Jag Mandir
Jag Mandir is a palace built on an island in the Lake Pichola, India. The palace served as a refuge to asylum seekers on two separate occasions.
Foro Bonaparte
Boro Bonaparte was a plan by Giovanni Antonio Antolinilans to redesign Milan in the around the Sforza Castle which Napoleon had begun to demolish. The projected proposed keeping the core of the castle, adding a facing of Doric columns, and developing a vast circular plaza around, some 570 meters in diameter. Surrounded by a Doric colonnade, the plaza was to be bordered by administrative buildings, ministries, courthouses, baths, theatres, universities and museums. Although Napoleon was strongly behind it, it was finally deemed too ambitious for a city the size of Milan.
Swiss bunkers
Swiss bunkers are paranoid architectural manifestations. With the threat of foreign invasion a thing of the past, thousands of military bunkers and fortresses in Switzerland have been now been put to commercial use, from hotels to data centres, museums to cheese factories.
Balusters
Balusters are architectural elements that remind us that repetition can be beautiful.
Amber Room
The Amber Room is a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. The room was looted by the Nazis during World War II and recreated in 2003. The original room is estimated to be worth 500 million dollars. It has yet to be featured on MTV Cribs.
Ryōan-ji garden
The Ryōan-ji garden is one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui, a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles.
Kuthodaw Pagoda
Kuthodaw Pagoda is a Buddhist stupa in Burma that contains the world's largest book. It has 730 leaves and 1460 pages. Each page is three and a half feet wide, five feet tall, and five inches thick. It's made of stone.
White City
The White City refers to a collection of over 4,000 Bauhaus or International style buildings built in Tel Aviv from the 1930s by German Jewish architects. Tel Aviv has the largest number of buildings in this style of any city in the world.
Bomarzo monster park
Bomarzo monster park is filled with bizarre sculptures for which only the accompanying inscriptions provide any explanation. Among the pieces are a war elephant, a monstrous fish-head, a giant tearing another giant in half, and a house built on a tilt to disorient the viewer. Perhaps the most frightening piece in the garden is an enormous head, mouth opened wide in a scream. The accompanying inscription reads “all reason departs.”
Arcana Books
Arcana Books specializes in new, rare and out of print books, catalogues, and ephemera on 20th and 21st century.