Awesome Architecture

Douglas Ball and Jeff Sokalski’s Clipper CS-1, a shedlike, mancavey capsule, was designed for use inside a traditional office and is in the permanent collection at London’s Museum of Design.

By breaking 100,000 staple strips into various sizes to create a mini city in a 10′ x 20′ area, UK artist Peter Root touches on fragility and impermanence with his Ephemicropolis art installation.

This Hong Kong architect managed to cram 24 different living spaces into his 344 square foot apartment through a clever system of moving walls. There’s even a home theater.

Mark Bennett makes blueprints of homes from retro TV shows and movies. With the right architect, you could build Wayne Manor. Ironically, Mike Brady’s blueprints are nowhere to be found.

You may be rethinking your opinion of your neighbor’s ugly shed after seeing this collection of weird homes, hotels and other unrestrained structures from around the world.

The luxury citizenM hotel is 2 minutes walking distance from Schiphol’s terminals. Public spaces are filled with dramatic Vitra furniture; rooms have king beds, rain showers, LCD tvs and free wi-fi.

Designed by Werner Aisslinger, the Fincube house fits in with its natural surroundings. The compact wooden home occupies a mere 2m² of land, and can be easily dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere.

The leather Blueprint Wallet by Constantin Boym for ACME Studio is made using a printing technique called digital engraving. The colors are applied onto the raw hides so the colors are part of the tanning.

Designboom has assembled a gallery of the unlikely beauty found in subway stations and tunnels around the globe. None of the underground “L” stations here in Chicago could ever compete.

If you’ve ever wanted to live Mad Max-style, Aristide Antonas’ KEG Apartment gives new meaning to “mobile home” by converting old tanker trucks into cylindrical houses on wheels.

Lumitectura is a time-lapse film unlike anything we’ve seen before; filmed on a single day between 2pm and 6pm, it uses about 50 masks to create normally impossible lighting situations.

They look like run-down European tenements, but Berlin artist EVOL’s buildings are Lilliputian in size: they’re power and utility boxes that are meticulously spray painted with stencils.

Top Gear co-host and Toy Stories host James May is also a hardcore brick fanatic: he’s building a two-story LEGO house just outside of London that’ll use over 816 million pieces.

LEGO’s Architecture Series site still says “coming soon”, but they’ve signed up with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for six buildings including Falling Water and the Guggenheim.

A finalist in the World Expo 2010 Singapore Pavilion, “My Dream, Our Vision” should have plenty of natural light; it’s made out of 3,866 cubes with varying levels of transparency.

Opening 9/25 at Le Gallery in Toronto, David Tratrimas’ Habitat Machines are architectural compositions made from household objects such as coffee pots and waffle irons.

WebUrbanist has a creepy collection of abandoned buildings from around the world. It’s like a horror movie director’s wet dream: insane asylums, condemned theme parks and crumbling hospitals.