Located in Villa Escudero of Quezon Province, Philippines, the Waterfalls Restaurant is quite well-known for its delicious local dishes and the sparkling waterfalls as a background. The moment you step into the restaurant, you’ll feel spring water running over your feet, and then you may feel that you’re much closer to the nature as a result.

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Located in Dresden, Germany, the small colorful house is built with some funnels on the wall and they’ll create charming (really?!) musical sound whenever the rain comes.  Due to that interesting and unique idea, the wall is also one of the most enjoyable attractions in Dresden’s student district in the new town.

Once realized that more and more bird are getting injured by skyscrapers in cities, an architecture studio “Stone Design” has decided to build the Urban Aviary, a tall building especially designed for birds that not only offers a house but can help to bring down the death rate. It will be located in Central Park, New York, standing at 1,050,000 square feet. It will let birds build nests outside the building because of the presence of vegetation and food inside the structure. Besides, a strong beam of light will be built to attract the birds so that they can give up other high buildings which may result in hurt to them.

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Climbing up the rock … to live in the Barcelona Rock Hostel designed by Polish architecture firm UGO is one of my goals for the next following years (if the concept will finally come into reality). The proposed building will feature real rocks on its exterior, while coming with fifty rooms, movie theater, spa, cafe, swimming pool, gym, bar and even shops inside. Thus whenever the rock climbers need a rest, they may either check into the Barcelona Rock Hostel or simply spent the night on the “mountain” using special equipment. So do you like it? Hopefully we’ll soon meet there in the Barcelona Rock Hostel.

Designer: UGO

Christmas is coming, are you planning a trip for your family? If so, we strongly recommend you a trip to the natural reserve of Huilo Huilo in Chile, where there’s also a beautifully constructed hotel named as “Magic Mountain Lodge”. Built with a unique shape of a volcano, the lodge is actually surfaced with waterfall, which makes the building quite refreshing both indoors and outdoors. As the hotel is the best in Chile, its price may be bit of expensive: one night there will cost you $250 to $400.

The world’s best house for kids seems to have appeared in Japan, designed by LEVEL architects. With an integrated slide, the house not only allows people to travel from one floor to another in a quicker way, but also provides great fun when you’re enjoying the sliding game. But wait, while it seems easy to go downstairs, does that also mean we’ll take more pain in climbing upstairs?  Of course not, actually when you’re sliding down from one side of house, you’ll go through stairs on the other side to get to the higher floors.

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What will the futuristic architecture look like? Japan-based Kisho Kurokawa’s “Nakagin Capsule Tower Building” may offer us some inspireations. Put forward in 1972, the tower building was constructed of 140 individual pods that could be changed and moved freely, thus to create a modular building with full functions. In the designer’s assumption, the 140 pods should get replaced about every 25 years so that the whole building could have a 200 year life span.  To let many more people get in a close touch with the “Nakagin Capsule Tower Building”, Kurokawa recently showcased one pod at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, in which the visitors would find a full-furnished house for temporary living.

Designer: Kisho Kurokawa

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“The Bridge School”, running through an old village in Fujian Province in China to connect the two sides, wins Li Xiaodong this year’s “Aga Khan Awards” due to its special structure and multi functions. Contrast to the old village is full of stone-built houses, “The Bridge School” utilizes modern and frugal steel and bamboo as main materials, giving the building a refreshing and stylish look. Except for serving as a school, the structure also doubles as a public library and a performance space as well.

Designer: Li Xiaodong

Although bridges are usually designed to keep us away from water, I really appreciate the Moses Bridge that sits below the water line to offer us an amazing experience of passing through parted water. Made from sustainable Accoya wood coated with a nontoxic waterproof material, the bridge can last quite a longer time than we can imagine and thus to lead many more people to go through the parted water. S how do you like it? At least it seems a miracle from the pictures, since the bridge visually disappears in the water.

