This morning I had a bit of a field day on one of those websites that just you can't understand how you never came across before... If I were a travel website, I would be Unusual Hotels of the World– it speaks my lingo when it comes to wanderlusting the globe, with a treasure chest of off-beat, u

Pickle Barrel House in Grand Marais, Minnesota The Pickle Barrel House is a two-story cabin built to resemble two barrels. This bizzare house design is

1. The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland) Construction of the building started in in January 2003 and in December 2003 it was finished. House architecture is based on Jan Marcin Szancer (famous Polish artist and child books illustrator) and Per Dahlberg (Swedish painter living in Sopot) pictures and paintings. The Crooked House The Crooked House Poland 2. Forest Spiral – Hundertwasser Building (Darmstadt, Germany) The Hundertwasser house “Waldspirale” (”Forest Spiral”) was built in Darmstadt between 1998 and 2000. Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the famous Austrian architect and painter, is widely renowned for his revolutionary, colourful architectural designs which incorporate irregular, organic forms, e.g. onion-shaped domes. Forest Spiral – Hundertwasser Building (Darmstadt, Germany) The structure with 105 apartments wraps around a landscaped courtyard with a running stream. Up in the turret at the southeast corner, there is a restaurant, including a cocktail bar. 3. The Torre Galatea Figueras (Spain) The Torre Galatea Figueras (Spain) 4. Ferdinand Cheval Palace a.k.a Ideal Palace (France) Ferdinand Cheval Palace a.k.a Ideal Palace (France) 5. The Basket Building (Ohio, United States) The Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio might just be a strangest office building in the world. The 180,000-square-foot building, a replica of the company’s famous market basket, cost $30 million and took two years to complete. Many experts tried to persuade Dave Longaberger to alter his plans, but he wanted an exact replica of the real thing. Ferdinand Cheval Palace a.k.a Ideal Palace (France) 6. Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States) This project, located in the heart of Kansas City, represents one of the pioneer projects behind the revitalization of downtown. The people of Kansas City were asked to help pick highly influential books that represent Kansas City. Those titles were included as ‘bookbindings’ in the innovative design of the parking garage exterior, to inspire people to utilize the downtown Central Library. Ferdinand Cheval Palace a.k.a Ideal Palace (France) 7. Wonderworks (Pigeon Forge, TN, United States) Ferdinand Cheval Palace a.k.a Ideal Palace (France) 8. Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada) Expo 67, one of the world’s largest universal expositions was held in Montreal. Housing was one of the main themes of Expo 67. The cube is the base, the mean and the finality of Habitat 67. In its material sense, the cube is a symbol of stability. As for its mystic meaning, the cube is symbol of wisdom, truth, moral perfection, at the origin itself of our civilization. 354 cubes of a magnificent grey-beige build up one on the other to form 146 residences nestled between sky and earth, between city and river, between greenery and light. Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada) 9. Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands) The original idea of these cubic houses came about in the 1970s. Piet Blom has developed a couple of these cubic houses that were built in Helmond. The city of Rotterdam asked him to design housing on top of a pedestrian bridge and he decided to use the cubic houses idea. The concept behind these houses is that he tries to create a forest by each cube representing an abstract tree; therefore the whole village becomes a forest. Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands) 10. Hang Nga Guesthouse a.k.a Crazy House (Vietnam) The house is owned by the daughter of the ex-president of Vietnam, who studied architecture in Moscow. It does not comply with any convention about house building, has unexpected twists and turns, roofs and rooms. It looks like a fairy tale castle, it has enormous “animals” like a giraffe and a spider, no window is rectangular or round and it can be visited like a museum. Hang Nga Guesthouse a.k.a Crazy House (Vietnam) 11. The Inside-Out House - United States Finally, "Inversion" was a temporary art-installation project that looked kinda like the aftermath of a terrible drilling accident. In 2005, a few months before the house in Houston, Tex., was to be demolished, artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck created a large funnel-like vortex beginning from the west wall adjacent to the street. The exterior skin of the house was peeled off and used to create the narrowing spiral as it progressed eastward through the small central hallway connecting this building and another, exiting through a small hole into an adjacent courtyard. The Inside-Out House - United States 12.The Bubble House - France Architect Antti Lovag, a pioneer in ferro-cement design, committed to the concept of organic architecture inspired by shapes and forms found in nature. Lovag has one very famous work in the French Rivierra, called Le Palais Bulles ("The Palace of Bubbles"), which he designed in conjunction with Pierre Cardin. Lovag designed a few bubble houses on the same coast. The one in Tourette-sur-Loup, high on a hillside behind Nice, is only 38 years old, yet it is already listed as a historic monument by the French Ministry of Culture. The Bubble House - France 13. The Ufo House (Sanjhih, Taiwan) This bizarre looking building in Sanjhih is actually an abandoned resort project. The Taiwanese locals call it The UFO House because of it’s somewhat extra-terrestrial design. Cypherone (Taipei) has a Flickr set with over 40 photos of this abandoned holiday resort in Taiwan. The Ufo House (Sanjhih, Taiwan) 14. The Shoe House - South Africa One of many shoe-shaped houses in the world, the South African shoe house, in Mpumalanga Province, was built in 1990 by entrepreneur and artist Ron Van Zyl, a South African artist and hotelier who built the strange building at his wife's request. The interior is a museum of rock and wood carvings made by Van Zyl himself. The Shoe is part of a bigger project, which includes a camp site and a chalet guest house, restaurant, bar, pool and shop The Shoe House - South Africa 15. The Seashell House The Nautilus, designed by Mexican architect Javier Senosiain, is located in Mexico City. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before – it closely resembles the inside of a shell. Kinda reminds us of something you’d find in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! The Seashell House

There's some wonderful fun and funky houses around that defy all town planning regulations and still manage to get built. They're home to all sorts of creative, fun and bohemian individuals who want just a little bit more out of their lives. Who live outside the square. I'll share a cup with them anytime...

1. A Storybook Tower by Friedensreich Hundertwasser AFP/ Timm Schamberger This might look like it was built once upon a time but the Hundertwasser Tower was actually completed in 2010. At thirty-five meters high and six meters in diameter, the observation tower in South Germany was originally inte

I have lived in some strange places, having had a Southern Baptist minister for a dad who uprooted us every two years, and my ex- spouses being of a very different cultures/races than mine. So I asked myself, would I live in these nutty places?...

I don't know whose it is, where it is, where it's been or where it's going, but this wooden Trojan Horse housebus certainly is spectacular... Thanks to Victoria at Ozarks Crescent Mural for sending me the link.

Explore Dan Stiver's 1179 photos on Flickr!

From conception through construction to occupation, tree houses are unusually intentional spaces. They require defying convention, not to mention gravity. They are the stuff of childhood dreams ... made real. A cliff treehouse overlooking the Alps, anyone? It is no different for this structure b ...

Upside down buildings

Japanese tea houses spring from the roofs of ordinary-looking trucks, ornate handcrafted cabins are tacked onto school buses and fire trucks are converted into monster off-road RVs when industrious and determined DIYers decide to take on building their own mobile homes. One tiny house on wheels even has a back deck with a full-sized hot