20 of the World's Most Beautiful Libraries - Oddee.com (beautiful libraries, amazing libraries...) For some people it’s castles with their noble history and crumbling towers, for others it’s abandoned factories or lost cities. But for those who enjoy reading, a huge beautiful library is a place of endless pleasure. Meet 20 of the biggest and most beautiful libraries around the globe, as presented by . You can find this and more fascinating pictures on Candida Hofer's book. Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Trinity College LIbrary, AKA, The Long Room, Dublin, Ireland Melk Monastery Library, Melk, Austria Jay Walker's Private Library Rijkmuseum Library, Amsterdam Library of Parliament, Ottawa, Canada Strahov Monastery - Theological Library, Prague, Czech Republic Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, Germany Biblioteca Geral University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal Wiblingen Monastary Library, Ulm, Germany Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg, Klosterneuburg, Austria Central Library, Seattle George Peabody Library, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Hover Home Plan: Floating Floor Slides 6 Stories Straight Up « Dornob. This might be the coolest house design concept for urban dwellers and landscape lovers alike – a singular shining metal-and-glass structure divided into sections, each of which independently slides up story by story. With this marvelous motion comes stunning views on all sides, and the option to retreat, dropping back down to disappear in the surrounding environment.
Just imagine: push a button and you could move your whole home or just part of it, changing your entire perspective, privacy level and relationship to other rooms at will. It looks fantastic, and seems like a fantasy, but this dream home is designed with all kinds of practical considerations in mind – include a rigidly simple rectangular floor plan. Structural and mechanical engineers have established working methods to allow for a smooth ride up and down as well as stable experience at any height. However, this house is also grounded in real principles of physics and realities of building construction. Historical Tree House, Fort, Restaurant & Resort Designs « Dornob. Wood tree houses are rarely timeless, built as they are into the ever-changing natural environment and often constructed natural materials such as woods that surround them.
The plan is often to make them play places more than permanent homes. Some are created as novelty buildings for rent to the public (such as hotels, inns and other vacation properties) while others are intended to be lofted restaurants, temporary homes or forts for children. A shack in the sky is somehow so much more compelling than the same run-down little lodge structure sitting on the ground below, but it also more susceptible to the elements through its exposure.
These beautiful-but-shoddy tree houses had to be abandoned as the pictures above show. Though simple, they are still stunning structures in their way. For better or worse, not everyone who tries knows how to build a tree house. To be fair, this building appears to be more of a toy or club house than a resort or residence.
Aircraft + Boat + House = Eccentric Wooden Tree Home « Dornob. It looks like a blimp that crash-landed in the forest, a luxury yacht or strange submarine washed ashore – that was modified, renovated and transformed into a habitable year-round home in the trees. Using engineering techniques employed in building strong rigid curves into the framework of wood boats and aircraft hulls, this unique tree house is at once cutting-edge and curiously eccentric. In some ways, this building designed by Bellemo & Cat stands out strongly from its surroundings – critics must decided whether this move preserves or shatters the integrity of the green hillside landscape.
From a sustainability standpoint, however, raising the whole house on stilts is an eco-friendly move that preserves the existing trees and other plant life growing natural on the site. The curved form of the exterior carries through to the interior, informing and shaping the strange rooms and spaces – including the ovoid bedroom at one of the tips of the blimp-like structure.
Weavers Nest: Tree House or the Work of a Very Big Bird? « Dornob. Who wouldn’t run scared at the sight of such a thing? It looks like it had to have been constructed by a (flying) bird far larger than the biggest (flightless) birds on the planet. Any surprise it was developed by a design firm known as Animal Farm? Patterned after the remarkable communal architecture of the infamous weaver, these tree houses are much bigger than anything found in nature. Nested inside the organic exterior framed of branches and sticks, however, sits a hidden steel frame revealing this to be a work of human craft rather than the home of some extinct flying creature. A rope ladder leads up through a porthole opening to a round lounge space surrounded by wood and padded with floor pillows from wall to curved wall. It is a very strange hybrid – a marriage of traditional-looking construction from some remote region, the naturalistic formations of a strange unknown creature and the modern mechanical capabilities of creative metalworkers.
1 Man, 10 Stories, 100 Feet: Tallest Treehouse in the World « Dornob. It looks downright dangerous … yet its creator claims it is divinely inspired by a vision he received in which he was told to begin building a tree house for which he would never run out of materials. 15 years, 10,000 square feet and 250,000 nails and a lot of scrap wood later, this amazing structure towers up over the very trees that support it. Known as the Minister’s Treehouse (out of deference to creator Horace Burgess, de facto pastor of the forest) trange features of this phenomenal structure include: a third-floor basketball-court-and-sanctuary combination, a half-ton chime at the very top of the building on top of a penthouse suite Burgess built for his wife as an anniversary present.
