London’s Invisible House Is Covered in Mirrors

A unique house in London’s Richmond neighborhood has been dubbed “the invisible house” as the giant mirror walls reflect everything around it, making it very hard to notice.

Located on the busy A316 road by the Richmond Circus roundabout, near Richmond Underground station, London’s Invisible House isn’t some fancy art installation, but an actual home. Redesigned by architect and artist Alex Haw in 2015, the property has been inhabited since 2019, and the family said that living there has been interesting, to say the least. Even though passers-by can’t see inside, the owners can see outside perfectly fine, and they sometimes spot people fixing their hair or clothes in their mirrored walls and windows.

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Vietnamese Businessman Builds Himself a Palace-Like Mansion

A successful businessman in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province has been getting a lot of attention because of the opulent mansion he built for himself and his family.

Looking at the architectural masterpiece built by Mr. Trinh Dinh Xuan, a businessman who operates in the construction sector, it’s easy to see why photos of the edifice have been going viral on social media ever since it was completed, in 2018. Featuring an imposing facade with giant stone columns flanking the entrance, three large domes topped with gilded statues, and a baroque architectural style inspired by European palaces, the so-called “Xuan Truong Mansion” is one of the most eye-catching buildings in all of Vietnam.

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The Perfect Cat House Doesn’t Exis…

A feline lover in California spent several decades and over $100,000 turning his home into the ultimate house for cats.

House of Nekko is a 3,000-square-foot home just north of Santa Barbara. It looks pretty ordinary from the outside, so few know that this is probably the world’s most amazing cat house. Featuring over 300 feet of catwalks, 15 feet of tunnels, 8 bridges, individual feeding spots suspended on the walls giant hamster wheels and giant scratching posts, among other feline attractions, House of Nekko is unlike any other house we’ve ever seen before.

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Russian Businessman Builds Fairytale Castle in the Middle of a Lake

Chateau Erken, in the Russian Federation’s Kabardino-Balkaria autonomous republic, looks like an extremely well-preserved medieval castle, but in reality, this architectural wonder is just over a decade old.

Located in the vineyard-dominated countryside of Kabardino-Balkaria, Chateau Erken is a tourist attraction unlike any other in Russia. Not only does it mimic the fortress-like design of European medieval castles, but its location in the middle of a man-made lake full of fish and wild birds is just as impressive. People from all over the country come to this rural area in Southern Russia to see Chateau Erken in person. Photos and videos of this amazing castle have been doing the rounds on social media for years, but some people still can’t believe it exists and that it was built not by a king, but by a legendary businessman.

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This Company Builds Fantastic Playhouses That Can Cost Up to $400,000

Most people can only dream of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their dream home, but some are paying the same amounts, if not more, on intricate, fully-furnished playhouses for their kids.

Charmed Playhouses, a family business based in Letherbridge, Canada, claims to build the world’s most fantastic, luxurious and quality playhouses, and looking at some of their creation, we’re inclined to agree. But before you start dreaming about your very own backyard fantasy playhouse, you should know that some of these can cost an arm and a leg. Even though prices start at a respectable $3,500 for a basic playhouse, if you’re looking for something special, the bill can easily go into the tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Illinois “Goth House” Is Black Both Inside and Out

An octagon-shaped Illinois home listed on Zillow for $250,000 went viral online a few days ago, not for its shape or asking price, but for its all-black exterior and interior.

The now-famous “goth house” of Illinois shot to internet fame after being featured on the Instagram account “Zillow Gone Wild” where people quickly noticed its unusual dark exterior. Upon closer inspection, they realized that the interior decor was not much different. There were some white floor and wall tiles and some grey furniture here and there, but everything else stuck to the black theme of the place, which isn’t something you see every day.

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Businessman Build Taj Mahal Replica Home as Gift for His Wife

In a unique gesture of appreciation and love, an Indian man built a scaled-down replica of the iconic Taj Mahal as a “monument of love” for his wife of 27 years.

The original Taj Mahal, the most famous building in all of India, was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their 14th child. It’s one of the world’s most iconic symbols of love, so one businessman from Madhya Pradesh decided that it was the perfect inspiration for his own tribute to his spouse. He paid a reported 20 million rupees ($260,000) to have a construction team build a four-bedroom replica of the Taj Mahal, complete with intricate latticework, minarets, and a luxurious interior fit for a queen.

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This New Restaurant in Russia Looks Like a Dilapidated Mansion

To say the “Le Courage” restaurant in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, has a vintage look would be a gross understatement. The place looks to be in a state of severe disrepair, but it’s all by design, as the place just opened a couple of years ago.

Located in  Sankt Petersburg’s newly-built Russian House residential complex, Le Courage is a modern restaurant with a very unique look. It’s stylized as a 19th-century mansion in serious need of repairs, with deliberately worn walls, chipped stucco moldings, antique furniture, and deliberately worn floorboards. During the “renovation” phase, designers used a hammer to chip away at the stucco molds they had just glued onto the walls, they washed out the plaster to make it look like the ceiling had survived more than one serious water leak, and the 19th-century pattern wallpaper was left unfinished in places.

