All in the name

Remember when buildings used to be covered with ivy, but then people were told to tear them all off because they destroyed the brickwork and acted as a highway for vermin?  Silly Outer Party members!  Just call them "vertical gardens" and you'll have the benedictions of the priests of Blessed Gaia

Shanghai dragon

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) inflicts a building in the form of a metal "dragon" in the centre of Shanghai.  Even the ChiComs don't deserve this.

Question:  Exactly when did architecture become an exercises in bad jokes that the rest of us have to live with?

Rotating garden pods

What garden couldn't be improved by rotating garden pods?  Or say asks Ornate Garden.

BIG RAT and spy kit sold separately.

Future London

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) imagines the future skyline of London with a sweeping plan that totally ignores the city's current architecture, history, culture or any human needs in favour of a "green", "utopitan" scheme that's one economic downturn away from becoming Blade Runner with Cockneys.

Architectural criticism

Cardboard cathedral

New Zealand plans to build a cardboard cathedral to replace the Victorian one damaged in the recent earthquake.

It also serves as a metaphor for the current state of the Anglican church.

Migrant building

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) goes on the move with their "migrant" buildings.

I don't know which is more worthy of comment; the insane number of basic things that are wrong with this technological mishmash or the question of whether this picture is of the unicycle skyscrapers fleeing a collapsing city or caught in the middle of an architectural Panzar attack.

Buildings from Hell

The Telegraph looks at the ugliest buildings in the world.  This one, Liverpool Cathedral, was so bad that at the time of its construction it was denounced as the work of the Anti-Christ.

Himalayas Water Tower

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) has this solution to the inexorable melting of the Himalayan glaciers due to global warming:  Build 900-yard tall towers, one third of which is filled with ice cubes made up with run-off from the melting glaciers.

Two problems with this.  First, the capacity of these towers compared to the volume of a single glacier is so tiny that it makes wind power look like a good idea and second, the designer has missed out on Glaciergate.

An oily home

The idea of living in a converted oil tank is intriguing.  At the least, it would look very cool.  However, I can't decide which is the worst about this particular proposal:

• All the silly "green" touches.
• The ludicrous, upside down, inside-out layout that has the master bathroom opening on the living room rather than the bedroom.
• The fact that the architect intends to have the tank completely dismantled, taken off site, almost entirely rebuilt and then reassembled at another site.

I think the third.  If you're going to go through all that trouble for a bottle of rusty steel, you might as well save the expense and build a new one.

Crazy, messy accident waiting to happen

Cannonbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!
(THUD!)

Noah's Ark

For those not very big tsunamis
Please confirm ave height before using.

Yanko design (The DREADCO of the design world) comes to the rescue of future tsunami victims with their New-Age Noah's Ark; a building designed to survive the worst tectonic event because it sits on shock absorbers and in the event of tsunamis "the architecture float on water by buoyancy".

No doubt the architecture dodge wave of water-borne debris crashing down it like a sledge hammer by luckiness.  I hope so because all that hurtling timber and motor cars aren't going to do the Ark's tsunami-driven hydroelectric generators any good at all.

How anyone is supposed to reach this thing in the event of an earthquake is left to the imagination as is the question of what the survivors are supposed to do when they get there because instead of dormitories and medical facilities the Ark consists entirely of a tastefully lit garden and a small art gallery.

This may prove something of a disappointment on the day

Zombie Safe Homes

It's good to see that someone is finally taking this impending threat seriously.  I've been looking at the 2011 Zombie Safe Home competition and while I do find many of the designs intriguing, I'm disappointed that so many rely on either fortification or escape.

Personally, I prefer defence in depth so that the ranks of shambling ghouls are decimated before they even reach the outer perimeter and then unleashing my counter-attack measures to reclaim lost territory before they can establish themselves.

One question that I've had from watching too many zombie films:  Has everyone forgotten how to combine barbed wire and machine guns?  It always seemed to me that some concertina wire and a Bren gun would do wonders.

