The Russian city of Sochi is known as a popular seaside destination and for having hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. But what most people don’t know about the seaside city is that it is home to a special type of residential complexes – so-called “Russian Favelas” made up of Soviet-era car garages converted into 3, 4 even 5-storey homes.

Having a garage built into a house or apartment building isn’t unusual at all, but while in the US they are considered annexes to the main building, in the Russian city of Sochi, it’s the other way around. The garage is the main building upon which owners have built several storey residential annexes which they then rent out to migrants or families too poor to afford conventional homes. In order to avoid having to register these bizarre residential buildings as actual houses and paying higher taxes, owners maintain the ground floor as garages, preferring instead to build as many storeys on top of them as legally possible to maximize their profits.

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A farmer from Southern China’s Jianxi Province managed to move his entire house 40 meters away from the site of a road construction site, by using an impressive system of wooden sleepers and winches.

Gao Yiping had completed work on his three-storey house in Zhouxi Town in 2014, and he and his family had only lived in it for just over a year when local authorities notified him that it was standing right in the middle of a new road construction site and needed to be demolished. The state would offer some compensation, but Gao, who had spent around 1 million yuan ($160,000) and several years building his dream home, just couldn’t bare the thought of seeing it demolished so soon. So, last year, he started searching for an alternative.

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The tiny house movement has taken off over the past decade as urban developers have had to find creative solutions to soaring property prices worldwide. James Law Cybertecture of Hong Kong has joined this trend with their newly released Opod Tube House, made from repurposed concrete pipe.

Hong Kong, one of the most populous cities on the planet, has been especially hard hit as home prices have shattered historical records for 12 straight months this past year. According to the Bangkok Post, an apartment sold this past November for HK 32,060 (USD 6,915) per square foot, making it the most expensive apartment per square foot in all of of Asia. This trend has forced over 200,000 people into tiny partitioned apartments, averaging no more than 62 square feet, and some are only able to afford individual caged beds. Government data shows a 9% increase in the number of households living in “inadequate housing,” including partitioned flats and industrial buildings.

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If you’re a diehard vegetarian who can’t bear the smell of cooked meat, or even the thought of living near someone who likes to consume meat, you’ll soon be able to move into a vegetarian-only apartment complex in Russia.

Veda Village, an ongoing construction project in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Russia, was designed for vegetarians looking to practice a healthy and ethical lifestyle in a community of like-minded people. The first and most important requirement to buy or rent an apartment here is to be a vegetarian. Clients will undergo interviews with sales agents, and if they fail to convince them that they are true vegetarians, their application will get denied. But a meat-free diet is not the only thing required to earn a place in Veda Village. According to developers, smoking and the consumption of alcohol in the residential complex are also prohibited.

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A family in Forest Hill, Toronto, has taken their neighbors to court for copying the design of their multi-million dollar house when renovating their property, thus decreasing the value of their own home. They are asking for $2.5 million in damages.

It turns out you can’t just copy design elements of a house you like without suffering the consequences. Barbara Ann and Eric Kirshenblatt learned that the hard way three years ago, when they were taken to court by their neighbors, Jason and Jodi Chapnick, whose home they had allegedly used as inspiration when renovating their own property. The Chapnicks claimed that the defendants had fixed up their house to look “strikingly similar” to theirs, including using matching stonework the same shade of blue. They were asking for $1.5 million in damages, $20,000 in statutory copyright damages, $1 million in punitive damages, and for the defendants to change the look of their house.

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In the town of Ratomka, five kilometers from the Belorussian capital of Minsk, there is a house so spooky that some people try to avoid walking past it at all costs, especially at night. With skeletal hands coming out of the stone fence, devils decorating the roof and dozens of black skulls covering a domed structure on the property, the scariest house in Belarus is definitely a sight to behold.

Photos of the spooky house in Ratomka recently went viral in Belarus, with most people praising the owner for the bold artistic design. However, the only reason that the house even became famous in the first place was because people living in its vicinity had been complaining that it is too spooky. Some of them even filed complaints to the local authorities about it, claiming that the devils and skulls were scaring children and even adults walking by after dark, but they haven’t done anything about it yet.

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For 150 lucky preschoolers in Moscow, Russia, every day is a fairy tale. Instead of the usual kindergarten, they go to the Castle of Childhood, a real-life fantasy castle where they can play and live out their dreams of being princes and princesses.

The Castle of Childhood is often called the coolest-looking kindergarten in the world, and for good reason. It’s an amazing complex consisting of a large, colorful medieval castle and numerous play areas, including the usual swings and slides, as well as several playhouses, a soccer field, running track and flower gardens. The castle itself houses all kinds of wondrous areas designed to keep children busy and entertained at all times.

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Yu Ermei, and 86-year-old woman from Jingdezhen, Eastern China, has spent around $900,000 and five years of her life building a “palace” completely decorated with ceramic pieces. Most people consider her insane for spending so much time and money on this project, but she says that her life would be incomplete without it.

