World's Strangest Buildings

[M II A II R II K]

World's Strangest Buildings


By Karrie Jacobs



Read More: http://www.travelandleisure.com/arti...st-buildings/1

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Between all the bubbly novelties that went up in pre-Olympics Beijing, and Dubai’s feverish invention over the past decade, nothing should surprise us. Except that some buildings still do. And these eccentric edifices, breathtaking in their strangeness, are worth a detour—if only to ginger up your worldview a bit. Still, how can any building be considered strange anymore? Sure, we’ve had time to digest the CCTV headquarters in Beijing, the one that looks like a huge Möbius strip, and we’ve acclimated to the implausible height of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And yeah, we’ve shrugged off our share of goofball novelties, like the Pyramid Arena of Memphis or the Eiffel Tower of Las Vegas.

- Sometimes strangeness is a function of amazing architecture where we least expect it, like the Selfridges Department Store in dowdy, downtown Birmingham, England, that effectively out-Bilbaoed Bilbao. “The mother of all magic mushrooms” is how Jonathan Glancey, architecture critic of the Guardian described it, perfectly capturing its hallucinatory character. More often, the truly strange buildings are the outgrowth of an obsession: the stranger the obsession, the stranger the building. Take Korean politician Sim Jae-Duck, for example. He has spent his life campaigning for clean and beautiful toilets in his home country and around the world. A few years ago, he tore down his own home in the town of Suwon and replaced it with a new house shaped like a giant toilet.

- The house, a showplace of toilet wonder, is named Haewoojae, which means “a place where one can solve one’s worries,” Korean for sans souci. And then there are the projects by architectural visionaries, like the Austrian free spirit Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who attract clients and major commissions despite the fact—or perhaps because—their approaches to design are completely outside anyone’s frame of reference. You stare at their buildings and marvel that they ever got built. Whatever the variety of strangeness, we’re truly grateful for these buildings. We think that it’s an honor to make this list and that it’s an extraordinary building that can shake jaded observers like ourselves out of our complacency.

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Selfridges Department Store, Birmingham, England






Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Canada






The Bar Code Building, St. Petersburg, Russia






Ramot Polin Apartments, Jerusalem, Israel






Columbus Lighthouse, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic






Bioscleave House, East Hampton, NY






Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Shanghai, China






Spittelau District Heating Plant, Vienna, Austria






Elbe Philharmonic, Hamburg, Germany






The Atomium, Brussels, Belgium






Kansas City Public Library, MO






Container City II, London






House Attack, Vienna






Fuji Television Building, Tokyo






Edificio Mirador, Madrid





Museum of Contemporary Art, Rio de Janeiro






Druzhba Holiday Center, Yalta, Ukraine






Solar Furnace, Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via, France






Cube Houses, Rotterdam, Netherlands






Lloyd’s Building, London






Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria






Office Center 1000 3 a.k.a. Banknote, Kaunas, Lithuania






Blur Building, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland






Agbar Tower, Barcelona






Cybertecture Egg, Mumbai, India






The Church of Hallgrimur, Reykjavik, Iceland






Nakagin Capsule Tower, Tokyo






Montreal Biosphere, Montreal






Wonderworks, Pigeon Forge, TN, and Orlando, FL






Haewoojae, Suwon, South Korea

[Gresto]

The Kansas City library is genius!

[LeeWilson]

Why did they build a giant toilet seat in Korea?

[The Chemist]

I know lots of people think that the Oriental Pearl Tower is ugly (I'm not one of them, but that's neither here nor there) but there's no denying that it's absolutely unique and leaves you with little doubt what city you're looking at when you see a picture of it.

[M.K.]

There is nothing wrong with most those buildings, neither strange. Orient Pearl is very beautiful and interesting architecture design. Elbe Philarmonie will never be finished. They stopped the conrstuction already because it is too complicated, too expensive and German people has no competence to futher do for just some violins to be played. The WC Toilet and the inversed houses here are the only protest strange constructions in my opinion. The rest is pretty different ok.

[MolsonExport]

Most of the above are fugly, but there are a few I like:
Iceland Hallgrimur (Reykjavik) church
Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Shanghai
Kansas City Library (most excellent!)
Office Center 1000 3 a.k.a. Banknote, Kaunas, Lithuania
Fuji Television Building, Tokyo
Museum of Contemporary Art, Rio de Janeiro





Not sure what is so strange about Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic dome in Montreal (now the Biodome).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Not sure what is so strange about Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic dome in Montreal (now the Biodome).

It is actually the Biosphère. The Biodôme is in the former Olympic Velodrome at the base of the tower of Olympic Stadium.

[Nowhereman1280]

Originally Posted by Gresto

The Kansas City library is genius!

It's actually rather unimpressive in real life. That portion with the books on it is actually only a screen for the new parking garage next to the far more impressive Neo-classical building that houses the actual interior spaces of the library.

It's a clever way to screen a parking garage, but is still a parking garage screen. It's also made of some sort of laminated wood product or composite and might not age so well as a result.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It is actually the Biosphère. The Biodôme is in the former Olympic Velodrome at the base of the tower of Olympic Stadium.

Yes of course. I know this, but my brain farted.

[The_Architect]

I would actually replace the Biosphere with Habitat 67.

Also awesome to see OCAD represented! Love it!

[M II A II R II K]

Emporis always hosted that Yugoslavia twin building connected in a weird way to be one of the world's strangest.

[Onward]

Originally Posted by Gresto

The Kansas City library is genius!

Couldn't agree more. Out of all of them, that's the one I just had to go back to and look at again.

[Nowhereman1280]

Originally Posted by Texan101

Couldn't agree more. Out of all of them, that's the one I just had to go back to and look at again.

Take another look:


dctc.edu

It's not even a building, it's a parking garage. Again, this is essentially just a mural covering up what would normally be a fugly parking garage for the very impressive Old library building (which is actually an old bank converted to a library). This is the actual library:


unews.com

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Ugh. Silly list. "Strange" is so subjective.

[meh_cd]

Originally Posted by M.K.

There is nothing wrong with most those buildings, neither strange. Orient Pearl is very beautiful and interesting architecture design. Elbe Philarmonie will never be finished. They stopped the conrstuction already because it is too complicated, too expensive and German people has no competence to futher do for just some violins to be played. The WC Toilet and the inversed houses here are the only protest strange constructions in my opinion. The rest is pretty different ok.

Oriental Pearl looks like something that was built in the 90s. I don't like it, but it certainly fits the time period.

[kcexpress69]

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

It's actually rather unimpressive in real life. That portion with the books on it is actually only a screen for the new parking garage next to the far more impressive Neo-classical building that houses the actual interior spaces of the library.

It's a clever way to screen a parking garage, but is still a parking garage screen. It's also made of some sort of laminated wood product or composite and might not age so well as a result.

I drive by there quite a bit. Never thought much of it till I saw this thread. I will say, however that the building the library is now in is much better than the previous building. It was a very ugly, boring building that now houses the Kansas City School District!! Both, the building and the KCSD need to be imploded and start over!!