Bizarre buildings Part 1: Weird, Cool, Techy, Arty

Beauty of the bizarre in architecture tells us how laterally the human mind can think

The thing that makes architecture a true fine art is ‘weirdness’. Like painting or sculpture, a truly innovative building that wows us with its idiosyncratic design and construction makes us sit up and take note of what must have been going through the architect’s mind while she or he conceived of something so outlandishly beautiful. In fact, lateral thinking that goes into creating an elevation gives architecture its true charishma. It isn’t just about following the beaten track. Here is a list of some interesting and out of the world creations that are baffling in their design and execution. There are so many such buildings around the world, but when you add scale to the wierdness it becomes something truly extraordinary. The buildings are in not particular order, so pick what you think is the weirdest. 

In the next part of this series, watch out for some skull-cracking concepts. Watch this space next week.

Device to Root Out Evil

This work by American artist Dennis Oppenheim has had a history of controversy. With it’s steeple buried in the ground, it makes a clear remark regarding religion. First exhibited at the 1997 Venice Biennale, it was later moved to Harbour Green Park in Vancouver, Canada in 2005. Not surprisingly, the city parks committee voted to remove the sculpture, and at the time of this post it was installed at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada. In September of 2004, John L Hennessy, President of Stanford University, made the unprecedented decision to reject Device to Root Out Evil, a sculpture that had been commissioned by the President’s Panel on Art by the American sculptor Dennis Oppenheim.  Hennessy feared a potential controversy because the sculpture is an inverted church.  In a statement, Hennessy said the piece was “not appropriate” for the campus. The artist maintains that his interest is in exploring the dialogue between architecture and sculpture.  Device to Root Out Evil “withdraws functionality from architecture.” To those reading religion into the work, he answers that “Turning the church upside down makes it more aggressive, but not blasphemous.

Forest Spiral

The Hundertwasser house ‘Waldspirale’ (Forest Spiral) was built in Darmstadt between 1998 and 2000. Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the famous Austrian architect and painter, is widely renowned for his revolutionary, colourful architectural designs which incorporate irregular, organic forms, eg onion-shaped domes. The structure with 105 apartments wraps around a landscaped courtyard with a running stream. Up in the turret at the southeast corner, there is a restaurant, including a cocktail bar.

The Longaberger Basket Building

The Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio might just be a strangest office building in the world. The 180,000-square-foot building, a replica of the company’s famous market basket, cost $30 million and took two years to complete. Many experts tried to persuade Dave Longaberger to alter his plans, but he wanted an exact replica of the real thing.

Cubic Houses, Rotterdam

The original idea of these cubic houses came about in the 1970s. Piet Blom has developed a couple of these cubic houses that were built in Helmond.The city of Rotterdam asked him to design housing on top of a pedestrian bridge and he decided to use the cubic houses idea. The concept behind these houses is that he tries to create a forest by each cube representing an abstract tree; therefore the whole village becomes a forest.

House Attack

Erwin Wurm (born 1954) is an Austrian artist born in Bruck an der Mur / Styria. This bizarre structure is another one of his architectural expressions that is steeped in humour. 

Solar Furnace 

A solar furnace is a structure that uses concentrated solar power to produce high temperatures, usually for industry. Parabolic mirrors or heliostats concentrate light (Insolation) onto a focal point. The temperature at the focal point may reach 3,500 °C (6,330 °F), and this heat can be used to generate electricity, melt steel, make hydrogen fuel or nanomaterials. The largest solar furnace is at Odeillo in the Pyrénées-Orientales in France, opened in 1970. It employs an array of plane mirrors to gather sunlight, reflecting it onto a larger curved mirror.

Nord L B Building

This building in Hanover, Germany, occupies an entire city block and serves as an important linking element between the various activities which define the neighbouring quarters of the city: retail, commercial, residential, cultural, sport and leisure. Through varying heights a building emerges which gently integrates itself in the existing fabric of the city. 

Hole House

Officially known as the ‘Inversion’ project it was the work of two Houston sculptors Dan Havel and Dean Ruck who were offered the building to work with for a short period of time prior to its demolition to make way for a new Art League Houston building.  Havel and Ruck created a large funnel-like vortex beginning from the west wall adjacent to Montrose Blvd. The exterior skin of the houses was peeled off and used to create the narrowing spiral as it progressed eastward through the small central hallway connecting the two buildings and exiting through a small hole into an adjacent courtyard.

Paucescu House: HQ, Association of Architects

The building is the headquarters of the association of architects from Romania. The old building was called ‘Paucescu House’ (built in the second half of the nineteenth century) and in 1914, with the last arrangements at the Royal Foundation (1914), part of Paucescu house was demolished. Thereby, the building area was reduced considerably, but even in the new form, it remained a remarkable one. During the communist regime, the Paucescu house sheltered the Directorate of State Security. After 2000, the Union of Architects came into possession of the building. Everyone expected the palace Paucescu to regain its brilliance by restoring original style. What happened then is a different story. There was the question of the total demolition of the old building. Instead, the solution was not a restoration, a reconstruction, nore a preservation but simply keeping a piece of the old building and incorporate it into a new approach.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross

The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Roman Catholic chapel built into the mesas of Sedona, Arizona, which was inspired and commissioned by sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude. Richard Hein was chosen as project architect, and the design was executed by architect August K. Strotz, both from the firm of Anshen & Allen. The chapel is built on Coconino National Forest land; the late Senator Barry Goldwater assisted Staude in obtaining a special-use permit. The construction supervisor was Fred Courkos, who built the chapel in 18 months at a cost of US$300,000. The chapel was completed in 1956.

Stone House

This amazing building Stone House was built in Fafe mountains in Portugal. Two stones connected together have made a strange but beautiful-looking house.

Errante Guest House

There is not much info about this bizarre Errante Guest House built in Chile but it looks absolutely amazing and unusual.

Aragon Pavilion

The Aragon Pavilion has been designed by Olano y Mendo Arquitectos, from Zaragoza. It covers an area of 2,500 m2 and is 25 metres high. The pavilion is spread over a basement floor, ground floor or enclosure, first floor, second floor and terrace. Aragon Pavilion’s interior exhibition space is (without the square/enclosure) is 2,774 m2 (+135 m2 in the cavities of the columns). The pavilion takes the form of a typical Aragonese wicker basket achieved by intertwined panels of glass and micro-concrete with white glass fibre, providing the interior with a large quantity of natural light.

The Eden Project

The Eden Project is a visitor attraction in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world. The project is located in a reclaimed Kaolinite pit, located 1.25 mi (2 kilometres) from the town of St Blazey and 5 kilometres (3 mi) from the larger town of St Austell, Cornwall. The complex is dominated by two huge enclosures consisting of adjoining domes that house thousands of plant species, and each enclosure emulates a natural biome. The domes consist of hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal, inflated, plastic cells supported by steel frames. The first dome emulates a tropical environment, and the second a Mediterranean environment.

La Pedrera 

This undulating beast is another madcap Gaudí masterpiece, built in 1905-10 as a combined apartment and office block. Formally called Casa Milà, after the businessman who commissioned it, it is better known as La Pedrera (the Quarry) because of its uneven grey stone facade, which ripples around the corner of Carrer de Provença.

Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice

A monumental and beautiful building in Nice, France, which holds a host of famous works of both French and international modern artists. The design of this building is considered legendary because it appears so appropriate for what it houses.