When Yu came up with the idea for her unique porcelain palace, six years ago, her family thought she had become senile, but she tried to explain that this was her life’s dream. Jingdezhen is considered “China’s porcelain capital” and having lived here since age 12, the woman wanted to leave something behind in honor of the city that had shaped her existence. She had worked in the ceramics business for most of her life, first as an apprentice in a porcelain workshop, then as a worker in two state-owned factories, before gaining enough experience to open her own kiln and porcelain factory, which ended up making her a sizable fortune. This palace would be her way of giving back to Jingdezhen and a tribute to ceramics.

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Photos of a five-storey building in the Chinese city of Chongqing have been going viral on social media, for the simple fact that the building in question has a flat roof that also doubles as a road that cars actually drive on.

Before we go into details about this particular architectural oddity, it’s worth mentioning that Chongqing has a reputation for unusual architecture and infrastructure. Its terrain is mainly made up of hill slopes, and this lack of flat building space has basically forced architects and urban planners to think outside the box in order to come up with feasible solutions. Some of their most famous creations include a sprawling road interchange with 15 ramps going in eight different directions, 13-storey-high pedestrian bridges and the world-famous apartment building that has a train passing straight through it.

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Walking through the picturesque village of Kupino, in Russia’s Belgorod region, the last thing you would expect to see is a large wooden replica of Sir Francis Drake’s legendary galleon, the Golden Hind. And yet, that’s exactly what a local carpenter has been building on top of his small workshop.

Growing up on the coast of Crimea, close to a naval base, Valeriy Vasilevich Kiku dreamed of one day building his own ship and going on a long voyage around the world. Along with other boys in the village, he would spend hours just watching the ships sailing in and out of port, and fantasying about life as a sailor. He never got to fulfill his dream, as he went to study at the Agricultural Institute and became an agronomist, but he never lost his passion for naval engineering.

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When they hear the word “Styrofoam”, most people think about disposable food containers or packaging material, but for one Japanese modular home manufacturer, it is the building material of the future. Its increasingly popular Styrofoam dome houses are highly earthquake-resistant, super cheap and quick to build, and have very high thermal insulating properties. What’s not to like?

Japan Dome House has been selling Styrofoam houses in Japan for the last 15 years, but it was last year that demand for the ultra light housing skyrocketed. In April 2016, Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed 49 people and injured another 3,000. Over 44,000 people were evacuated from their homes, after they had collapsed or caught fire, with thousands of them still living in temporary housing. Structural damage to conventional buildings was reported both in Kumamoto and the neighboring Oita prefecture, but one place that didn’t suffer any damage was Kyushu’s Village Zone, a housing complex made up of 480 closely-packed dome-shaped houses built by Japan Dome House.

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As man’s best friends, dogs deserve the best in life, and when it comes to housing, a UK company is ready to offer them just that. Hecate Verona is all set to launch the world’s first line of luxury dog mansions, with the most expensive models costing up to $200,000.

Hardwood floors made from beech, oak and larch, walls, columns and balconies carved from marble and dolomite, indoor and outdoor lighting, automated food and water systems, treat dispensers, TV and sound system, these are just some of the things you can expect when paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a luxury dog house for your beloved, pampered pet. They are the best pet homes money can buy, but with prices starting at around $40,000 and reaching up to $200,000 for the high-end models, you’re going to have to spend a lot of it.

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Constructed in 1970, the Seoul Station overpass connected the eastern and western halves of the South Korean capital for over three decades. Closed in 2015, due to safety concerns, the iconic suspended highway was reopened this month, as a pedestrian sky garden.

The old overpass was created as a solution to the growing traffic congestion in Seoul, and eventually became a symbol of the Asian country’s economic growth in the 1970s. However, concerns regarding its safety were first raised by experts during the 1990s, prompting the local government to conduct periodic inspections. In 2012, engineers reported that the 1,024-meter-long structure could only support heavy traffic for three more years, and the city announced that it was going to be demolished by 2015. However, in 2014, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, came up with a different plan.

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Santos Churata has been a fan of the Transformers universe since early childhood. Now a licensed home builder in the Bolivian city of El Alto, the 34-year-old uses his passion for autobots and decepticons as inspiration for the design of eye-catching houses for the rich.

The city of El Alto, located at 4,070 meters above sea level, has become well-known for a unique architectural style called “chola architecture”. Sometimes described as psychedelic baroque, it incorporates symbols of native Andean culture, Chinese design elements and all the colors of the rainbow. For the new wealthy indigenous Bolivians, who have made millions in recent years, these modern-day palaces are a reflection of both their social status and their proud Aymara heritage. In 2015, there were over 170 unique chola houses in El Alto, enough for the city to set up a tourist route for the most impressive ones.

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Edificio Santalaia, a plant-covered building in the middle of Bogota, Colombia, is considered one of the most amazing urban gardens ever created. With over 33,000 Sq. feet of plants covering the building’s 11 stories (9 above ground and 2 underground), this is the world’s largest vertical garden.

The result of a collaboration between Spanish green designers Paisajismo Urbano and Colombian company Groncol, this stunning vertical garden was completed in December 2015, after eight months of planning, and another eight months of hard work. Today, it is often referred to as “the green heart of Bogota”, and acts both as an icon of sustainability, as well as a reminder of the important role that plants play in our daily lives.

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