head of the cube houses’ architect, one Piet Blom, who designed this unorthodox living space in 1984. There are 40 cubes in total, all connected, and yeah, people do live in them. Each Cube House contain a kitchen, living room, two bedroom, a bathroom and even space for a small garden, all on about 75 square meters.
The Wooden Mansion of Insanity (Arkhangelsk, Siberia)
Unfortunately, this is not the official name of this house, probably because most houses do not have names as these are not the late 1700s, asshole! No, really, who the hell gives a name to a house and is not some pretentious artist in a black turtleneck or inbred European aristocracy? Yeah, you can be sure that the man behind this 13-story mansion made entirely out of scrap wood, one Nikolai Sutyagin, is definitely none of the above. He’s a Siberian gangster, and he built this magnificent, insane version of the Addams Family household to have sex with slutty women inside it.
Sutyagin actually put the house together himself, using only discarded pieces of wood, because, well, apparently crime really does not pay. Despite that, the house stands to this day, while not rocking back and forward whenever the Russian gangster “entertains” some guests inside it, we assume.
Krzywy Domek (Sopot, Poland)
“Krzywy Domek” is Polish for “Crooked House” and aptly houses Poland’s parliament, only not really, because as we’re sure you already know, life just isn’t that perfect when it comes to comedy. Krzywy Domek is actually a sophisticated and assumingly incredibly expensive Polish tourist attraction, today housing a few stores, a restaurant and a slot-machine establishment.
It was built in 2004 and despite what we all know about Poland and its residents, was not the result of the construction workers getting shitfaced on cheap vodka and simply going with their blurred, wavy vision of the design specs. The building was allegedly inspired by the fairytale illustrations of some guys or whatever, but because by all accounts their work was also not drug or alcohol related, so let’s just move along.
The Vdara Hotel (Las Vegas, USA)
Here’s the gist of it: The Vdara Hotel is a building that can shoot death rays, making it the closest thing we ever got to a real-life Death Star. No word if its manager is a tall cyborg clad in black armor (obviously not, but still, a man can dream).
Due to the shape of the building and it facing South, at specific times of the day and with the right weather, the Vdara Hotel concentrates and bounces back Sun rays, forming scorching death rays that can singe hair and even melt plastic cups or bags. That’s not even the crazy part. The hotel architect did anticipate this problem but thought that coating the outer layer of the building with a special film would fix everything. The film did reflect over 70% of the Sun rays but the building still kept shooting potentially dangerous Sun blasts. Think what would happen if someone would unleash its true potential. Dear Lord, he could take over the world! Provided the weather was nice, of course.
