The Water House in Lijiang, China, by Li Xiaodong Atelier.

It’s an old adage from the golden age of suburbia that “a man’s home is his castle,” but what if you’re not into castles? Perhaps you’d like a house that looks like the intake of a jet turbine? Or a home that appears to be floating on a bed of ephemeral orange light?

Houses have become architectural projects designed to reflect the unique personality of their resident(s). If a client has the resources then she or he can work closely with an architect to achieve that imagined perfect synergy of a human and her or his home. Many children imagine a “dream house,” and the core principle of that fantasy stays the same: a home perfectly suited to your identity and favorite activities. Eccentric French philosopher and academic Gaston Bachelard explored our intense psychological connection to our homes in his 1958 classic The Poetics of Space. Citing both psychoanalysis and poetry in equal measure, Bachelard argued that our homes occupy a special part of our psyche. According to him, we generate and experience profound mental associations with domestic spaces that stay with us our entire lives.

In the spirit of unconventional thinking (and design!) we present our top ten eccentric houses.

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It’s a classic counter-cultural exercise to observe the city and try to find new messages and ideas in its systems and forms. Walter Benjamin’s flâneur did it, the Situationists did it, and countless avant-garde artists followed suit until the activity became a relatively standard aspect of contemporary art and—suitably so—architecture. When artist Lisa Rienermann looked at the city, she saw … the alphabet (and some punctuation marks too). Rienermann has created a rather ingenious font composed entirely of photos of the sky cropped by the tops of city buildings. Click through for more.

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Product Lounge of Microsoft’s Briefing Center in Wallisellen, Switzerland. Designed by COASToffice. All photos: David Franck Photography

As interactive devices fill up more and more of our spaces, will architects design differently? Will they treat interiors the same or will a fresh approach be required?

It’s coming sooner than you think. Just recently the University of Washington reported that it could use a WiFi signal to recognize hand gestures made anywhere in a house, meaning you could control your household electronics with a flick of the wrist. We’re already seeing an explosion of sensors and touch surfaces (not to mention personal visual devices) coming to the market. Much like television supplanting radio and the fireplace, these devices may cause subtle but significant changes to how we use spaces. Consequently, will how you use your tablet and motion sensor drive how your home or office is designed?

So when we heard that Microsoft had recently completed a new Briefing Center in Switzerland replete with interactive Kinect and Surface products, our interest was certainly piqued. See what architects at COASToffice have designed for Microsoft after the jump!

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William Lamson
Solarium, 2012
Steel, glass, sugar, plants
10′ 10″ x 8′ 11″ x 10′ 3 ³⁄₈ in. (330.2 x 271.8 x 313 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Pierogi Gallery

© Storm King Art Center

Foodies and design geeks are linked by a closely tuned attention to trend-making and aesthetics, which explains all the edible architectural models, installations, and photo projects popping up all over the place. These two realms come crashing once again in William Lamson‘s Solarium—an ecstatic collision of sugar and glass. Part greenhouse, part meditation retreat, Solarium was designed for the Storm King Art Center’s 2012 Light and Landscape show, which also saw entries from the likes of Anish Kapoor and Donald Judd (Solarium has now been de-installed).

The pavilion was made by caramelizing sugar at different temperatures to produce different tones ranging from yellow to brown. The sugar was then sandwiched between panes of glass to produce a gloriously glowing house on a hill. The pavilion serves as a greenhouse for citrus plants, while in the summer months 5×8 foot panels on each face can be opened to let in fresh air. The true success of the project rests not in its concept, but rather on the final affective triumph reminiscent of stained glass.

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Story by Karen Wong, Deputy Director of New Museum and CoFounder of Ideas City

In the Golden Age of, let’s say, the Renaissance, any artist worth his salt knew how to draft, sketch, and draw.

Five hundred years on we’ve continually redefined what constitutes “art,” and drafting is no longer a prerequisite of the profession. Yet architecture is different. Even with the advent of dozens of computer programs that, if mastered, could replace the auteur’s sketchbook, architects have stayed the course and fundamentally believe the act of drawing is a necessity in the making of architecture.

