No, you didn’t read the title wrong.  330 square feet hasn’t stopped Hong Kong architect Gary Chang from expanding his tiny apartment into a shocking 24-room space.  How is that possible?  Are the individual rooms less than 14 square feet each?  The strange answer is…sort of.

Gary decided to make the most of his space by implementing a sliding panel system that makes his apartment pretty much whatever he wants it to be.  Journalists and home enthusiasts have called the apartment “The Domestic Transformer” and the home was featured in The New York Times.

Check out the video:

Chang is obviously some sort of mad genius – the fact that he was able to design this setup and execute it speaks to his ingenuity and industry.  There are many, many tiny apartments in Hong Kong – and Chang is the first to think of this sort of solution to the problem of limited space.

The home is also considered ecologically friendly.  Chang has come up with a way to save on heating and cooling, and because his apartment gets pretty constant natural light he barely ever turns on the lights.

If we’re going to get technical about it, Chang’s apartment isn’t really 24 rooms – it’s really just an apartment with 24 possible configurations.

Chang has lived in this particular space since he was a young man.  The building was built in the 1960′s and when Chang first lived there he lived there with his mother and three sisters.  His father was a waiter in the United States.  Amazingly enough, during those days they also rented the third tiny partitioned bedroom to a tenant to help with the rent payment.

When Chang took possession of the apartment he began a lengthy four-renovation project that cost more than $200,000 and resulted in the remarkable apartment he lives in today.  It’s guys like this that make it so fun to write for this website!

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If there weren’t already enough reasons to visit Barcelona, Spain, now you have another one.  Casa Batllo is situated at 43 Passeig de Gracia in the Illa de la Discordia in Barcelona, and it is open for tours to the lucky traveler.

The structure itself was built in 1877, but remodeled and finished in 1906 by Antoni Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol.  Gaudi, who was born in 1852 and died in 1926, was a very creative and unconventional architect who fought through the initial ridicule and judgment of his peers to create his own special visions.

Casa Batllo, also called “The House of Bones” or Casa dels Ossos, makes use of sculpted stone and mosaic to create a totally unique exterior.

The roof is arched like the ridged fin of some strange fish or dinosaur, and one legend says that the turret and cross on top stand for Saint George’s sword – which of course he used to kill the dragon.

The roofline of Casa Batllo

The man who commissioned the building was a rich aristocrat named Josep Batlo.

As for the interior of the structure, Batllo himself lived in the building for a while – the first floor apartment is included in the tour.  Batllo and his family lived on the first and second floors of the building, and they rented out the upper floors to residential tenants.

It only costs 17.80 Euros per person to tour this historic structure.  That includes an audio guided tour and can observe the grandeur and charm of this true work of art.

We don’t usually delve into celebrity news and scoops, but when I saw the specs on Perry Farrell’s Venice, CA home that went up for sale several months ago, I know I just had to write it up here.  The home sold on May 25, so unfortunately you can’t count on me for the latest news about homes for sale (at least not yet) but the founder of Lollapalooza and front man of Janes Addiction’s house is far too cool not to tell you about.

First off, there’s the exterior.  It’s hard to believe that it used to be a standard post-war California bungalow, because this house’s exterior is the furthest thing from that.  It’s totally black, with a barrel-curved roof (and of course, the ceiling inside is curved as well) and it looks very, I don’t know, black and barrel-like.  And shiny.

Well, shiny in parts.  The original listing said that the “rock musician” took advantage of the Southern California weather, and Farrell has always been a bid of an environmentalist, so it wouldn’t surprise me if this dark exterior has something to do with solar heat and a wicked-efficient indoor heating and cooling setup.  In addition, there is also one whole wall that slides open (like a sliding glass door) so that the indoors can incorporate some outdoors.  There is also a rooftop deck.

The first floor of the house features an open floor plan.

Open floor plan with a barrel ceiling

The master bath has a sunken tub (and by sunken we mean directly in the floor) and cool floating sinks.  Two vanities are key, no matter if you’re a rock star or not.

The property also features a three-car garage, a rock and cactus garden.  One drawback?  Laundry in the garage.  Even the wives of rock stars (and the rock stars themselves) have to schelp to the garage to do the wash.

Either way, it’s a pretty cool house, and I bet you’re sorry you didn’t know to save up $1.425 million to buy it.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

Do you like learning about celebrity homes?  If so, I’d be happy to find some more for you.  Comment below!

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.    It had no plumbing, no electricity, and Leda says it was the best home she’d ever had – they called it their “Winter Palace.”

