The Seven Most Extraordinary Architects in the World

From the cool to the bizarre, to fun and magical, architects of yesterday and today indulge their skills and creativity building 'fun' structures.
There are structures all over the world designed by architects that would have to rank as extraordinary. These structures become tourist attractions just for their pure imagery and indulgence. How about a building in the shape a shoe (or maybe a boot) has been standing in a small town in Pennsylvania in USA since 1948. Designed and built for a business magnate who owned a large chain of yes you guessed it shoe stores. And there is another one in South Africa built in 1990 by Ron Van Zyl, where the interior is a museum of rock and wood carvings made by Van Zyl who is an artist.

South Korea is rapidly replacing its traditional straw-roofed houses with more up to date dwellings constructed of modern day materials.
One man however has designed and constructed an extra-ordinary dwelling in the shape of a toilet! Sim Jae Duck has built a new home in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, from steel, concrete and vast quantities of glass, as part of a campaign for cleaner toilets worldwide. Included in this bizarre shaped building, is a showcase loo, where the user is enveloped in a mist created by the loo, to protect their modesty!!!
If you would like to stay overnight in this house aptly named Haewoojae translated place where you can solve your worries it will cost you around US$50,000 , all proceeds go towards a campaign to have better loos around the world.

Senosian Arquitectos, commissioned by a young couple in Mexico city who wanted to change from a conventional home to one integrated with nature, have designed a building known the world over as the Nautilus Shell House. This stunning edifice resembles a nautilus shell on the exterior as well as on the insides, where the house flows from one chamber into the other. Chambers and halls are rounded leading to gentle staircases which spiral upwards. Truly wonderful and magical inside, this house was not the first house inspired by animals from Senosian Arquitectos, this innovative firm has created buildings resembling snakes, sharks and whales.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, is a modern and contemporary construction building designed by Canadian-American Frank Gehry, made of titanium, glass and limestone, and has been hailed as the greatest building of our time when it was completed in the mid 1990s. Bilbao is a port town on the Atlantic Coast of Spain and to this end the building is supposed to resemble a ship. More like a sculpture than a building, the titanium exterior is curved and flowing glowing in beautiful colour as only titanium can. The surface of the titanium has been worked to resemble the texture and look of fish scales. This is a truly extra-ordinary building.
Another shining example of Gehry's work is the matt finish stainless steel mass or curves and sharp lines fitted together to house The Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles. This imposing, glistening building looks like a giant space ship has landed in the middle of the California.

Award winning architects Herzog and de Meuron, in collaboration with Ai Weiwei have recently created the stunning Beijing National Stadium, now known the world over as the Bird's Nest, Beijing. Everyone associates a bird's nest with China, and along with the more subtle implications of a bird's nest in Chinese belief, the choice of representation was not an accident. Constructed on a large-scale steel frame, with a fabric liner, the exterior of this dramatic piece of architecture is strewed with ribbons of steel, to resemble the twigs of a bird's nest.

Fancy going to work in a building that looks like a 1,000 Lithuanian banknote architect RA Studija designed a 10 floor office building in Kaunas that looks like a banknote standing upright on its long edge, with all the detail of the note replicated on its front. Using 4500 pieces of enameled glass in appropriate shapes, all crafted in the Netherlands, hem this building is a work of art. Illuminated at night it is an amazing sight to see.