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The World’s Thinnest Observation Tower Has a Diameter of Under 4 Meters

The English seaside city of Brighton is home to the world’s thinnest observation tower, a structure only 3.9 meters in diameter, with a height-to-width ratio of over 40:1.

Conceived and designed by Marks Barfield Architects, the same firm behind the famous London Eye wheel, the i360 coastal observation tower in Brighton, UK looks like a giant needle pointing at the sky. It’s not the only observational tower in the world, but it is the thinnest one ever made. It has a diameter of only 3.9 meters, or 12.8 feet, at its widest point, and stands 162 meters tall. Although it is often described simply as a vertical cable car because of the technology it uses to drive a tourist-filled pod up and down, the i360 is actually an engineering marvel.

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Farmer Spends Over $2 Million Constructing One of the Strangest Buildings in China

A small town in Guangxi is home to one of the strangest-looking buildings in all of China, a 10-storey behemoth combining an assortment of architectural styles from all over the world.

In recent years, Xinxu Town, a small settlement close to Beiliu City, has become known for a strange edifice towering over the dozens of predominantly commercial buildings in the area. Not only is it much taller than most other structures in the area, but it also doesn’t adhere to any particular architectural style. Most of its several spire-like towers feature Russian-inspired domes, the central spire is a Western-style bell tower, and there’s even a teapot-shaped fountain that doesn’t make any kind of sense. Still, the building’s creator, a local farmer, is willing to spend a fortune to see it completed.

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Welcome to Yanjin, the World’s Narrowest City

Built along the Nanxi River, between the steep mountains of China’s Yunnan Province, Yanjin county is widely regarded as the world’s narrowest city.

Looking at Yanjin county from above, it’s hard to believe that such a settlement actually exists in real life. The narrow stretch of usable land sandwiched between the troubled waters of the Nanxi River and steep mountains on either side hardly seems like a suitable location for a city of roughly 450,000 people, but that’s exactly what makes Yanjin so special. It looks more like something you’d expect to see in a fantasy movie, or in a building simulation game than a modern-day city.

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Burj Al Babas – Turkey’s Famous Ghost Town of Fairytale Castles

Burj Al Babas is an abandoned housing development in Turkey, which consists of hundreds of miniature Disney-like chateaus stretching out almost as far as the eye can see.

It was supposed to be a bustling holiday retreat for the world’s super-rich, a neighborhood of castle-inspired villas spread around in a picturesque valley, near the the historic village of Mudurnu, in northwestern Turkey. Instead, today Burj Al Babas is one of the world’s largest ghost towns, featuring hundreds of unfinished villas, some of which have already started to deteriorate. It’s a story of big ambitions, sky-high property prices and economic woes that ultimately spelled the end of the dream that was Burj Al Babas.

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Chinese Company Erects 10-Storey Apartment Building in Less Than 29 Hours

China’s Broad Group recently showcased its innovative Living Building, a new type of modular building system, by erecting a 10-storey apartment building in Changsha City in only 28 hours and 45 minutes.

The Living Building concept developed by Broad Group sounds like it could truly revolutionize the construction industry, and the Chinese company’s recent feat of erecting a 10-floor building in just over a day was meant to emphasize just how disruptive its new system can be. Technically, the building was just assembled on a site in Changsha, by three cranes and a large workforce, as all the components were built in a local Broad Group factory and transported by truck. But that’s one of the features of the Living Building system, it consists of pre-made container-size modules that only need to be bolted together at the “build” site and have their electricity and plumbing connected.

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Mirrored Ceiling Makes Bookstore Look Like an Infinite Library

Dujiangyan Zhongshuge, a bookstore in Dujiangyan, China, relies on strategically placed mirrors and gleaming black tile floor to create a stunning illusion that makes the place look like an infinite bookworm’s paradise.

The roughly 10,500-square-foot bookshop was designed by Li Xiang, founder of Shanghai-based architecture studio X+Living, and inaugurated in the Fall of 2020. Using clever elements like spiraling staircases, curved archways and strategically-placed mirrors, the designers of this unique bookstore were able to create a downright stunning illusion of infinity. One need only look at photos of Dujiangyan Zhongshuge’s interior to experience the otherworldliness of the place.

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300-Meter Chinese Skyscraper Wobbles Ominously for No Apparent Reason

A 73-storey skyscraper in Shenzen, China, was recently evacuated after it reportedly started shaking for no apparent reason, sending inhabitants into a panic.

On Tuesday afternoon, SEG Plaza, a 20-year-old skyscraper in Shenzen, started wobbling visibly, prompting both people inside and those on the streets below to flee for their lives. Videos shared on social media by people in the vicinity at the time of the freak occurrence, show the giant edifice leaning from one side to the other,  and furniture on the inside shaking. By the time the Shenzhen Emergency Management Bureau evacuated the building, it had stopped shaking, but the plaza remained sealed off until the investigation into the cause of the wobbling was concluded.

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