Church usually means something grave and quite to me, and I seldom imagined that a church could also be “floating”, with all its components seeming to float in the air. The church is 10 meters high and made of 100 layers and 2000 columns of steel, which create four see-through walls and thus bring the church with a romantic name of “Reading between the Lines”. When viewing in the landscape, the church seems to dissolve in the air. If you look at the landscape from within the church, well, all the surrounding scenery is redefined by abstract lines.

Designer: Pieterjan Gijs & Arnout Van Vaerenbergh

Phill, completed by Romanian designers Nuca Studio in Bucharest, is a meeting place for the entire family. It has a playground, a multipurpose room and a small café at the ground floor, and the restaurant on the upper floor. Thus before dinners, kids can play games and parents can have some coffee on the ground floor, without needing to wait through a boring time. The house is delicately decorated with bright colors and animated patterns, which make Phill also a nice place for people to relax themselves.

Designer: Nuca Studio

Kid’s Republic is colorful bookstore built in Beijing, China for children. From the ground floor to the upper floors, a rainbow-shaped carpet is running everywhere, connecting all the rooms together. Inside the building, there is also a relaxing reading environment as well as hundreds of books for kids to enjoy their happiness of an entertaining childhood. I wish I could ever go the bookstore, but pity it’s far away in China.

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Shelf House for bookworms is located in Osaka, Japan. Once stepping into the house, you’ll see big and small shelves here and there, such as on the walls, on the stairs, or even integrated with the window. So do you have enough books to fill all these shelves? I don’t, honestly.

Designer: Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio

Sleepbox is a mini building that allows you to sleep comfortably and conveniently. It was originally a conceptualized design put forward in 2009 and now has been installed at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, for travelers to rent and sleep for hours during their transfers at airports.

Although it comes with quite simple appearance, the small building is actually built with complete supporting facilities. There’re three beds, sockets for charging up gadgets, LED-reading lamps, electric-driven blinds, Wi-Fi, safety deposit box, a touchscreen TV and luggage storage space. The only pity is that there’s no integrated toilet or shower. Except for airports, the Sleepbox can be used in train stations, Metro Stations and even outdoor space too.

Designer: Arch Group

Welcome to the world’s first moving building. The three storey apartment is 40-foot high, weighs 220 tons and measures 9,300 square foot in total. Although the apartment is built with patented steel panels that give the structure the same sturdiness of a cement building, it is actually much lighter than ordinary buildings. It is earthquake resistant too, so the apartment can be used in any places all around the world. At present the owners have installed it in Turku, and the apartment will be moved to a new location when the renting period finishes.

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Russian Space Hotel makes common people’s dream of living in space come true. Planned to be opened in the year 2016, this hotel would house seven guests in four cabins and allows guests to view the Earth turning below through large windows. It would quite comfortable to live in such a hotel, as the guests can freely choose their favorite cabins, enjoy different kinds of food and even a bath. Due to all those nice things you may get from the Space Hotel, you’ll need to pay 1 million USD for a 5-day trip.

Is it possible that the little mermaid wouldn’t become bubbles if she had lived in a fantastic house as this one from Octavio Ocampo? I hope so, and I do love the Conch Shell Home very much. It is built of concrete and repurposed materials, featuring a shell shape and pure white color, and moreover bringing you the real feel of sea when you’re walking in or outside of it. Now let’s open you guys to the pictures for more details.

Designer: Octavio Ocampo

Not everybody loves skateboard but everyone would love the PAS House designed by Gil Le Bon Delapointe and Francois Perrin. It is a perfect house with every space and furniture skateable: the ground becomes the wall, the continuous ceiling forms a tube of a 10ft diameter, and most furniture is integrated in the curve to become part of the skateable house. Really funny, right? We can easily skate in and outside a house with this PAS.

Designer: Gil Le Bon Delapointe & Francois Perrin

Have you ever experienced a night in concrete pipes? Well, if not, we strongly suggest you have a try and you’ll see it’s not that boring as you may have imagined. But before that you need to get a touch with T3arc’s TuboHotel. It is a mini hotel located in Tepoztlan, Mexico and it was built from recycled concrete pipes. Each room may seem bit of small on the pictures but actually they offer a really cozy living as well as some beautiful panoramic views of the Sierra del Tepozteco.

