The Naerum  suburban district of Copenhagen, in Denmark, is home to one of the most visually appealing allotment gardens in the world – the “round gardens”, which are actually oval.

Søren Carl Theodor Marius Sørensen is considered one of the greatest landscape architects to have ever lived, and the oval gardens of Naerum are one of his most famous projects. In 1948, 40 oval allotment gardens, each measuring approximately 25 × 15 m, were laid out on a rolling lawn, between public housing on one side and more traditional allotments on the other. Owners were free to position their cottages, select the surrounding hedges, and lay out the interior of their plots, but Sørensen provided some directions, stressing that they were meant as a guide, not rules. Seven decades later, the oval gardens of Naerum are still one of the most beautiful attractions in the Danish capital.

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If you’re in the market for a unique kind of house, this $149,000 Vermont property may spark your interest. It doesn’t look like anything special from the outside, but it actually comes with its own creepy jail.

Located in Guidhall, a small Vermont town, this 2,190-square-foot white and green home has been listed on online real-estate marketplace Realtor for two months, with an asking price of $149,000. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, wood floors and high ceilings, a nice backyard, as well as its own adjacent seven-cell jail. That’s right, an actual jail, the kind where people used to be locked-up in up until a few decades ago. This used to be the town jailer’s home, and even though the property has changed hands several times since then, the jail has remained intact.

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Two cousins from the Dutch town of Nieuw-Lekkerland recently received an award for turning an old water tower into a modern and stylish home for their respective families.

Sven and Lennart de Jong grew up in a house right next to the old water tower of Nieuw-Lekkerland, and used to paly in it as kids, so in 2011, when they heard it was being put up for auction, they decided to place a bid. The approximately 200,000 euros they bid proved to be enough and the two became the owners of an abandoned building from 1915. Sven and Lennart knew that they had their work cut out, but they dreamt of making the water tower their home in a decade’s time, and managed to pull it off. For their achievement, the two received the 2020 Water Tower Award, a distinction for the best conversion of a historic water tower.

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A Chinese entrepreneur spent a year and only 400,000 yuan ($61,000) building himself an awesome, 600-square-foot floating home on the coast of Fujian province.

The protagonist of our story is a young entrepreneur known only by his nickname, “Coastline”, who grew up near the sea, spending most of his time fishing and taking in the beautiful sunsets of Dongshan County, a large island in the South China Sea. Coastline spent most of his free time sea fishing, and always drove his friends crazy with his praise of the sea and the carefree lifestyle of the fishermen of Dongshan. One night in 2018, while drinking with his good friend, architect Dong Xinmeng, he started talking about how great it would be to have a floating home, so he could fish and drink beer all day. One drink led to another, and by the end of the night, they had decided to make his dream a reality.

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The Brazilian city of Santos is famous as the birthplace of Pele, regarded by many as the greatest football player ever, but also for its unique looking waterfront skyline, which looks, well, a bit tilted.

The leaning apartment buildings of Santos have been around for decades, and even though the problem has been getting worse over time, so far authorities have chosen not to intervene, claiming the edifices are perfectly safe. The Santos skyline is made up of 651 buildings, all of which are somewhat tilted, some only about 5cm out of level, which counts as a construction flaw, others almost 2 meters, which makes them visibly tilted. But the issue isn’t only aesthetic, some apartments have windows and doors that no longer close properly, and others have plumbing issues. There have also been reports of inhabitants experiencing loss of balance issues on level ground, from spending too much time in their tilted apartments.

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If you’ve always dreamed of packing up your house and moving around whenever you like, this foldable tiny house that comes with plumbing and electrical wiring pre-installed is going to seem mighty interesting.

Latvian startup Brette Haus only started producing its ingenious foldable houses last December, but its innovative design and technology has already made quite an impression both on the general public and housing experts. Using cross-laminated timber as the main construction material, Brette Haus can build a whole house in 8 weeks, and then install it anywhere in 3-4 hours. Because it doesn’t require a permanent foundation, the foldable house can be moved at any time, and has minimum impact on the land it’s set up on.

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Waterbuurt (Dutch for “water quarter”) is a state of the art residential development in Amsterdam, which consists of nearly 100 individual floating homes moored on Lake Eimer.

The floating homes Ijburg district are no ordinary houseboats, but real floating houses. They float adjacent to jetties and are moored to steel pilons, so they only move vertically with the changing tide. Designed by Dutch architect Marlies Rohmer, the houses have a “no-nonsense, basic design” but are comfortable at the same time. They were built at a shipyard about 65 km north of Lake Eimer and then transported through a network of canals. Although the Waterbuurt is still a work in progress, some of the houses are already inhabited.

