This Week’s Crazy Building: Mystery Castle

Mystery Castle by mediafury licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Mystery Castle in Phoenix, Arizona. In the 1930s, Boyce Luther Gulley made some drastic life changes. After learning he had tuberculosis, he moved to Phoenix and started building a house for his daughter Mary Lou. He created it from cheap or scavenged materials—everything from stones to car parts and
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Mushroom House La Jolla

Beach house on south end of Blacks Beach, north of Scripps Pier with funicular to La Jolla Farms mansion in La Jolla, California by Raquel Baranow licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Mushroom House in La Jolla, CA. The official name of this strange structure is the Pavilion, but it’s been nicknamed the Mushroom House due to its distinctive shape. Way back in 1960, Sam Bell of Bell’s Potato Chips bought a summer home on the cliffs above Black’s Beach. Realizing
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Kauffman Center

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts by Burdettekevin licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri. The brainchild of philanthropist Muriel Kauffman, this oddly shaped building took five years to complete, finishing in 2011. It began as a napkin sketch by architect Moshe Safde, and ended as a massive construction with 25,000 cubic yards of
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Busan Cinema Center

Busan Cinema Center by Obristv licensed under the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea. This absurd structure is the official venue of the Busan International Film Festival. Completed in 2011, it consists of several buildings, but Dureream Square is the most impressive feature. The square boasts a gigantic roof—534 by 196 feet—that also doubles as a massive “screen” consisting of
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Titanic Belfast

Titanic Belfast, author unknown licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0
This week’s crazy building is the Titanic Belfast in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Opened in 2012, this massive museum boasts over 130,000 feet of floor space. It tells visitors the story of the Titanic with artifacts, reconstructions and even an informative high-tech ride. The museum was built in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, directly in front of where
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Ministry of Transportation

Bank of Georgia Headquarters by Tinalomidze7 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
This week’s crazy building is the Ministry of Transportation Building in Tbilisi, Georgia. Completed in 1975 in Soviet Georgia, this amazing work of Brutalist architecture looks something like a 3D tic-tac-toe board. It consists of several crisscrossing prisms of steel and concrete—three vertical, five horizontal. The architect for the project was also the main client:
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Sealand

Sealand by Richard Lazenby licensed under the terms of public domain
This week’s crazy building is the Principality of Sealand, off the coast of Essex, England. This time around, our crazy building is (depending on who you ask) also its own country. Originally a British WWII naval fort known as Roughs Tower, it was occupied by pirate radio broadcaster Paddy Roy Bates in 1967. By 1975,
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This Week’s Crazy Building: House of Bottles

La casa Ecológica de Botellas by Rodrigo Soldon licensed under the terms of CC BY-ND 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the House of Bottles in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina. After the Argentinian economy went bust in 2001, Alfredo Santa Cruz was reduced to sifting through trash. But in an inspiring tale of lemons into lemonade, he decided to make that trash into a home. More specifically, using a system of over 1,200
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Biosphere 2

Biosphere 2 by Johndedios licensed under the terms of CC BY 3.0
This week’s crazy building is Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Biosphere 2’s weird series of structures has an even weirder history. Based on the name, you may expect that there was a similar building built before this one. In fact, Biosphere 2 was meant as the second self-sufficient biosphere—the first being Earth itself. It originally contained miniature
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This Week’s Crazy Building: Robarts Library

Robarts Library by Sascha Noyes is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
This week’s crazy building is Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. This fortress-like structure is one of the most prominent examples of Brutalist architecture: raw concrete with strong lines and a plain, stark feel. It’s appropriately nicknamed “Fort Book.” Opened in 1973 and created by Mathers & Haldenby Architects, it features over 4.5 million
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