Whole Tree Architecture - if you'd like a house built by pioneering architect Roald Gundersen, your first step might be to hike in your nearby woods to choose some young, wind-bent, and diseased "Charlie Brown" trees. Small diameter round trees have 150% the strength of milled lumber and twice the strength of steel in tension. Besides structural and environmental advantages, whole trees make for some beautiful and naturally sculptured environments. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 22, 2009 - 35 comments

Urban exploration has been featured here once or twice before, but Jim Griffioen's site photo-documenting his discoveries in and around Detroit deserves a look. Griffioen was recently interviewed [direct mp3 link] on the American Public Media radio program The Story. [more inside]
posted by item on Jul 25, 2009 - 14 comments

100 Abandoned Houses. A photo essay from Detroit-based photographer Kevin Bauman.
posted by dersins on Apr 3, 2009 - 71 comments

Unusual Life Dot Com: Unusual Homes. Amazing Architecture. Strange Places. Fascinating People.
posted by dersins on Oct 9, 2007 - 13 comments

Stone inhabitants and extraordinary houses of Prague. More at the Praha experience.
If you like this, you might also like fifty doors of Paris and San Francisco.
posted by plep on Jul 18, 2003 - 6 comments

I So Want This House It Hurts. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is up for sale. If price was no object and location wasn't a problem, where would you choose to really live? What architect, living or dead; what building, available or not, would you choose? [NYT reg. required for main link..]
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 31, 2003 - 44 comments