Designer: T3arc

Bureau Spectacular’s Phalanstery Module lets us to go through an experience of zero-gravity. It is an interesting architecture that rotates once an hour: one of its surfaces become parallel to the ground every 15 minutes and two people will be bound to collide in the middle of every 7.5- minute conversations.

Designer: Bureau Spectacular

Jon Salerno’s Habitat Micro Home provides a clever and practical way to expand the area of your living space. It uses a small car docked underneath a 100 square feet house to act as an extra room so that the total reconfigurable space inside the Habitat Micro Home would reach 132 square feet.

Moreover, with adjustable solar panels on the house’s roof, the Habitat Micro Home can produce and store electricity energy for daily use.

Designer: Jon Salerno

Buildings in Moscow used to have a long distance from others so you may easily find large space between offices if you’re wandering in that city. But such space between buildings would not exist too long after Za Bor Architects come up with the Parasite office concept. To be finalized in the future, the office building will be built between two buildings without a base on the ground. It is so interesting. More surprising is the office building will have three floors with an accessible roof area as well. Will that be safe enough? No certain answer is offered by now so we may need to wait to see.

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Designer: Za Bor Architects

Things have gone to be different… To get a car in or out of the house located in Florida, you would have to open the whole wall rather than a door. But do not be too astonished, as the wall is in fact a really wide door decorated like a doorway. Have you noticed that?

Do subway stations need to be so splendorous? I mean, nowadays these underground buildings tend to be much more gorgeous than those on ground while we seldom have chance to view them frequently, let alone take them as scenic spots. But since people always prefer fabulous things, we surely need some awesome subway stations as shown below.

Isay Weinfeld’s Village Bookstore is a convertible and mobile design for library Livraria da Vila. Everyday it offers consumers with plenty of books while utilizes four huge movable bookcases as display windows when closed in the evenings. So no matter you walk outside or inside the bookstore, you’ll always see a world full of books. Isn’t that amazing?

Designer: Isay Weinfeld

Everyone loves transparent items, from the Bubble Tent to this Italy-based Glass House. Built by the sea, it is made almost entirely with a variety of ultra-clear and strong glass. So when you look at the house, you’ll directly see its interior and may feel like that all its furniture is floating in the air. Fabulous!

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Inventionland, America’s largest invention factory, is a famous studio especially built for working out creative ideas. Every year it comes up with 2,000-2,400 new inventions and drives the world forward on with its innovative spirit. But how could Inventionland be so creative? Somebody finds a possible answer from Inventionland’s unique offices. Now let’s go and start our tour in Inventionland offices.

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A wild idea. My friends said that when they heard about my dreams of a floating house just as the one appeared in Pixar movie “Up”. But a team from National Geographic has built a real “Up” using 300 helium-filled weather balloons and managed to get the house 10,000 feet up into the air. National Geographic TV has made a record of this experiment and you’ll find it in “How Hard Can it Be” series.

This water tower redesigned by Zecc Architects to change into a delicate apartment has no doubt brought some shock to our mind. Dated from 1931, the water tower looks quite ordinary from outside but will surprise everybody that walks into it. A three-level high window frame was built to let in more daylight; steel, concrete and other materials were adopted to keep the interior’s industrial characteristics; and inside the rooms many simple but practical furniture was used.

Designer: Zecc Architects

Aha, a building inspired by cheese?! Although I love cheese quite much, I never imagine that I’ll one day see a cheese building in reality. But it looks really great, with many holes both in and out of the building- some of them as decorative part and some used to exhibit items. Designed by Jakob + Macfarlane as a creative design showroom in Lyon, France, this building has already become a new landscape and together with the river and the surrounding hills to amaze tourists everyday.

