io9: buildings

Yesterday's House Of The Future Went Cheap

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:21:15 PDT

You missed your chance to own a piece of retro-futurist awesomeness. The Futuro House, a Finnish flying-saucer-shaped masterpiece built (wait for it) in 1968, sold at auction for only $50,000. Also auctioned: a Zen chair, and Buckminster Fuller blueprints.

According to the Futuro House's fansite:

Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed and built a series of ovaloid, flying-saucer-like houses out of fibreglass in the late 1960s. He called them Futuro. Suuronen's houses were comfortably large but light enough to be carried to remote sites by helicopter.

Wright auction house sold the Futuro House on June 2, with a suggested price of between $50K and $70K, but in the end the house fetched only the bottom end of that range — astonishingly cheap for a house, although maybe it's closer to being a mobile home really.

Check out some of the other items that Wright just auctioned off:

Chromium organs made by Atelier Van Lieshout (just $5K, unsold!)

Acrylic stool by Shiro Kuramata (just $30K, also unsold!)

Zen Chair by Kwok Hoi Chan (just $2,000, also unsold!)

Jitterbug Atom by Buckminster Fuller, sold for $3,125.

Monohex Dome design by Buckminster Fuller, sold for just $3,250.

4-D House blueprints by Buckminster Fuller, $5,000 to $6,000... amazingly enough, unsold. Make them an offer!

Non-Symmetrical Tension Integrity by Buckminster Fuller, sold for $2,500.

How Star Wars Changed Architecture

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:36:33 PDT

Star Wars may have transformed science fiction, but it also changed the look of our buildings. Like this trendy building, borrowing from the Jawa sandcrawler. A high-powered architecture journal honored Star Wars' influence, and here are some Star Wars-inspired buildings.

We already showed you a ton of buildings that look like the Death Star — not just sphere shaped, but in many cases sporting that telltale "Prime Weapon" housing. And Life Without Buildings pointed out the Sandcrawler's influence on the Casa da Musica a while ago.

But now Architect's Journal has rounded up the saga's 10 greatest architectural achievements, including the Death Star and the Jawa sandcrawler as well as eight others. And here are some of the buildings they say are influenced by the Death Star, the Sandcrawler, the Cloud City of Bespin and the Senate Building on Coruscant:

Buildings That Look Like Spaceships You've Never Seen

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:00:00 PST

Cutting-edge architecture, or weird starship design? Sometimes it's hard to tell. In our quest for buildings that look like famous spaceships, we came across some even more striking images that should be spaceships. Gallery below.

Thanks to DaveinVA, Doctor Who?, Turlough and a few other commenters who suggested some especially great spacey looking buildings. I've included some of them (with thanks to the suggester) in this gallery.

Note: Some of the pics I downloaded from AP last week turned out not to have captions embedded, and I'm honestly no longer sure what buildings they're pictures of. Any suggestions? Also, one picture of St. Paul's Cathedral made its way in there by mistake, even though I thought I'd already removed it. Although, with the other buildings around it, it does sort of look like a battle cruiser. Sort of.

Buildings That Look Like Famous Spaceships: A Gallery

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:51:17 PST

Science fiction's influences are all around us — even in your office buildings. Architects have drawn inspiration from the Death Star, the Borg Cube, and other famous spaceships, and here's a gallery to prove it.

(Parisian office building photo up top, by LemimPix.)

Building An Ice Castle On Mars

charliejane — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:00:00 PST

Martian architecture will have to be different from any existing styles on Earth, say 53 percent of respondents in this poll at NewMars. But weirdly, 15 percent believe that we'll build in "a mixture of Greek and Roman style" on Mars. And another 9 percent each believe we'll build in an "Egyptian" or "Celtic" style. WTF? Luckily, some people have come up with slightly more realistic designs for Mars habitats. Here's a gallery of possible (and one or two discredited) Mars building designs.

Sails Of Steel And Glass Cut Through Future Cities

charliejane — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:00:00 PST

The Jewish community in Poland wants to build a sail-shaped skyscraper like this one, from Japan. The planned building will tower over the old Warsaw ghetto as a monument to green self-sufficiency. The skyscraper (artist renderings in gallery after the jump) would use its voluptuous curves to generate enough wind power to keep the building running. It's also part of a trend in skyscrapers: some of the most futuristic buildings in the world are sail-shaped, with curved surfaces and a sharp peak. More cool sail-shaped buildings after the jump — some planned, some that already exist.

Photo by AP.