So it’s no surprise that a recently launched Kickstarter project, aptly named A:LOG, caught my eye. It’s a notebook designed by three architectural students from Columbia University’s GSAAP, the same school where this year’s graduating student body rebelled against its yearbook by tossing the facsimile out of Avery Hall’s windows when it turned out to be an app.

The enterprising trio—Paul, Rich, and Ebbe—have scoured design manuals, drawn 112 items that people actually use, and assembled key knowledge into 30 handy pages of “Cliff Notes” for architects. The travel-sized A:LOG covers design information (line weights, font sizes); building elements (door and window heights); technical guidelines (egress, ADA, structure); and architectural references (magazines and websites). An additional 130 pages in various dot grid scales make up the bulk of this sketchbook—and to boot it comes in both Imperial and Metric versions. Read more.

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Watch Dogs, from Ubisoft, is set in a near-future Chicago where everyone and everything is hackable. Image: via blog.us.playstation.com

If you could hack a city, would you? That’s what Watch Dogs, slated for release in November, asks the players as they enact vigilante justice on the streets of Chicago.

Watch Dogs is similar to Grand Theft Auto in that both host open urban environments that players navigate while completing plot-driven missions or simply exploring at their leisure. However, that’s where the similarity ends. Watch Dog’s protagonist, Aiden Pearce, can hack into Chicago’s fictional Central Operating System (CtOS), a supercomputer that controls urban infrastructure and serves as a hub for every smart device in the city. A web of wireless connections are traced through the air to guide the player’s actions, possibly with deadly effect. Read on to learn more!

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If you’re searching for some unconventional design inspiration this week, mosey over to a little tumblr called Ugly Belgian Houses (or don’t, depending on how you interpret the blog’s sardonic title and commentary). You won’t find any shiny renderings of slick contemporary designs here—only Instagram-filtered imagery of some of the most rule-breaking architectural gems this side of the Internet. Zany roof structures, exaggerated ornamentation, mismatched cladding, and downright inexplicable design decisions abound in this terse archive of bizarre Belgian residences. This is architecture at its most unselfconscious, in which dreams and visions are unhesitatingly constructed into reality. We’ve collected some of our favorites below.

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Until June 9, tourists and architecture aficionados will only have to make their way to Park Avenue to behold New York City’s most storied landmarks. The Flatiron, the Empire State, the Citicorp, and the Chrysler buildings, among others, are marching down the famed Manhattan mall, though not in their usual forms (as you probably guessed). Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea has created scaled down replicas of these familiar facades and elongated, twisted, and coiled them up into whimsical sculptures that speak of the metropolis and its incredible resilience. More after the jump.

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Guess what we have: pics from last night’s Pritzker gala in Boston! Hundreds attended the black-tie ceremony, held this year at the I.M. Pei-designed JFK Presidential Library & Museum. The star of the evening was prize-winner Toyo Ito, of course, who delivered a measured speech about how cities have become “artificial environments” that are disconnected from nature. “My work has always been about tearing down that wall,” he said.

Ito, who comes across as very humble and sincere, spent considerable time thanking nearly everyone in the room: the Pritzker clan, jurors, his current and former employees (including 2010 Pritzker laureate Kazuyo Sejima, who sported a kimono for last night’s event). His speech was preceded by remarks from Thomas Pritzker and the architectural patron Lord Peter Palumbo—and, earlier in the evening, a cocktail reception in the building’s soaring glass pavilion overlooking Dorchester Bay. Click through to see photos!

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Not all seaside architecture need be weathered and worn. England may be famous for its salt-pelted beachfront villages, but the isle’s traditional vacation spots have begun awakening to the sleeker charms of modern design. No doubt we owe some of this progress to the evangelism of the pop philosopher Alain de Botton, who brought modern materials like concrete, glass, and aluminum to the Suffolk seashore through his starchitect-studded vacation rental outfit, Living Architecture.

Before de Botton began his campaign for modern architecture tourism, the Manchester-based practice Arca Architects parked a sleek steel and glass café on the beach in Morecambe, a once-thriving seaside resort that had fallen on hard times. With its pod-like steel wrapper and ample glass, Arca’s design for the Silver Café has more in common with an airport terminal than the old stonework and masonry of nearby structures. So how did the firm build this modern gem in a land of clapboard and crumbling stone? Read more!

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