Designer: Jakob + Macfarlane

Ok, now everybody may have a chance to live in mushroom cloud. Created by Dietrich Wegner, this mushroom cloud playhouse is just what we’ve been dreamed of for year- a white, romantic house floating in the air. Time again I need to say that human’s imagination undoubtedly will make our life better, and let’s just start a new life with this mushroom cloud playhouse!

Designer: Dietrich Wegner

If you don’t have enough money to get a big house outside, you may just build a two-floor house inside your loft? Wow wow, it’s still costy!

Created by Liu Ming, this eight-foot cube in his loft does not take up much space, but still features a perfect two-storey structure—with a workspace on the ground floor and a recreational area on the top floor.

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Some materials usually seem so common that we seldom though to make them into something more creative. But this PVC House designed by Hoogte Twee has proved that we should have thought of that, because we may produce really amazing things though with ordinary materials. Yups, the B (h) uis looks very magic!

Designer: Hoogte Twee

Javier Senosiain’s Shell House must have been the envy of all their neighbors, friends, and you guys in front of the screen. The building is designed with a shell shape, decorated with colorful glass, equipped with pleasant light and filled with green plants. So whenever you view it from the outside or walk through the interior, you’ll always find a wonderful combination of nature beauty and architecture art.

Designer: Javier Senosiain

On an island that is located at the intersection of Lake Huron and Georgia Gulf, there’s a unique building built by MOS. The designer has made a metal pontoon as the house’s “foundation”, and as a result the whole building will shake slightly as the waves sweep the bridge. Additionally the house is surrounded by trees and rocks, so that it will offer a pleasant scenery as you walk inside the building.

Designer: MOS

Recently a new coffee shop opened in Wales and it is covered with toasts on all its walls. And on these toasts, you’ll see some portraits painted with jam. So when viewed from a distance, the coffee shop seems really special and when you get closer to it, the house also smells well.

The Kiefertechnic Architecture Showroom in Styria, Austria has solid brick walls but covered with aluminum plates that change continuously from hour to hour. So other words, this is a dynamic sculpture, a sculpture that has a refreshing look from time to time.

Designer: Ernst Giselbrecht

We’ll never suggest you go to a restaurant that is constructed from bamboo for dinner, because no buildings would be much solider and safer than one that is made from concrete. But the Indonesian Bamboo Restaurant is so extraordinary that we would really like you to have a try. Designed by DSA+s, the restaurant is mainly made from bamboo and coupled together with ijuk, which is a rope made from sugar palm fiber. Concrete is also used for  the stair, patio, and house base.

On Holy Island in the UK, you’ll see some truly old storage sheds with a sharp point built along the shore. And when you come nearer to them, you’ll find that they’re actually transformed from retired wooden fishing boats and retrofitted with a door. Maybe until then, you’ll really know what an important and clever work the local fishermen have done to recycle the resources.

If you have a chance of flying over the forest of Karuizawa, you’ll feel quite surprised and impressive to see a huge shell among the trees. However it’s not a real shell, but simply a vacation house that resembles a shell. Designed by Japanese architect Kotaro Ide, the new building seems to blend into the surrounding sceneries, adding unique beauty to the green forests. And when you view the house from inside, wow, that’s really fantastic!

Designer: Kotaro Ide

When coming near the village of Thorington in Suffolk, England, you’ll feel quite surprised to see a large barn with half side suspending above the ground. Collaborated by Mole Architects and Studio Makkink Bey, the Balancing Barn is the first of five in Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture projects, and it will be opened to the visitors from 22 October to help them view the nature from a different but amazing way.

Give yourself a few more seconds to check out another picture after the break, if you couldn’t figure out what the issue is about or you simply begin to feel dizzy…

Here the image looks better, and you may have found that this is a coffee bar that has been flipped on its side. So why did the designer Anurag Nema create such a weird coffee bar? According to Elaine Louie’s September 30, 2010 New York Times story: “When Eugene Kagansky, the owner of D’Espresso on the Lower East Side, decided to open another coffee bar a block away from the New York Public Library at Bryant Park, he told his designer, Let’s do a coffee bar that looks like a library, but would be more interesting.” And hence the interesting coffee bar was built and opened earlier this month, welcoming everybody with its unique beauty.

