Your stylish terrace

“Out of Africa” is still one of the most romantic movies ever made. The lovely romance that took place of the loveliest African air is surely something any woman would like to take and bury inside her heart.

If you are a fan of native designs, wide open eyes dreaming and cool nights spent on a terrace filled with Africa air then making such a dream come true is a few decoration ideas away.

Africa style has been a common presence in the home decoration ever since the colonial era and since the native patterns is a huge comeback of this year, decorating your terrace using African patterns and furniture style is a very good idea.

Revamping a Patio

Bring your patio alive! In case you have a patio, but you aren’t satisfied with it, for example because it is too small, there are some good ideas through which you might make a change.

The size of the patio shouldn’t be a problem. In order to save some money, you might use what you have, and make some extensions. If you have to deal with sloping surface then you might have to create a retaining wall.

This might cause some problems when raining, so you should place plastic flexible tubing along the wall to drain the water.

Luxurious outdoor shower designs

Showering is perhaps one of the most basic activities anybody does daily. With the summer here and all the heat in the air, it feels natural to want to shower outside. Also, you can install vanity sinks outside for convenience.

Come, have a look at the coolest shower designs that make showering an exclusive experience.

Cascade Shower

The Cascade outdoor shower is versatile, functional and aesthetically pleasing. It features a base made from acacia wood that makes it comfortable to stand on.

There is a tube connected to the base that carries water to another, horizontal tube which then drops the water down onto you in a waterfall like style.

If you tap on the vertical tube, it will regulate the pressure of the water coming from the horizontal tube.

This is a wonderful shower for a garden, a terrace, deck, or even out by the pool or Jacuzzi. It is easy to both assemble and use. To connect water to it, simply attach an everyday garden hose to the base.

Most unique bookshelves

No matter how much the electronic media progresses, it can never replace books as they are still the most stable and suitable form of knowledge preservation known to mankind.

Even though books are interesting themselves, it is more interesting to observe the designs of the bookshelves they are kept in.

 Coffee Table Bookshelf

The Coffee Table bookshelf is perfect for coffee-loving readers. Store it all at one place and read or drink whenever you like.

Unbelievable Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower – I don't consider it to be the most beautiful piece of architecture, but I can assure you it is one of the most interesting ones.

Built in 1889 for the International Exhibition of Paris in order to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution, the tower was hardly accepted by many people. The tower was met with resistance from the public when it was built, with many calling it an eyesore.

It is even said that the novelist Guy de Maupassant claimed to hate the tower. Despite that, he usually ate lunch at the Tower's restaurant. When asked why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where you couldn't see the Tower.

But in time it became part of Parisian life… "During its lifetime, the Eiffel Tower has also witnessed a few strange scenes, including being scaled by a mountaineer in 1954, and parachuted off of in 1984 by two Englishmen. In 1923 a journalist rode a bicycle down from the first level. Some accounts say he rode down the stairs, other accounts suggest the exterior of one of the tower's four legs which slope outward." But although its birth was a little rough, today it completely accepted and must be listed as one of the symbols of Paris itself and as the most visited monument in the world.

Gustave Eiffel about his tower:  

"Now to what phenomenon did I give primary concern in designing the Tower? It was wind resistance. Well then! I hold that the curvature of the monument's four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it should be (…) will give a great impression of strength and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the design as a whole."

Winning architectural designs

An architect is a designer whose capabilities are best exploited in a competitive environment. Over the past, various contests have been held around the world for designing many an important structure. These designs are unique in one way or the other, either being related to some big event, or subject to heated disputes, or intended, but never implemented. 

Boston City hall

In 1962, a nationwide contest held for designing the headquarters of the municipal government of Boston saw the entry of 256 different designs. Out of these, the prize-winning entry was presented by a group of three Columbia professors, the theme of which revolved around civic

Marvelous Route 66 stops

U-Drop Inn

Shamrock, Texas

By far, one of the most recognizable structures on the route. In the 1930′s, the owners of the lot were approached by some investors and offered a custom designed building in order to cash in on the coming flood of travelers. The owner of the land grabbed a stick and drew in the dirt his idea for the building, and the U-Drop Inn was born! The U-Drop Inn functioned as a gas station and cafe and is currently being restored.

