Hobbit Village: Switzerland
The Earth House Estate Lättenstrasse project in the Swiss city of Ditikon may appeal not only to fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but also to people who value their comfort and care about the environment.
The village consists of nine separate residences, which are gathered around an artificial lake, built of natural materials with completely green roofs and occupies more than 4,000 m2. In addition to the fabulous appearance and attractiveness, the project also has a philosophy. Underground construction is more than just an architectural solution. In this case, the earth acts as an insulating blanket, which effectively protects against rain, low temperatures, wind and natural wear. Each house is built taking into account the wishes of its owner, so it is a unique and individual design, unlike anything you have ever seen (even the rest of the dugouts of the complex).
Tree House: Costa Rica
Finca Bellavista is a guesthouse of ten treehouses with certain rules and conditions of living. The cabins are built right around the trunk of the tree and are located at a distance of several meters from each other. The camp is located a mile and a half from civilization, and hundreds of acres of dense tropical forests with their fantastic fauna stretch around.
Initially, the community was engaged in saving local nature, collecting and processing rainwater, and preserving vegetation. Since 2006, the founders of the community have opened a community center, a sauna, a cafe, a dining room and Wi-Fi in their tropical paradise. Residents are obliged to process all household waste through a biodigestor, and clean the water themselves. As entertainment, the guest is offered a walk through the jungle and swimming in natural rivers. In some houses there is no electricity at all.
Houseboat: World Ocean
The World (or “Planet”) is the only ship in the world that is a private apartment of people from all over the world. More than 160 people from 45 countries are officially registered as yacht owners. Even before the construction was completed, the richest of this world bought out The World apartments; one and a half hundred apartments and studio apartments were provided for their choice. The owner of movable real estate has every right not to leave the yacht until the end of his days or to rent out the property.
The World vessel travels around the planet, making stops at ports for two or three days, allowing the yacht’s residents to get off the course at their desired point of the globe or continue the cruise. However, on board the ship there is everything that a modern person needs for happiness: several grocery stores, a delicatessen, boutiques and showrooms with clothes, a gym, a billiard room, a tennis court, a spa, a swimming pool, a cinema, a library, wine bars and six restaurants.
Cubic buildings: Netherlands
Cube houses in Rotterdam is an experimental project aimed at optimizing the living space. The architect tilted the standard cube shape of an ordinary house by 45° and placed it on a hexagonal pylon. The design of the structure is a village inside a city, in which each house is a tree, and all the other houses together are a forest. It turns out that the basic design of cubic houses optimizes the space and allows you to better distribute the space of the rooms inside.
The building consists of 38 small cubes and two super bowls that are connected to each other. The owner of one of the cubes was so tired of the attention of tourists to the house that he decided to open his apartment for visiting and earn a living in this way. Today, Showcube offers three floors for inspection: a living room and a kitchen on the ground floor, a bedroom and a bathroom on the second and a small garden on the third floor.
A very gloomy city: Great Britain
Imagine living in a city where there is nothing but a lighthouse, a grocery store, a sports park and a hotel. Congratulations, you are in the town of John O’ Groats, in one of the northernmost points of Scotland. This place is popular among tourists as the end point of the distance between the two most extreme inhabited points on the mainland. Literally everyone here knows each other by sight: the population of the city a few years ago was 300 people, and today, due to the tourist flow, the number of people is hardly more than five hundred. The name of the town is often used in a metaphorical context when referring to a long and exhausting journey from point A to point B.
You can stay overnight in John O’ Groats at the hotel of the same name, which was built in 1875 at the house of the founder of the town. In 2005, a well-known tourist publication dubbed the village as a “seedy tourist trap”, and five years later the city received an award for being “the darkest city in Scotland”.
Cave settlements: Turkey
The historical region of Cappadocia in the central part of modern Turkey is home to one of the most impressive landscapes in the world — deep valleys and rock formations dotted with houses, chapels, tombs, temples and entire underground cities harmoniously carved into natural reliefs. The settlement is 100 square miles with cave houses made of volcanic tuff, underground villages, cities with hidden passages and secret rooms. Today Cappadocia is considered one of the brightest and largest cave regions in the world.
The impressive shape of the rock formations of Cappadocia was created thanks to a combination of volcanic eruptions, erosion and wind. Since the 1st century AD, the area has been widely used, and later modified by man for many centuries. People have created a real fairy tale with their own hands: 40 cities, 200 underground structures, 111 levels of depth, 600 separate entrances, tunnels for tens of miles connecting one underground city with another. Sleeping areas, cattle stables, wells, water tanks, cooking pits, ventilation shafts, bathrooms and tombs were built and carved out of tuff stone in each settlement. At the same time, the capacity of one city is about a thousand people.
Cappadocia today is a popular tourist destination and an opportunity to touch the mystical mysteries of the history of the Ancient World. Several cities of the settlement are fully open to the public.