Designer: Anurag Nema

Natural elements like mountains and ocean waves are widely used in the designs of modern architectures, and right here is a fantastic sculptural building designed by Henning Larsen Architects, which has also drawn their inspiration from nature: the bridge, the waves and the hills of Vejle, Denmark. So the building seems just like white waves in the sea during the daytime but magnificent mountains in the night.

Designer: Henning Larsen Architects

Car House, Rolling House, Slim House, here on I New Idea we’ve introduced many interesting and weird houses that make you WOW. And today we’d like to take you to Hallam, Pennsylvania, where there is a unique shoe shaped house built by Mahlon Haines in 1948. The building was constructed from a huge shoe model, and every part of the cute house is still in an excellent state of preservation.

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Would anyone like to live in a mini apartment that measures only 23 square meters? I bet everybody will, if they’re to have the Red Nest by Paul Coudamy. Designed for an apartment in Paris, Paul has built a desk, a bed and a wardrobe in the small room. The most fantastic point is, however, a red-gloss sliding wall unit that can reveal or conceal sleeping area, dressing room and workspace. Apart from that, the designer has also hidden a bathroom behind a two-way mirror, as well as a WC behind the wardrobe doors. That’s so incredible!

Designer: Paul Coudamy

The ceilings of Tokyo houses are not always leveled, as the Mount Fuji Architects Studio has designed a new house with a spiral shaped roof for a couple in the local residential area. You’ll know why the house comes with such an interesting ceiling once you step into it: there’s a giant cylinder resembling a tree stem in the middle of the house and the structure gradually fades out into a spiral shape when going towards the ceiling. So you may still feel that you’re living in the country or more exactly in the forest, even though your house is in fact built in the city. Really fantastic.

Designer: Mount Fuji Architects Studio

Possibly in the near future, you’ll see a pile of large paper placed in The Hague, the Netherlands. That’s what the Zaha Hadid Architects have designed for the city’s new dance and music centre.

“The design concept is developed from an understanding of the unique urban dynamics of the site”, Zaha Hadid Architects explained. So the whole building looks just like a moving river when graced by light and shadow in the night, but when viewed from a higher place, the same building then seems like a stack of paper fluttering in the breeze. That’s really amazing.

But before you see the real building in the site, the design must beat the other two proposals from Amsterdam architects RAU and Rotterdam studio Neutelings Riedijk Architecten, and the result will be announced in November 2010.

Designer: Zaha Hadid Architects

Discovery Channel’s office building in Silver Spring, Maryland has recently been attacked by a giant shark. But do not call the 911, because that’s just what the Discovery Channel has done to celebrate its Shark Week 2010. The shark is named as “Chompie” and it consists of five inflatable pieces—a head, two side fins, a dorsal fin and a tail. Those five parts were all securely tied in place by cables and ropes, and they’re continuously inflated by 10 air blowers.

As we become more and more technologically inclined, the books we read has followed the same trend. But while most others prefer to read online, the London designers Campaign are still keeping their deep love for paper books. Therefore Campaign has designed a cardboard bookshop for the London Festival of Architecture, to celebrate the art form of the printed publication. Named as Foldaway Bookshop, the store is stocked by RIBA Bookshops and sells latest must-have high quality publications and the most coveted architecture classics. Pity that the shop opens just for 13 days and it will be recycled at the end of the Festival.

Designer: Campaign

There is nothing special about the Light-Filled Glass Studio itself, because we’ve covered many buildings that use transparent glass as main material. It is odd that the glass architecture is designed for a school of Japan where earthquakes frequently occur, while the studio features no earthquake-resistant walls! But there is no call for you to worry over the studio’s stability, coz the designers have adopted 305 pillars to support the whole building. Made mostly of glass, the studio not only lets in enough light during the daytime, but shines like a diamond when the lights are on in the night.

Designer: Junya Ishigami and Associates