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Photos of a house near the Russian city of Irkutsk have gone viral on social media because of the contrast between its exterior and interior design.

Located in the village of Novaya Razvodnaya, near Irkutsk, this modern house was recently put on sale, as part of a 620-square-meter property. At first glance, the house has a pretty modern look, but the solitary Roman column decorating the yard hints at the fact that there is more to this place than meets the eye. The moment you set foot inside, it’s like going down the rabbit whole and waking up in a whole new dimension.

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Bosco Vericale is a unique residential complex in the center of Milan, Italy. It consists of two towers that stand 80 and 112 meters high and are covered in plants and trees giving them the look that inspired their name – vertical forest.

Designed by a team of architects at Boeri Studio, Bosco Verticale was designed as a “home for trees that also houses humans and birds”. It was inaugurated in October 2014, in Milan’s Porta Nuova Isola area, as part of a wider renovation project. The two towers are home to a total of 800 trees (480 first and second stage trees, 300 smaller ones), 15,000 perennials and/or ground covering plants and 5,000 shrubs. That amounts to 30,000 square meters of woodland and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square meters of urban surface. And the vegetation is not just for show, it serves a purpose that the residents themselves acknowledge.

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If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a pharaoh without having to build your own lavish palace, you can settle for this unique Moscow apartment designed to make you feel like a ruler of ancient Egypt.

Over the last two decades, the Khamovniki district of Moscow has turned from a simple working-class district, into one of the most expensive living areas in the entire Russian capital. There are plenty of luxurious apartment complexes to choose from if you have the funds, but if you’re looking for something truly unique, you may want to consider this $1.7 million apartment in the “Opera House” residential complex on Ostozhenka street. It’s literally fit for a king, an Egyptian king, that is…

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Silpo, a popular supermarket chain in Ukraine, has attracted a lot of attention since the opening of its new Lviv venue, which is decorated with elements from the popular GTA: San Andreas video game.

Featuring decorative panels in the same style as the artwork for Rockstar Games’ 2004 hit open-world game, as well as the same font for it isles, the new Silpo supermarket in Lviv has been scoring a lot of points with GTA: San Andreas fans. The venue also features visual references to Venice Beach, and iconic elements like lifeguards, surfboards and lots of color.

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CopenHill isn’t just the world’s largest waste-to-energy powerplant, it’s also a masterpiece of architectural design, incorporating a giant ski slope and hiking trail on its winding roof, and a massive climbing wall on one of its sides.

Waste processing powerplants don’t usually make great tourist attractions, but Copenhagen’s newest achievement in its quest to become the world’s first carbon-free city is something that has to be experienced. Not only is CopenHill capable of converting 440,000 tons of waste into clean energy every year, but it’s also an exciting entertainment for people looking to engage in outdoorsy activities near the center of Denmark’s capital city. During the summer, its winding roof doubles as a green hiking trail, while in the winter season it becomes an artificial sky slope. Did I mention that it has the “tallest artificial climbing wall in the world” on its facade?

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Chinese Engineers have successfully moved an 85-year-old historical school building in Shanghai to a new location with the help of 198 robotic legs.

Moving older buildings to make room for new construction projects is nothing new in China, but what makes this particular case interesting is the method used to move the 7,600-tonne building. Usually, side rails or flatbeads are used to relocate structures, but the irregular shape of the Lagena Primary Schoool posed quite a challenge to engineers. After weighing their options, experts opted for an innovative “walking” system made up of 198 hydraulic legs that lifted the giant building and helped it “walk” a total of 62 meters over 18 days.

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The Qiyi City Forest Garden residential complex in Chengdu, China, was supposed to be a green paradise for its residents, but two years on, the vertical forest concept has turned into a nightmare.

Back in 2018, the idea of living among dozens of exotic plants proved very exciting for the people of Chengdu, one of China’s most polluted cities, and by April of 2020 all 826 units in the Qiyi City Forest Garden complex had been sold. Each unit had up to 20 types of plants growing on the balcony, and filtering the city’s air and noise pollution. However, instead of an urban paradise, the eight-tower complex looks like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic film, with balconies overrun by sprawling greenery and plagues of mosquitoes.

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Photos of a so-called “mushroom house” sitting on a narrow concrete staircase have been doing the rounds on Japanese social media and leaving viewers scratching their heads in disbelief.

The viral photos were originally posted by Japanese Twitter user Yuko Mohri, but have since been shared over 20,000 times on the popular social network alone. They show what looks like a one-storey house perched on a very narrow concrete staircase, somewhere in Japan. Such a sight would raise a few eyebrows anywhere in the world, but even more in the island country, where powerful earthquakes occur fairly often.

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