Wonderful roller coasters

 Goliath – Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, California, USA

Top Speed: 85 mph / 136.7 km/h

Not only is the Goliath the 9th fastest roller coaster, but it also has the third highest drop and is the seventh tallest (standing at over 20 stories high). It includes a 255 foot drop, at 85 miles per hour, leading to a tunnel full of smoke. It also includes camel-like humps and an amazing bunny hop in which riders float off their seats due the force. It is recognized as one of the most entertaining roller coasters in the world.

World's most unusual hotels

Tired of the same boring hotels? Me too… I’m not talking about ordinary Jamaica hotels or ones you would see on your Dominican Republic vacation. And there are plenty of weird hotels around the world that could provide for any tourist a more interesting and special accommodation. Some of them are finished and just waiting for you, others are projects or in construction. But all of them are amazing…

Beckham Creek Cave Haven

The world's deepest swimming pool

So this is the world's deepest swimming pool. I don't really like swimming and for me would be a true nightmare… but for others looks like fun. It seems it is located in Brussels, Belgium inside a recreational diving center and almost anyone is allowed to dive as long as he or she is accompanied by a professional instructor. The pool itself consists of a submerged structure with flat platforms at various depth levels. The pool has two largeflat-bottomed areas at depth levels of 5m (16 ft) and 10m (32 ft), and a largecircular pit descending to a depth of 33m (108 ft).It is filled with 2,500,000 liters of non-chlorinated, highly filtered spring water maintainedat 30°C.

Wonderful power plants architecture

More or less dangerous, but necessary, old or new, power plants like any other buildings are able to tell a story of the past centuries or give us a perspective on of the future. Recently I received from Reinfried Marass a beautiful picture of Austria’s oldest hydro-electrical power plant. You can see it below, followed by pictures of other power stations around the world.

Nuclear Pacific – Diablo Canyon, nuclear power plant built on a gorgeous expanse of California Coast next to a beautiful state park.

Most bizarre houses

Home is probably one of the safest and most peaceful places for a person to be at. No matter how it looks like, its has a charm of comfort and a glow of peacefulness.

Its hard to believe if the residents of the houses below think the same too.

Compiled below is a list of the  Most bizarre houses of the World. You will love to see them but the question is whether you have the guts to live in one?

Stone House

This Stone House in Portugal is one of the best examples of elements of nature put to good use. As surprising as it may seen but people actually live in that house.

Marvelous huge aquariums

These are just a few of the most beautiful places in the world, most interesting and captivating aquariums, where you can easily break into the mesmerizing secrets of the underwater world.
World’s Largest Aquarium – Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, a wonderful home for more than 100,000 animals of 500 different species (notable specimens: whale sharks, beluga whales, manta ray) and with a capacity of 8.1 million US gallons (31,000 m³) of marine fresh water.

World’s Second Largest Aquarium - Churaumi Aquarium,part of the Ocean Expo

Teluk Intan Leaning Tower

Teluk Intan Leaning Tower – The main attraction of the Malaysian town of Teluk Intan is the leaning water tower erected in 1885 by a Chinese builder, Mr. Leong Choon Cheong. It started to tilt four years after its construction finished due to an underground stream. The tower had a clock at the top, and still rings every 15 minutes now. Today, it is seen and used only as a local tourist attraction, and no longer stores water.

China’s “Leaning Tower of Pisa”

China’s “Leaning Tower of Pisa”- Built under the Liao Dynasty, the leaning tower in Huludao, northeast China’s Liaonin province is almost 10 meters high and has an inclination of 12 degrees to northeast. The tower has undergone numerous earthquake- and flood-induced damages, but remained intact.

Unusual beds

Comfort has always been a priority for people around the globe. When a person comes back home after a stressful day at work, he wants to take rest on his bed. People all over the world show creativity in every walk of life and so does represent this list.

