Standard churches don’t usually look like this, but then again, Leaf Chapel isn’t an ordinary church. Designed by Klein-Dytham Architecture, at the special request of a Japanese hotel-owner, the Leaf Chapel is located inside a very popular resort in the Japanese Alps. Its unusual design was cleverly thought through, because this chapel is as as much a business as it is a sacred place. People of all faiths come here to get married so the Leaf Chapel had to have an ecumenical design, with no identifying iconographies.  Risonare mountain resort has become even more popular after the addition of the 550-square foot Leaf Chapel.

A few months ago I wrote a post about the world’s tallest tower near Legoland Windsor, in England, but now it is forced to hand over the title to the new LEGO Tower in Vienna. Built by hundreds of children near Vienna‘s city-hall, the new world’s tallest LEGO tower ended up being 29,48 meters tall, beating the previous tower of “only” 29,03 meters. The LEGO tower in Vienna was built using a crane and several support wires that secured it against strong winds. After the record was certified by an official judge from The Guinness Book of Records, the LEGO Tower was dismantled. The Tower of Vienna was created to celebrate the festival “100 Years of Friends of Children“. Photo Credits

In the world of fashion Kate Moss was always worth her weight in gold, but now she really is gold…literally.  British artist Marc Quin, famous for works like “Allison Lapper pregnant“, “Sphinx” or “Self“, a bust of his head for which he used eight pints of his own blood, presented his latest masterpiece, “Siren” a 50 kg solid gold statue of international supermodel Kate Moss. The 1,5 million pounds statue is on display at the British Museum, in the Nereid Hall. A part of his latest collection, entitled Statuephilia, “Siren” depicts Kate Moss in a Yoga position and has already been named “the Aphrodite of our time“. Marc Quinn‘s “Siren” is said to be the largest gold statue created since the time of Ancient Egypt.

Creating art out of food is not always easy, and if that food happens to be sliced salami, well, I’d say you’d have your work cut out for you. But someone managed to create replicas of masterpieces like The Mona Lisa, using only different kinds of salami and baloney, and it turned out pretty good. The guests at this wedding seem to be enjoying it too, or perhaps they’re just really, really hungry. Food art is all about imagination, and this food-artist has a very rich one, that’s for sure. Photo Source

Well the last thing any of us would do is laying it all on the asphalt as a beautiful mosaic right? Stefan Sagmeister of Sagmeister Inc. did just that during the first edition of Biennale, in Amsterdam. Entitled “Obsessions make my life worse and my work better“, Sagmeister‘s work of art was made out of around 300,000  euro- cent coins set up on a 20×42 square meters surface. This intricate installation was a challenge to all passers-by, with so much money at stake, would people leave it alone and appreciate its beauty or would they just go for the money out of greed? After the show was over the complex art piece was simply sweeped away with a brush. Photo source

Helge Lundstrom is said to be the best apple artist in the world…I wonder if he’s the only one too? This man makes a different apple mosaic every year for the Apple Market Festival in Kivik, Sweden and each one is more beautiful than the other. Only problem I have is about all those wasted apples, just like the Orange Festival of Ivrea where tons of oranges go to waste, when they can all be donated to some poor country where people are dying of hunger. But, other than that, Helge Lundstrom’s apple art looks simply amazing.He uses more than 75,000 apples for each of his apple mosaics

What’s the weirdest thing you could possibly see in the desert? Sure, an iceberg or something, but you have to admit that ten half buried Cadillacs come pretty close. And when they’re all covered in graffiti, it just makes things even weirder. The Cadillac Ranch was created in 1974, in Amarillo, Texas by members of an art group called Ant Farm. It’s made up by 10 old Cadillac models dating from 1949 to 1963 and it means to symbolize a number of evolutions of the car line.  All the ten Cadillacs are tilted towards the west, at an angle corresponding to that of the Pyramids at Gyza. The Cadillac Ranch can be seen when driving on Highway 66

Designers from the Scandinavian firm Aurumania have created a limited series of 10 bikes made out of solid gold.  Each piece of every bike was created by hand and the whole thing decorated with 600 Swarovsky crystals. The bikes all come with a leather seats and horns and they each cost around 80,000 dollars. I’d buy one of these gold designer bicycles if I knew how to ride one and…if I could afford it.

The Big Picture is a project by British creative artist Helen Marshall who worked with specialists from PollyTiles to create what may be the world’s largest photo mosaic in central Birmingham. The idea behind The Big Picture was to create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands, where people donated over 110,000 photographs. The photo mosaic is a new record in terms of size, covering over 3 tennis courts. If you’re ever in Birmingham, you shouldn’t pass the opportunity of seeing The Big Picture photo mosaic unveiled at the city’s ThinkTank in Millenium Park, on August 23rd. The Big Picture

In Krasnaya Presnya Park, Moscow, a gallery of Russian ice-sculptures opened its gates for the first time. In an ice-museum of over 500 square meters the most popular samples of Russian culture were presented in ice. The facility where the sculptures were kept was cooled using the latest cooling technology, managing to keep the temperature below -10 degrees Celsius.

Well if one can create art out of bottle-caps I don’t see why corks can’t be used for the same purpose? It seems Albanian artist Saimir Strati feels the same way, since he has taken on the challenge of creating a 3D painting out of 300,000 wine-bottle corks. What you see in the photos is not the completed project, upon completion it will be a 96 square meter masterpiece depicting people playing guitar. This is not Strati’s first  unusual artwork, in the past he has gained a spot in the Guinness Boook of Records for the world’s largest toothpick mosaic in the world. It contained approximately 1 million toothpicks and it depicted some horses. So be on the look out for Saimir Strati, he’s one special artist. If you have a thing for cork, you might like to take a look at the cork costume

Frequently called the eight wonder of the world, Willard Wigan‘s micro art is indeed quite something. Some people can barely fit string through a pinhead, let alone create art on such a level.  Wigan creates famous figures on pin tips, pin heads, nails, matchsticks, anything particularly thin and small. He’s an amazing artist and his work speaks for itself.

Once every two years, the Grand Place, a central market in Brussles, Belgium becomes one of the largest flower gardens in the world. This year people could admire a beautiful flower carpet between the 14th and 17th of August, for those of you that missed it, there’s always two years from now. The flower carpet of Grand Place has a different model every time and it’s made out of roughly 700,000 begonias. This is definitely one of the must see- attractions of Brussels.

Here are some amazing-looking metal sculptures by Argentinian artist Facundo Huidobro. For more of his artworks visit chatarrasalvaje.com

Artist Jennifer Marsh, founder of the International Fiber Collaborative has just finished wrapping an abandoned gas-station in pieces of fabric from all-around the world. The whole project cost $29,000 and a part of the sum came from her own pocket. She’s now thinking of expanding the organization into other communities, not just Syracusw, New York and her future project will involve covering an abandoned grocery-store in recycled plastic.