British Couple Turn Public Toilet into a Comfy House

Opened in the early 1900s, this Victorian toilet has served visitors of Scarborough Beach, for decades, but it’s now become one of the most popular houses in the area.

Tracy Woodhouse and Graham Peck decided the public toilet would make a great house, as soon as they heard the lease for the building was available, five years ago. They found an architect who’s housing design maintained the original design and character of the building, so the authorities gladly approved the project.

They’ve spent around $53,000 reconditioning and refurbishing the old public toilet, and even worked on it themselves, in their spare time. After top-to-bottom rebuilding, their house is now the talk of the town. Their lounge is where the men’s bathroom used to be, and their bedroom stands where there once was the ladies room.

Friends often make fun of the couple, saying they live in a lavatory, but they don’t mind, and actually become amused themselves. But what matters most is they now have a cozy house of their own, with a spectacular view over the North Bay.

The two expected people to be amused, or even shocked, but one thing they didn’t expect was to receive offers for their toilet house. So far, they have three.

via Daily Mail

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Britain’s Amazing Seed Cathedral at Shanghai Expo

If you thought Miguelin, the giant baby at the Spanish pavilion was awesome, than the British pavilion’s Seed Cathedral will blow your mind.

By far the most popular structure, at the Shanghai Expo 2010, even before it was officially opened, the Seed Cathedral is a six storey high cube-shaped structure, pierced by 60,000 thin acrylic rods. Each 7.5 meter long rod sways at the slightest wind movement, adding the dramatic effect of the design.

Just like fiber optics, the acrylic rods draw in the light from the outside, and illuminate the inside. At night, the artificial light, on the inside, is projected to the outside, making the Seed Cathedral glow.

But Britain’s awe-inspiring building isn’t called Seed Cathedral, for no reason. On the inside, each rod has one or more seeds encased in it. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, this architectural wonder has already won the hearts of its visitors, who have nicknamed it “The Dandelion”.

Photos via QQ

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Man Builds House out of 6 Million Glass Bottles

Tito Ingenieri, from Quilmes, Argentina, claims he has spent the last 19 years collecting bottles and using them to build an environment-friendly house.

Now, we’ve seen impressive bottle-made structures before, like the Bottle Temple of Thailand, or the house of plastic bottles, near Iguazu Falls, but none as impressive as Tito Ingenieri’s bottle house. I know it doesn’t look very stylish, but the man did spend almost two decades of his life working on it. During this time he collected 6 million non-returnable glass bottles, and asked his neighbors to save their bottles for him.

Mr. Ingenieri says his unusual home also acts as an alarm, when the waters of a nearby river are rising. The southern winds blowing into the necks of the glass bottles, makes a whistling sound. He also adds that he can teach anyone who’s interested in building a bottle house like his. If that’s you, check out his website for contact information.

via Treehugger

house-made-of-6-million-bottles

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Bottle House Built in Mexico

This is not the first bottle house featured on Oddity Central, but it’s definitely the most impressive looking.

After finding these pics on several spam sites that posted no link to the original source, I spent quite a while trying to find some info. Finally I discovered the photos were uploaded by someone on Instructables and were of a family building a plastic and glass bottles house, somewhere in Mexico. That’s about everything I was able to find out about these photos, but what’s that they say? A picture is worth a thousand words?

bottle-house

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Pierre Cardin’s bubble house

Some people just can’t stand living in a normal house and Pierre Cardin is one of them.

As the story goes, Pierre Cardin was looking to buy a nice house on the Cote d’Azur, but was horrified by all the unoriginal designs that he had seen and that didn’t match his avant-garde fashion designs . That one day he stumbled upon a construction site, where an architect by the name of Antti Lovag was building a bubble-house for some industrialist who happened to have died. Cardin was thrilled to acquire the almost finished residence that finally satisfied his exigent taste.

Not everyone liked Lovag‘s creation when it was finished in 1990, many went as far as to call it Crazy-house, but now it has become a historic monument.

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Blue building of Rotterdam

I guess the Dutch have a thing for colorful infrastructure, because the famous Yellow Brick Road is also found in Holland.

This blue building is set in the Delfshaven district, in Rotterdam and it used to be one of the towns least interesting buildings and one of the most unnoticed by the public. The administration asked an artistic firm to freshen the place up, or it would be demolished. They chose to paint the place blue and the deal with the neighborhood is that it will stay this way until the community comes up with a new plan for the area.

Funniest thing is the blue building has become the most photographed building in Rotterdam. That’s how important 2 layers of paint can be.

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Fabulous wood art

Who ever said wood was to stiff and can’t be molded into anything that comes into our minds? These creations prove that, with a lot of talent, wood can take any given shape. My regards to the sculptors, they did an awesome job!