They lived in their “Winter Palace” for the next five years while they built the main building that would be Eliphante, and the surrounding buildings, one of which would be called Hippodome, named this because it looks like a hippopotamus rising out of a body of water.  Livant lives in the Hippodome now – Kahn died a few years ago from a form of dementia.  The Hippodome has a phone and running water and electricity, but no bathroom.  Livant showers in a shower house that is solar-powered (and is pretty much just a hose in a shack), and if she needs to use the restroom she does it in the outhouse, or sometimes right out in the open.  The property is fairly secluded, and is only accessible across a stream.  Sometimes the stream is low enough that a car can just drive across it.  Other times, you have to take a canoe.

Their story is one of magic and tragedy – romance and heartbreak.  Livant was a suburban mother of two, married to a a psychologist.  She dabbled in painting and drawing, but lived her suburban life and volunteered in the community.  When her kids were a little older (one in college, the other in high school), Livant and her husband went on vacation to Cape Cod.  That’s where Livant’s whole life turned upside down.

Michael Kahn was a painter, ten years younger than Livant, and she fell for him immediately.  She left her husband and her kids, and moved in with Kahn, taking housecleaning jobs to support them.  All he ever wanted to do was paint.  When they moved to Arizona they built and when he wasn’t building he was painting.  Livant blossomed as an artist, and learned to weave as well as developed her painting skills.   They were happy together.

The house that was born of their union is part madness, part magic.  It is made of found objects and driftwood and any other thing they could find to build it.  They have mosaic tile work that used salvaged tiles from someone’s kitchen remodel.  They’ve made interesting use of AstroTurf.

Though they started building in 1979, Eliphante &  Hippodome and everything around them was consistently a work-in-progress.  In 1987 Eliphante LTD was formed – a non-profit art company – and in 1994 the Smithsonian listed it with their Save Outdoor Sculpture movement.  The property is in a state of disarray – in need of about $30000 worth or repairs.  Livant doesn’t have the money, and Kahn wasn’t able to secure a grant before he died.  Let’s hope that someone comes in to do what needs to be done to preserve this artistic treasure.

Entrance - the central curved beam looks like an elephant's trunk

Interior shot of Eliphante

Ms. Livant

ceiling and ceiling fan - mylar decor

photo by Baron Moe

This palatial summer home was built by Amir al-Mumenin al-Mutawakkil ‘Ala Allah Rab ul-Alamin Imam Yahya bin al-Mansur Bi’llah Muhammad Hamidaddin, Imam and Commander of the Faithful.  Why don’t we call him Imam for short?

Imam was the King of Yemen from 1926 to 1948, when he was assassinated.  We don’t go too far into politics or anything here on YLW, but apparently he was a pretty fair and nice guy, and he had 14 sons, so they were probably pretty sad.

Back to Dar Al-Hajar, though, because is that a beautiful place or what?  Imam had the place constructed as a summer home, and it was constructed on an already-existing prehistoric structure.  This particular valley that Dar Al-Hajar overlooks is a fertile ancient land that is talked about in rock drawings, for Pete’s sake.  Scholars speculate that the old construction on top of the mountain where Dar Al-Hajar was built was older than recorded history.  That’s, needless to say, pretty darn cool.

The structure itself is 7 stories tall, with open courtyards and little pools everywhere.  It has 35 rooms and the stairs look like they were built into the rocks.  They probably were.  The entrance has a 700-year old tree in it.  Even though Imam had the place built in the 1930′s, it looks like a place completely out of time.  A place of beauty and wonder that I’m sure his 14 sons enjoyed – from ducking in and out of the courtyards to exploring the caves beneath (unless the caves were really used for corpses, as rumors say).

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.”

Drivers in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston TX had a surprise in store with the Inversion Tunnel House, a temporary artwork project which turned two homes scheduled for demolition into a warped work of art with a an apparent vortex through the property!

Art League artists, Havel and Ruck, converted the dwellings into an apparent whole house but with a twist – a vortex through the middle of the homes which gives the impression of a twister hitting the homes from the side.  Using existing wood and materials, they created the appearance of the side of the dwelling being sucked through to the other side, but there’s no danger of being whisked away as if you’re small enough, you can crawl through the vortex to the other side of the property. Even for “larger” viewers, the artwork presented a cool visual image.

The outside of the homes, which had been used to exhibit art for the last 30 years, were peeled away and replaced in a contracting spiral which progressed through the outer shell of the buildings clear through to the other side.  The effect was a truly mind bending piece of art which while looking visually stunning,  also allowed the observer to get inside the building in a very different way compared to simply walking through a door.

In this instance, art is merely fleeting as the property and artwork were demolished in 2005 to make way for the new Art League building which now occupies the plot.  Nevertheless, we still have the photographs of a unique piece of art.

photo by Nick Douglas