How and What

Ferdinand Cheval Palace A postman of France called Ferdinand Cheval, born in 1836 built this palace also known as Ideal Palace with the help of his wife by using the stones collected by him during the 20 km daily walk while delivering mails, in the last 30 years of his life. When he was 13 year old, he became a postman and after few years of service, he developed a habit of day dreaming because of the solitude of 20 km daily walk for delivering the mails. During his walk, one day he was attracted to a pebble in his path and started collecting in his pocket, every stone he encountered in his path. Later he used basket and wheelbarrow too. With his collected stones, he and his wife built the Palace, often working in night. He used lime, cement and mortar to bind the stones together. In the final years of the construction work, the palace started attracting people and today too, it brings lots of tourists to the village every year, though there are no other tourist attractions in th...

Earth House An earth house is non-conventional type of house constructed without digging a foundation on a flat surface; rather it is built with the natural terrain by using sprayed concrete. This type of house doesn’t have corners or right angled walls, but are built according to the geometry of the existing environment by adjusting to the natural shapes, which is the most significant feature of this type of house. An earth house is the architecture mostly inspired by the ancient housing techniques, like burrows and caves, with a modern touch of art and strength of finely grained concrete. The concrete spray technique which was first patented by Natural Scientist Carl Akeley in 1911 is the method used to spray finely grained concrete in the structurally designed and welded web of metal bars. It is generally confused that an earth house is built by excavating and constructing the house under the earth, but an earth house is built on natural terrain adjusting to the slope allow...

Chapel in the Rock Chapel in the rock also known as ‘The Chapel of The Holy Cross’ is a beautiful chapel in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, completed in 1956, designed by Marguerite  Brunswick , appearing like a chapel rising out of the surrounding rocks. The Chapel looks beautiful from all sides and is a major tourist  attraction  of Sedona.

Lotus Temple Also known as Bahai Temple, this beautiful temple with its magnificent design of a half open lotus flower was built by around 800 workers taking about 10 years to complete in 1986 in New Delhi India. The Architect Mr. Fariborz Sahba wanted to depict true love; hence the temple was designed in the shape of a lotus, by using 27 marble petals arranged to form 9 sided 40 meter high main hall with 9 entrances and capacity of 2500 people together. Like all other Bahai temples, Lotus Temple is also open to all, irrespective of Cast Creed and Color. Since its construction, Lotus temple has always been a major attraction for tourists.

Banknote Kaunas This office building of Kaunas, Lithuania also known as Office Center 1000, consists of about 4500 glass tiles, pained with enamel paint to form a complete and extraordinarily magnified, 1926 issued LTL 1000 Banknote of Lithuania, which appears to wrapped around the whole 10 story building. The Office Center 1000 was designed by Rimas Adomaitis, Raimundas Babrauskas, Darius Siaurodinas and Virgilijus Jockys to contradict the traditional architecture, which Kaunas is famous for. The Banknote that glitters on the walls of this curvaceous building constructed in 2008 is not functional today, but Office Center 1000 is the idle and most preferred and location for banks and offices.

  Ceramic House, Colombia This is a Ceramic house designed and built by Octavio Mendoza in Colombia. The house looks comical in shape and is very strong. It is built in the same way as a brick or mud utensils are made, by first moulding a desired shape out of mud, allowing it to drain in sunlight for proper time and finally backing it in intense heat. The houses built in this style has a very special feature that it has pores inside its walls which occur when water is evaporated on heating and space is left voided in the forms of pores that acts as thin capillaries. Due to this the house cools automatically in summers and is earthquake proof, being made of a single brick. The only drawback is that it is difficult to build if levels are required and repair and renovations weakens the house. Also there are various chances of errors since larger voids can cause a poor quality house.

National Grand Theater The National Theater of Beijing, China, also known as the National Grand Theater is an egg shaped opera house constructed with Titanium and Glass Frames and is surrounded by an artificial lake, built with Opera House, Drama Theater and Concert hall having a total capacity of accommodating 5452 people at once. All the theaters were designed to be covered with the famous egg shaped titanium framed shell ornamented with designer glass panels, by French Architect Paul Andreu, having the construction started in 2001 and completed, finished and opened for public in 2007. Being surrounded by man-made lake from all sides, the dome Theater appears to floating in water, with the pathway underneath the lake to enter in the theater.