All on one web page
banana, shoe, milk bottle, handbag, tomato, etc. Plus the city where they are located.
I have written about some of them before. Here they are on one page!!
A fun link to check it out!! There are a few comments.
http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/87822/novelty-architecture-ducks-arrested-development/#.UaafA0qDmSo
A Chinese house that became an internet sensation after being left in the middle of new highway because its elderly owners refused to move out has been demolished.
Photographs of the house went viral on China’s social media websites last month after 67 year-old duck farmer Luo Baogen and his wife refused to sign an agreement allowing it to be demolished. This resulted in authorities building a planned road around the building. As the images spread around the world, the five-storey building became a symbol of protest against forced property demolitions, one of China’s most pressing social issues.
My comment: The Power of the Internet. WoW!!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aOgDje8sYQ]
Click here for the full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/dec/02/chinese-middle-road-house-demolished-video
St Etienne by Jurg Roessen
Click here to go to the original blog post.
Stunning NYC Subway Station Hidden in Plain Sight, Until Now
Excerpt:
Trulli (trullo in singular) are round or square dwellings or storebuildings with cone shaped roofs found in the Itria valley in the Apulian region of southern Italy. They are traditionally built completely without mortar – to avoid taxation, it’s been said. Allthough some foundations can be traced back to the Neolithic period, really ancient trulli don’t exist, because people used to tear them down when they became rickety and rebuild them or build new ones using the material from the ones they tore down. New trulli are still being constructed the traditional way.
Traditional symbols of good luck and protection against the evil eye are painted on the roofs. They can be pagan, Jewish, Christain, Hellenic, magical – some are so old nobody remembers their origin or exactly what they mean.
Excerpt:
This awesome place in the town of Matera in the region of Basilicata, Italy, is carved out from the soft tuff rock mountain (sassi = rocks). In 1952 the inhabitants were forcefully relocated by the government due to breakdown of the dwellings’ complicated ecosystems and lack of sanitary systems, but that’s changing now that they have entered Unesco’s World Heritage list (1993). One of the main reasons for the inclusion on the list is the enormous rainwater collection system, another reason is of course the age – the oldest inhabited parts date from the Palaeolithic period, and are thought to be among the first human settlements on the entire peninsula. Several caves have been carefully restored, parts as museum, but most as proper homes, or as holiday homes, small businesses, hotels, and B&Bs.
To keep up on what is happening in appraisal businesses, mortgage lending, USPAP, etc. , Plus humor and strange homes, sign up for my FREE weekly appraisal email newsletter, sent since June 1994. Go to Home on the left side of the menu at the top of this page or go to www.appraisaltoday.com
Sign up in the Big Yellow Boxes
I regularly write about hot topics in appraising and appraisal business management issues
in my paid Appraisal Today monthly newsletter.
$99 per year or (credit card only) $8.25 per month, $24.75 per quarter, or $89 per year.
For more info, go to https://www.appraisaltoday.com/products
Largest home in the U.S. June 2016
Excerpt:
Biltmore Estate is a large private estate and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, is a Châteauesque-styled mansion built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately-owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet (16,622.8 m2) and featuring 250 rooms.
Still owned by one of Vanderbilt’s descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age, and of significant gardens in the jardin à la française and English Landscape garden styles in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked eighth in America’s Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.
Swiss guesthouse built into side of mountain Appraisers and Houses(Opens in a new browser tab)