Tentacled Building

A building in France with inflatable tentacles.

Drainage Pipe Hotel

Hasn't it always been your dream to spend the night inside a giant concrete cylinder? Well now you can! At the Parkhotel, rooms are put together inside a short length of the kind of concrete pipe that large drainage systems are made from. One end cap adds a dash of art to the room, and the other is a hobbit door that opens up the entire height of the space directly to the outdoors.

I imagine spending the night here pretending to be in the intro sequence of a particularly gruesome episode of CSI. There seems to be a tiny circular skylight or two, but I doubt that would dispel the feeling of being entombed. There is an interesting cave-like quality to the room as well. It's a refreshing change from the endless proliferation of generic rectangular spaces.

Book Staircase

This incredible book staircase caught my eye awhile ago, but I just had to share it with you. It's the realization of my library daydream. I'm surrounded by wonderful books that go to the ceiling, and I can climb up the bookcases, actually entering the space of the books, and at the top and deepest penetration into the bookcase, I emerge into a sunlit nest perfect for enjoying whatever books I picked up along the way.
Books are objects that beg to be entered. Their covers and titles lure you inside and tempt you to lose yourself for hours inside the world they offer. This book staircase acts as the physical embodiment of the mental act of entering the world of the books. Most good libraries have a labyrinthine nature in both their physical and conceptual structure, adding to the tendency to lose oneself in them.
The photos of these bookstairs are especially intriguing in that they never show the back of the bookshelves. It visually suggests the possibility that if one climbed the staircase halfway and pulled out a book or two, one might discover another hidden portal to crawl through into even deeper and more hidden realms of the book world.

Wall Decor for the Paintless

I used the old trick of starched fabric on my walls in college. The idea is to get cheap wide fabric, and to use starch to turn it into removable wallpaper. This is great for those of us who don't have painting privileges in our living spaces.

This how-to from How About Orange uses the same technique to make temporary fabric wall decals. I can't believe I never thought of this! It takes mountains of fabric and gallons of starch to completely cover the walls of even the 90 square foot dorm room that was mine in college. With these fabric decals, even a small amount of materials can have a big design punch.

Designers like blik and One Up Designs create some inspiring temporary vinyl wall decals that this fabric project brings to mind. These starched fabric decals are a great combination of the high-design ornamentation of the potentially pricey vinyl wall decals with the possibility to DIY on-the-cheap.

The project calls for supplies I already have on hand, or can get easily through freecycle or thrifting, and when it comes time to remove them, the fabric scraps are still usable once the starch is rinsed out. This would be an incredible way to use up odd scraps of vintage fabrics, thrift store materials, and even deconstructed clothing.