Here I have compiled some of the most unique and interesting beds used around the globe. This list is not only about bed but an achievement of mankind of using his intellectual capability in order to make himself comfortable.

SAMPON DAYBED OUTDOOR BED

Sampon daybed is a sleekly plastic resin waved bed. Can be placed anywhere outside in your lawn giving it a more luxurious and elegant look.

Leaning Tower in Torun, Poland

 Leaning Tower in Torun, Poland – obviously smaller than the one in Pisa, the Tower of Torun is a simple Roman tower that started to lean immediately after its construction due to the instable ground on which it had been erected.

Most beautiful Fountains

Eye catching fountains, it’s a must-have for every self-respecting city that wants to attracts more and more tourists. The bigger, more colorful it is, the bigger the hype. We get to see them in every city we travel to, but have you ever wondered where are the most beautiful places to rest your feet while looking at water going up and then down.

The Magic Fountain of Montjuic

The magic fountain of Montjuic is a spectacular display of color, light, motion, music and water acrobatics. Located in Barcelona the magic fountain attracts thousands of tourists every night to see the water and the music show.

Fastest roller coasters

Sharp turns, descends, high G forces makes rollercoaster an ultimate adventure ride. Engineers and Architects are always coming up with new thrilling and adventurous rides and so are the people willing to challenge them.

Roller coasters give us a sense of thrill this is unidentifiable to most people, except when you hear the shrieks coming from the lady riding next to you, and all you want to do is cover up her mouth, or throw her off the side.

The Steel Dragon

The name was derived from “The Year of the Dragon”. The track is the longest in the world measuring 8133 feet in length. It is located at Nagashima Spa Land amusement park in Mie Prefacture, Japan.

Leaning towers of madrid

Leaning Towers of Madrid, Spain -  Standing as two of the most impressive buildings, ’Gateway to Europe’ towers, are considered to be the world’s first leaning high-rise buildings (115 m tall each). Built in 1996 by Philip Johnson and John Burgee with an inclination of 15º.

Marvelous suspension bridges

What amazes me most is how mankind has managed to erect such amazing architectures over the history of time. Ranging from the Taj Mahal of India to the Pyramids of Egypt, everything is a wonder.

Compiled below is a list of the 10 largest suspension bridges in the world which provide the best examples of human technology and man power combined together.

The list goes on in descending order, starting from the longest suspension bridge span.

 Great Belt Bridge

The runner up to the largest of all is the Great Belt Bridge located in Denmark. It was also built in 1998 and serves a main span of 1650 meters. It is also known as the Storebælt Bridge.

 Runyang Bridge

Leaning tower of suurhusen

The church in Suurhusen, a village in the German region of East Frisia, is a reminiscent of the old 15th century fortress churches and it’s tower is said to be the most lop-sided building in the world, beating the Tower of Pisa by 1.22 degrees.

The wonderful tower of Pisa

If you like traveling, it’s impossible not to know the wonderful Tower of Pisa (La Torre di Pisa), the campanile belonging to the Cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa, also known as The Leaning Tower.

Dating back  to 1173 and even intially meant to be a perfectly vertical structure, the Tower of Pisa is today one curious attraction due to its high leaning at about 3.99 degrees. How this happened? As Wikipedia says: “The tower began to sink after construction had progressed to the third floor in 1178. This was due to a mere three-meter foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil, a design that was flawed from the beginning.”  Now, the Tower of Pisa is a beautiful landmark in a continuous fight with its harsh environmental conditions.

The well known Italian tower, although one controversial building, as you’ll see, it’s not the only one of such kind… some other towers around the world stand almost like ready to fall – some intended to be like that, some not.

A Luxurious Underground Mansion

The house that will be built under the grounds of Limehurst, a Victorian building converted into flats, is a “£2m property, which will be entered via an unassuming door at ground level and descend up to 50ft below.”
Still a project…

L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

A beautiful place meant to remind of Viking settlements in Newfoundland, Canada. You can consider it the authentic Viking recreation – a wonderful architectural piece for travellers.

