My first apartment was an efficiency apartment with lovely 11 foot ceilings but a total of about 500 square feet.  I thought it was tiny.  The kitchen was part of the bedroom, and ran along one wall with a refrigerator, sink, stove and two cabinets.  I couldn’t cook without making my sheets smell like whatever [...]

We’ve heard of people living in trees, people living in caves, and even more unconventional housing, but here is a new one that is really cool – but cramped.  Airplane homes! We read about this on a website that is one of our faves.  Airplane living would be a little restrictive – sure.  The square [...]

A short train ride from Tokyo will take you to the city of Matsumoto, and to Matsumoto Castle.  One of Japan’s most stunning castles, Matsumoto Castle (also called Matsumotojo) was built during the Sengoku peroid – which is dubbed the Warring States period.  It was a time of conflict in Japan that stretched from the [...]

The Hundertwasserhaus (of Hundertwasserhaus) has become a cultural landmark not just in Vienna where it is located, but for the entire country of Austria.  This is despite the property only being built in the early 1980’s.  The building was the brainchild of academic architects, Professor Joseph Krawina and Peter Pelikan who conceived a property made [...]

Obviously, we love it when an architect has an imagination.  Terry Brown, a pretty famous architect, had a great big imagination – not just for the homes he designed for others, but for the home he made for himself.  It’s called The Mushroom House (though some people call it The Tree House) and it’s located [...]

In 1979, Michael Kahn and Leda Livant moved to a rural three-acre plot of land in Cornville, Arizona.  Allowed to stay on the property rent-free, Kahn and Livant started building what would become Eliphante immediately, living in an 8′ x 10′ wooden shack that Michael had thrown up to keep them safe during the winter.    [...]

Home designers may focus on the setting for their designs but the ideal for ecologically sound development is simply minimizing or completely negating the impact of development. Making the house “disappear” by blending the development into the surrounding landscape is one design development finding a degree of credibility after a shaky start. Painting existing development [...]

The World’s Tallest Log Cabin – The Wooden Skyscraper photo by the constant skeptic He is Nikolai Sutyagin.  He is a man who has seen it all.  Well, if not “all”, he’s seen quite a lot.  He was born and raised in a lowly communal flat in Arkhangelsk, Russia.  That’s in the northern part of [...]

photo by by Dizzy Atmosphere Smith Tower was built in 1914, and named after the guy from Smith Corona -  you know, typewriters and guns?  His name was Lyman Cornelius Smith and he set out to build the tallest building in Seattle.  That sort of went out the window when they built the Space Needle, [...]

Dar Al-Hajar is open to the public now as a sort of museum, though the Yemen travel website says that its “only jewel is the building itself.”