David Garej monastry complex
David Gareji is a rock-hewn Georgian Orthodox monastery complex located in the Kakheti region of Eastern Georgia.
Stoclet Palace
The Stoclet Palace is a private mansion built by architect Josef Hoffmann between 1905 and 1911 in Brussels for banker and art lover Adolphe Stoclet. Considered as Hoffman's masterpiece, the Stoclet's house is one of the most refined and luxurious private houses of the twentieth century.
Rolling Homes
Rolling Homes is a 70s book with photos of handmade houses on wheels.
Ziggurat of Ur
Ziggurat of Ur is a Neo-Sumerian ziggurat in what was the city of Ur in present-day Iraq. The structure was built during the Early Bronze Age but had crumbled to ruins by the 6th century BCE of the Neo-Babylonian period when it was restored by King Nabonidus. The ziggurat was damaged in the Gulf War in 1991 by small arms fire and the structure was shaken by explosions. Four bomb craters can be seen nearby and the walls of the ziggurat are marred by over 400 bullet holes.
Neft Dashlari
In the 1950s, Soviet engineers built a massive city in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan. It was a network of oil platforms linked by hundreds of kilometers of roads and housing 5,000 workers, with a cinema, a park and apartment blocks. In Neft Dashlari's heyday, some 2,000 drilling platforms were spread in a 30-kilometer circle, joined by a network of bridge viaducts spanning 300 kilometers. Trucks thundered across the bridges and eight-story apartment blocks were built for the 5,000 workers who sometimes spent weeks on Neft Dashlari. The voyage back to the mainland could take anything between six and twelve hours, depending on the type of ship. The island had its own beverage factory, soccer pitch, library, bakery, laundry, 300-seat cinema, bathhouse, vegetable garden and even a tree-lined park for which the soil was brought from the mainland.
Columbia University tunnels
Columbia University has an extensive tunnel system connecting most buildings on campus and acting as conduits for steam, electricity, telecommunications, and other infrastructure. The oldest tunnels are from the mental asylum that existed before the Morningside Campus was built. These tunnels are small and extremely hot, and they connect to Buell/La Maison Francaise, the one building remaining from the asylum.
Deir el-Bahari
A complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor, Egypt.
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a private garden created by Charles Jencks. The garden is inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, such as Black Holes and Fractals. The garden is not abundant with plants, but sets mathematical formulae and scientific phenomenae in a setting which elegantly combines natural features and artificial symmetry and curves.
Kustendorf
Emir Kusturica's utopian village project in Serbia. The streets in the village bear the names of various individuals that Kusturica holds in high esteem or finds to be personally significant: Nikola Tesla, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Diego Maradona, Miodrag Petrović Čkalja, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Joe Strummer, Novak Đoković and of course, Ivo Andrić, after whom the main street is named.
Dar Sebastian
Dar Sebastian house in Hammamet, often considered the embodyment of the perfect Tunisian house. George Sebastian fell in love with the simple beauty of the quiet fishing port of Hammamet and was the first of the international set of the times to build his villa there. He started a trend that has never ceased. Frank Lloyd Wright is said to have claimed it to be ” the most beautiful house I have ever seen”, but as we see it today, it is elegant, but rather sad in its emptiness. One has to have a vivid imagination to recreate the era when Cocteau, Elsa Schiaparelli, Paul Klee, Andre Gide, the Sitwells, Cecil Beaton and others came to enjoy visiting, partying and undertaking what someone once described as indulging the opportunity to do “some rather elaborate sinning”. Perhaps the marble bathtubs for four are a clue. These are two and the other two face them. There is an emptiness of spirit that fills the house where such original individuals once partied, but the space is cool, elegant and reflective of the medina which was its inspiration. It was no wonder that Dar Sebastian was requisitioned by the “Desert Fox” the much decorated and (by both sides) highly respected German General, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel for his wartime Headquarters during the Tunisian campaign.