Living Roof

Behold Nau's Living Roof: "A self-sustaining rooftop capsule".  It's unusual feature is that instead of having separate rooms, itrotates so that the one room becomes a lounge, bedroom or office.  It's an interesting design, though I can see some dissatisfaction as the tenants are subjected to periodic rains of paperclips, crisp wrappers, socks, and tea mugs.

I don't even want to think about what the loo is like.

Safe House

Welcome to the Blofeld summer home.

This is a bit modern for my tastes, but it does have one neat trick up its sleeve:

That lawn had better be mined.

Flick the switch and the steel door rolls down and concrete slabs slam shut over the windows to turn the cottage into an impregnable pillbox.

It's impressive, but a bit amateurish.  Now if the walls sloped more to deflect shot and were of reinforced concrete with a sheet of Chobam armour and kevlar padding it would be better.  And I'd prefer that as the shutters closed the strategically placed remote-controlled mini-gun turrets on the grounds would rise followed by the Javelin and Rapier missile launchers. The subterranean escape tunnel* with the one-man rocket sled/jet aeroplane I take as a given.

Safety first, you know.

*House self-destruct switch inside the hidden entrance in the study.

Oil rig villages

Inhabitat has another proposal for an "aquatic village" made out of an old oil rig.  As usual, it's a Utopia with jet skiing, sail boating, marine researching, swimming, hotelling, and all sorts of tropical good-lifeishnessity. And, of course, it's powered by lovely, Blessed Gaia-pleasing tidal and solar power generators no doubt backed up by rainbows, unicorns, and electricity fairies.

We'll overlook the fact that most rigs today are portable and move to a new site once they've done their job while the stationary ones tend to rust into uselessness in the blink of an eye.  I'm more concerned about the fact that oil rigs tend to be less in the French Riviera and more in the North Sea, which, I can confirm from white-knuckled experience, is less of a holiday spot and more of a very wobbly version of the Alps with gales thrown in for good measure.

Cuts down on the jet skiing, I can tell you.

An acrophobic nightmare

How do you pound tent pegs into steel plates?

Import Export Architecture comes up with a bold, new concept in urban camping. 

Sure to be a magnet for every drug addict, graffiti "artist", and vandal within miles, this tent tower will have residents cheering–as its jagged, rusting struts and platforms are pulled down after condemnation as a safety hazard.

Coral Reef

Welcome to Insta-Slum.

Haiti is the hellhole of the New World, but architect Vincent Callebaut has a solution in his Coral Reef; a "Inspired Carbon Neutral Eco Village".  Replete with all manner of greenery, these modular living units allow a thousand people to (somehow) grow their own food on small plots of land that I can't seem to find anywhere.  At any rate,

Aquaculture farms and grey water recycling plants filter and process the water before sending it into the sea. The entire complex is carbon neutral and powered via a number of different renewable energy sources. Power would be generated from thermal energy conversion under the pier, marine currents, vertical axis wind turbines, and solar photovoltaics.

Of course, seeing as Haiti isn't Hong Kong or Manhattan, you could just build small homes on normal plots of land, hook them up to a decent sanitation system, and then lay in a power grid with an honest-to-Fermi power plant that produces more power than the Haitians need so they can progress rather than never enough so they remain dirt poor, but where's the fun in that?

Hothouse London

Imagine the joy of living in a polycarbonate bubble in the centre of London.  Gaze upon the Palace of Westminster, enjoy the vistas of the Thames, glory in nature's splendor, and discover first hand when the sun comes out why people don't live in glass houses.

We leave your relations with the local pigeons and their effect on your bubble for another day.

Hemp house

Introducing the world's first house made entirely from hemp.

I'd invite you to go see it, but unfortunately, it was set fire to and inhaled by a load of hippies within an hour of completion.

Pass the Doritos, please.  Major munchies attack, you know.