Underground house in Greece

Another carved house with just the second storey visible above ground. Designed by Deca Architecture, the eco-friendly home stands proud on the beautiful landscape of the Greek Cycladic Islands and in the windy climate of the Aegean Sea.

Underground House in the Swiss

A unique house situated deep in the mountains in the Swiss village of Vals. Designed by search in collaboration with Christian Muller Architects the beautiful residence, although unusual in aesthetics, has the facilities of a normal home. A common interior, but a wonderful exterior design and a stunning mountain view due to its circular opening.

Malator is a beautiful construction

Malator is a beautiful construction that amazingly blends with the landscape of St Bride’s Bay. More than a strange, contemporary home – one of Wales’ architectural treasures.

Cumbria Underground House

Similar by nature with the two houses the follow her in this post, Cumbria is not a bunker as the Subterra Castle is, but an environmentally friendly, modernly designed home dug into the moutain, more like a burrow.

Beautiful Quito, Ecuador

Quito, Ecuador – Inca Civilization considered gold to be a symbol of the Sun God, so the interior of Iglesia de la Compañia was covered with almost 2 tons of gold. Magical…

Incredible Subterra Castle, Dover, Kansas

Living underground becomes more fascinating when your home is not just an earth-sheltered residence, but an abandoned subterranean missile launch complex. Subterra Castle is the best example on how to transform an old, ugly and forgotten bunker into a livable and colorful home. Behind a strong door designed to withstand the blast from a nuclear explosion, after tunnels and lots of metal, a New Age ambiance lays in the home of Ed and Dianna.

Underground hobbit house in central California

And because we were talking about underground owner built houses this is another interesting one. A whimsical wood home, strangely shaped, in the middle of nature – central California.

Incredible hobbit like house

A lovely home and the one I like most is the hobbit-like house of Simon Dale from Wales. Built with a lot of care for the environment is one of the wonderful and unique places in the world people would like to live in. Close to nature and making plenty use of it to get a comfortable and modern life… “wood burner for heating, water by gravity from nearby spring, solar panels for lighting, music and computing, skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light”.

People have been living underground

Unbelievable? Wild? A bit strange? Since the beginning of time people have been living underground. All history books speak about cavemen. The 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a very brutal image of these people and of the human being far away from civilization and called this kind of living “poor, nasty, brutish and short”.
After thousands and thousands of years things have changed a little… 
Today’s earth shelter dwellings are a more friendly and elegant return to nature: comfortable and eco. I wonder what Thomas Hobbes would say about these….

Wonderful Most Ljubavi

Known as a popular spa town in Serbia, Vrnjaka Banja is also the home of a wonderful tourist attraction: Most Ljubavi – The Bridge of Love… The sad story of two lovers separated by the First World War who used to meet on this bridge attracts people from everywhere. Lovers write their names on a padlock, attach it to the bridge railings and throw away the key to seal their love for ever.

Vrnjaka Banja must have a flourishing padlock industry.
A woman called Nada fell in love with Relja a Serbian officer. After they commitment, Relja went to war in Greece where he fell in love with another woman from Corfu.

As a consequence, Nada never recovered from her condemned love and died. Since then, all young girls from Vrnjaka Banja who wanted to protect their own love stories started writing down their names, together with the names of their loved ones, on padlocks and fastening them to the railings of the bridge where Nada and Relja used to meet.

Yunagi no hashi bridge of evening calm

Yunagi-no-hashi (bridge of evening calm)  There is a special bridge in the site. It is a 120m long wooden bridge on the Sea of Japan named Yunagi-no-hashi (bridge of evening calm). The story goes that – if you lock the key of the parapet of the bridge, your love will have a happy ending. Many believers, couples and couple wanna-bes, have visited this bridge and make a wish. It is said that you can see the world’s largest sunset from the bridge.

