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

Top 10 comic book cities
posted by Artw on Jul 13, 2009 - 45 comments

The Reas' previous house was destroyed in a winter storm - such are the perils of living on Unst - most northerly of the Shetland isles. On re-building the pensioner couple have constructed what they claim is the world's first occupied zero carbon emission house - using off the shelf materials. Here is a video interview with them and a few more details about the house. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo on May 11, 2009 - 8 comments

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

It's 1881. You're real estate speculator James Lafferty, and you've just bought a large parcel of empty, scrubby shoreside land just south of Atlantic City. Problem is, it's cut off from the AC streetcar line by a deep tidal creek. How do you entice potential buyers to make the trek over the inlet and look at your property? Build a giant elephant, of course. Capitalizing on the celebrity of P. T. Barnum's famous Jumbo, Lafferty built 65-foot tall Lucy the Elephant, the first of three giant elephants Lafferty built (followed by Cape May's Light of Asia and Coney Island's Elephantine Colossus). He even took out a patent on the very idea of buildings shaped like animals. Though threatened by decades of neglect and rot, the Save Lucy Committee began preservation efforts in 1970, moving her to her present site and giving her a complete restoration. [more inside]
posted by Miko on Jun 22, 2008 - 21 comments

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?
posted by Artw on Apr 28, 2008 - 12 comments

Eikongraphia - Browsable architecture design theory thingy.
posted by carter on Feb 26, 2008 - 3 comments

The Nautilus House is pretty awesome. [more inside]
posted by dersins on Feb 22, 2008 - 40 comments

Tiny Buildings - "a collection of tiny buildings handcrafted from business cards, packaging and other nice papers."
posted by dobbs on Dec 25, 2007 - 10 comments

How to wash your hands and ride the elevators in the new New York Times Building.
posted by Xurando on Dec 20, 2007 - 21 comments

American Ruins: a gallery of photgraphs by Chuck Hutchinson. "a gallery of houses, barns, automobiles and businesses that have become the ruins on the landscape of America."
posted by dersins on Nov 6, 2007 - 20 comments

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

An interview with Lebbeus Woods -- designer and illustrator of speculative futuristic landscapes and buildings. Woods just set up his own website, which has an amazing quantity of drawings, photographs, and text focusing on his lesser known projects [for those willing to deal with a frustrating flash interface and sound. It's better in IE than Firefox.] [more inside]
posted by salvia on Oct 6, 2007 - 10 comments

A Paternoster lift [wiki] is a cyclic elevator with "an endless chain of cabins moving at a moderate speed; some passing downward past a line of entrances and other cages moving upward past another set of openings. Passengers may embark or alight at any floor whenever they please, without delay. " (As seen on TV!) They're still in use in the the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and the UK among other places. (Via this list of interesting elevators.)
posted by dersins on Oct 4, 2007 - 58 comments

Illicit Ohio has a wide range of photos and essays of abandoned places in Ohio, from the Cincinnati subway system (yes, there really is was one, and it's been discussed here before), to various and sundry prisons, government installations, hotels, hosiptals, houses and more. And don't miss the old vs. new galleries, either.
posted by dersins on Aug 29, 2007 - 20 comments

Abandoned places: A satellite facility. A drag strip. A sports arena. A factory. A highway. A school. Another factory. An industrial park. A missile site. A church. A brewery. And much more at Abandoned But Not Forgotten. (Warning: Web 0.2 site with very large photos of variable quality...)
posted by dersins on Jul 26, 2007 - 42 comments

Helix — a 1D skyscraper with a single corridor. The principle is a cylindrical building with a helical shape for the floor. The slope of the floor is 1.5% (it rises by 1.5 cm every meter), thus hardly noticeable. The height of each ’storey’ is 3 meters, so that when you walk 200 meters along the corridor, you have walked a full circle, but you end up one ’storey’ above or below your starting point.
posted by psmealey on May 21, 2007 - 50 comments

Americas Favorite Architecture - The American Institute of Architecture lists its 150 most favorite buildings as ranked by its members. Zoom-able photos and building information herein. You can also rate your top five.
posted by Burhanistan on May 3, 2007 - 65 comments