The structure itself seems to fluctuate between highly organized, regular and planned to completely haphazard, chaotic and unstable. Natural Architecture: Home-Grown Artistic Tree Houses « Dornob. Patrick Dougherty is a builder and yet not an architect – he is perhaps best described as an artist and sculptor, a wood craftsman the likes of which most of us have never seen. Rather than cutting, planing, leveling and assembling rectilinear wood structures he shapes living trees into amazing natural tree buildings.
What started as simple arbosculptures quickly become inhabitable spaces and entire built environments. Some of the results seem like churches or gazebos, religious or resting places deep in the forest, as shown in the pictures above. Others are more abstract and open for interpretation or mixed-use occupation, changing with seasonal conditions as shown below. Always temporary by necessity, he grows and shapes the constituent sapplings to create playful and interactive forms in all kinds of contexts (with over 150 installations worldwide to date). What the Fujimori?! 10 Eccentric Eco-Homes of the Far East « Dornob.
From building materials and construction techniques to room requirements and site restrictions, Terunobu Fujimori takes nothing for granted when designing a new home. While there are themes that run between these houses, each is a one-of-a-kind creation that is as much a work of fine (if unusual) local contemporary craftsmanship as it is an exploration of residential architectural history in Japan. Many of his structures feature organic forms, odd angles and dizzying elevations, but beyond these large-scale formal moves are many much finer-grain detail choices that set each structure apart. Some use custom-charred wood, feature offbeat green roofs or contain other strange spatial twists and material science experiments. In the above home, for example, the tea room is set apart from the rest of the home – lofted out over empty space and accessible by ladder.
They might look whimsical, playful or even childish, but there is a great deal of thought in each building detail. 20 Tree House Pictures: Play-Club Plans to Big-Kid Houses « Dornob. Treehouses are more popular than ever, as play spaces for children but also as luxury hotel (and even house) designs for adults. Some of the most fantastic plans and ideas can be traced to specialist designers and builders – and pictures of their work can provide some of the best inspiration (as well as an informal visual guide) for do-it-yourself recreational, residential and commercial tree buildings.
Blue Forest is one such company, but far from the only one. Their specialty seems to lie somewhere between playful little fantasy structures and big educational spaces for children engaged in wildlife observation, forest ecology and related nature-oriented pursuits. The trick is to find a balance between safe and fun – railings are a must, as are sturdy supports, but whimsy and asymmetry help make these places feel more organic and engaging for younger visitors in particular.
Some are like mansions, fortresses or castles – just set up on stilts instead of sitting on the ground. Fantasy Forest Tree House Straight out of a Kids Story Book « Dornob. If this looks large to you, imagine how big it would seem to someone half your size or smaller. Like some childrens picture-book come to life, this ‘Enchanted Forest‘ wooden tree house may look a bit kitsch to us as adults from a design perspective – but for kids it is one very cool combination of fairy tale magic and real-life adventure. Held up by a combination of wooden beams and actual tree trunks, a spiral staircase connects this series of interdependent levels to effectively create a single (narrative) structure out of a number of semi-autonomous rooms and floors along the way. Each platform affords places to play as well as increasingly interesting views of the surrounding treescapes. Part of a larger theme park in the rural old-growth forests of British Columbia, this is part of a sizable fantasy-themed environment that blends natural wonders, wild animals and folklore classics both old and new in a kid-friendly resort setting.
Traditional Tree House & Home Design, Building & Living « Dornob. Continue reading below Our Featured Videos In some parts of the world and periods of history, the make-your-own approach has been more about function than fun. Some populations live mostly or exclusively in tree dwellings that range from simple and low-tech to towering structures at dizzying heights of up to 120 feet in places like New Guinea. The height, materials and overall designs of each treehouse reflects regional weather conditions and natural hazards.
Newsletter Sign Up Get the latest design news! Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest design news. Thanks for subscribing! Tree house living has added security benefits, gives greater access to sunlight above tree lines and is often possible with low-tech construction techniques, local natural materials and even a single dedicated builder. White Interior + Curved Walls = Wild Art Collector Condo « Dornob. Live, work, and art – all in one place. Built for an art collector in New York City, this top-floor condo is filled with sweeping curves and subtle illumination – but these artistic moves are tempered with strategically flat wall surfaces for hanging artworks as well. UNstudio, like any museum designer, faced the challenge of optimizing the design for artwork without letting pieces become overwhelmed by the architecture and interior design strategies – particularly tricky with the added element of inhabitants.
Track-lighting lines in the ceiling draw the eye through each area of the main (open floor plan) space, while back-lit panels in between provide even lighting for works of sculpture set on the floor and other art hanging from the walls. The light-bleached wood flooring is intentionally inconspicuous. The flush-set lights are adjustable LEDs that shift from bright daylight-simulating luminosity to ambient darkness depending on the needs of the resident and surrounding art pieces.