Beautiful Tumski Bridge

An old road bridge build in 1889 to connect two cities: Ostrow Tumski and Wyspa Piaskowa; now open for pedestrians only to cherish feelings. Thousands of love keys stay for eternity on the bottom of Odra  river.

Lovers Bridge in Penglai

Lovers Bridge in Penglai locks the love up. More than tourism. Accordingly to an ancient Chinese tradition, when a young couple marries, they place a lock on the chain and throw the key in the water. Symbol for everlasting love.

Chortov Bridge - Kiev, Ukraine

The Bridge of Love is a wood and steel pedestrian bridge on the northern side of Mariinskiy Park. This place is like an exhibition for more than 1000 locks with names of lovers inscribed on them.

Lovers Locks in Riga, Latvia

The bridge is the voice of a centuries old tradition from China that symbolizes the locking of ones life and love together.

Unbreakable bonds – Florence, Italy

A 14th century medieval bridge that crosses the Arno River offering a wonderful view for the passing-by lovers as well as a place to seal their love forever in a place full of history and architectural values. “Nel trentatrè dopo il mille-trecento, il ponte cadde, per diluvio dell’ acque: poi dieci anni, come al Comun piacque, rifatto fu con questo adornamento.”

Strong Russian Commitment – Tallinn, Estonia

According to the Russian tradition, when married, a bride and a groom must buy a lock, write their names on it, lock it to the bridge and throw the key into the river. And so their love will be eternal.

Incredible Forgotten Military Facilities

Some facilities are no more than simple structures, but still able to say a lot about people of that time and their beliefs, condition and possibilities. Others are real wonders, architectural masterpieces… Let’s take a tour around the world.

The 5th building of its kind in Aldershot, Cambridge Military Hospital opened the doors to pacients in July 1879. It was the first military hospital in the UK to receive battle casualties directly from the front of World War One and also the first to open a plastic surgery unit. The title it received came from His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army at the time.

The illuminated medical minds of the time considered that the wind would sweep away any infection and clean the air. This explains its strategical location on the hill. But the thing that made it famous was not its location, but its supposedly mile long corridor.The wonderful castle is located on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River. In 1900,  a businessman Francis Bannerman VI (1851–1918) bought the island in need of a storage facility for his growing surplus business. When Spanish-American War finished, he bought 90% of the US army surplus. This included also a large quantity of ammunition so he decided to provide a safe location for storage. Next spring, he began to build an arsenal on Pollepel.  It was built in the style of a castle more as a giant advertisement for his business.The island and buildings were bought by New York State in 1967, after the old military merchandise had been remove. Today, the unique castle is a ruin, victim of vandalism and societycarelessness.

The city of Bonifacio was founded as a fortress by and subsequently named after Boniface II of Tuscany in 828. He had led a naval expedition to suppress the Saracens of North Africa and returned to build an unassailable fortress and naval base from which the domains of Tuscany  could be defended at the outermost frontier. Most of the citadel postdates the 9th century or is of uncertain date but Il Torrione, a round tower, was certainly part of the original citadel.

Incredible fairytale houses architecture

You might think fairy tales are for children. Not always!!! What would you say about a few sweet colours and some warm materialsfor a fairytale house with a wonderful architecture… almost waiting for a Snow White to come out and greet you with a smile.
Just think of the equipment leasing rates for heavy machinery, vehicles, and other supplies needed for projects like this…amazing!

Incredible Office In Woods

Your office is probably the place where you spend most of your time. It is thus important that we at least try to make our office space an attractive and conducive place to work in. Having beautiful art in the office environment will certainly make your office a more interesting and dynamic place to work in. You have to admire the originality of this woods office in WestChester County, United States! It is truly amazing work of art.

Unique Coffee Tables

Whether you prefer function over style or vice versa, there is a coffee table out there is an out-of-the-box coffee table design out there ready to take replace the old, boring one lying in the center of your living room. The following tables are some of the most creative and unique cocktail tables on the market or heading towards production.

Touch-sensitive Coffee Table