Unintelligent Design. The History Images of Sze Tsung Leong. "Then there's the other type of history that is recorded in the fabric of cities. This includes the houses that are being destroyed; it has to do with the history of quotidian things, really, the layers of history that have slowly accumulated. The loss of this fabric the spaces and histories particular to different cities means that the particular cultural value and artistic qualities they contain, are lost." also here and here.
posted by arse_hat on Feb 6, 2007 - 8 comments

There are already some strange Soviet buildings. Gazprom intends to build these unusual skyscrapers in St. Petersburg. Maybe they will include caviar vending machines?
posted by nickyskye on Jan 18, 2007 - 25 comments

Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue - Cool photo essay about a beautiful building
posted by Afroblanco on Jan 28, 2006 - 20 comments

Kirkbride Buildings. Once state-of-the-art mental healthcare facilities, Kirkbride buildings have long been relics of an obsolete therapeutic method known as Moral Treatment. These massive structures were conceived as ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill in the latter half of the nineteenth century. AKA:The Kirkbride Plan. [more stuff inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Dec 29, 2005 - 21 comments

Action Squad – Urban Adventurers

"In a nutshell, Action Squad explores. This generally occurs late at night, to aid in avoiding other people, particularly those with badges and funny blue uniforms. We climb buildings, sneak into factories, crawl through all kinds of tunnels, spelunk old brewery caves, poke around abandoned buildings, and run across the rooftops."

Missions of the Action Squad are fully documented with descriptions, photographs (historical & intraoperative) and sometimes maps but always with a sense of wonder at the urban flotsam they enjoy exploring.
This is my particular favourite but poke around, there's a fair bit in this gem of a site worth exploring from the armchair. [via]
posted by peacay on May 24, 2005 - 27 comments

Tall Buildings (Flash required)
posted by riffola on Jul 28, 2004 - 19 comments

The Leo Masuda Architectonic Research Office Homepage.
posted by hama7 on Jun 12, 2004 - 4 comments

Kampung: 60 photographs of Singapore architecture.
posted by sgt.serenity on Apr 20, 2004 - 10 comments

arcspace. Modern architecture, by name, for you.
posted by the fire you left me on Feb 29, 2004 - 8 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

Future of Sky Scrapers? Is this the future of sky scrapers, or are they now irrelevant with the current threats that are presented? Would you work in this building?
posted by npost on Jan 29, 2003 - 15 comments

The New Yorker wonders whether the new Westin hotel at Times Square is the ugliest building in NYC. What do New Yorkers think? Is ugly architecture anything more than just poor business? What is the state of architecture in this country? (more)
posted by pejamo on Oct 8, 2002 - 45 comments

A Fruit Has Been Built. A unique architectural piece that pokes your senses in creative ways, is also good-humouredly called the "Durians" by local Singaporeans. Durians, or otherwise titled King of fruits, are beloved by millions of South East Asians. The spiky building, officially known as "Esplanade-theatres on the bay", started construction in 1996 and will open (flash) to the world on the 12th October 2002.
posted by taratan on Oct 6, 2002 - 12 comments

A Tale of Two Cities: Chicago and New York This exhibition of more than 150 black-and-white photographs represents a cross-section of the thousands of significant buildings that are protected by local landmark designation in Chicago and New York City. The story of how this came to pass is both as similar and as different as the cities themselves.
posted by vacapinta on Sep 7, 2002 - 3 comments

The World's Ugliest Buildings
posted by yertledaturtle on May 10, 2002 - 49 comments

Sacred Commerce? Funny, I walked daily to work past the World Trade Center, and have been in the Middle East more than once, but it never occured to me to connect the WTC with Islamic architecture until I read this.
posted by MidasMulligan on Dec 31, 2001 - 1 comment

Samuel Mockbee is my new hero. As the creator of Auburn University's Rural Studio and winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, he has his undergraduate students design and construct buildings. Not only are the structures they build attractive and functional, they are built in one of the poorest areas of the country, using discarded and recycled materials.
posted by Aaaugh! on Nov 29, 2000 - 2 comments

The latest troubles at Trump World Tower just reaffirms what the neighbors have been saying since day one.
posted by tamim on Sep 2, 2000 - 8 comments

Capitol Idea: Matt believes "all government capitols look phallic to somehow signify that the most important 'man' lives here." Having lived in the shadow of Florida's capitol for a few years, I have a better theory. These buildings are phallic because government's primary function is to screw people.
posted by mikewas on Mar 22, 2000 - 3 comments