The Birds Island

Birds Island is a dwelling designed by Graft architects that addresses an age-old quandary—how do you enjoy the great outdoors and sit in your house at the same time? Located in Kuala Lumpur, the home has a silicone glass exterior “skin” that makes this very thing possible. It changes the transparency of the walls, allowing residents to drink in the views in all their splendor, get a canopy of shade, or shut everything out entirely.

Birds Island is also a sustainable dwelling, and its outer skin collects rain water, and harnesses solar energy and wind power . The structure’s placement on a pier is another nod to energy efficiency. It allows the natural cooling of the water underneath and permits energy collection and distribution from nearby lotuses.

Homes of the Future: The Airdrop House

The Airdrop House is so futuristic and forward-thinking that it has yet to get past the artistic rendering stage, so anyone who wants one will have to wait until some distant tomorrow. However, they are being designed to provide emergency shelter to disaster survivors , so hopefully the need for them won’t come up too often.

The home is designed by Andrew Maynard Architects in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The home is intended to be air-dropped into disaster areas and used as a temporary shelter. Its design also permits the growing of plants on its surface, to provide both food and shade.

The MercuryHouseOne

MercuryHouseOne is a home designed by Arturo Vittori of the Italian architecture firm Architecture and Vision. Vittori is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and his interest in technology is obvious to anyone who sees the home’s unique raindrop shape.

MercuryHouseOne is a mobile home, but any similarity to an RV ends there. It runs entirely on solar power and has a thin marble exterior, and according to Architecture and Vision’s website , “the interior is equipped with [the] latest lighting, audio and video technologies in order to maximize the user experience.”

Here are ten amazing futuristic home designs. Some of the designs are bold, some are bizarre, and some seem unlikely to get past the drafting table. However, they all address current challenges and create new rules.

“Amphibious 1000″ First Semi-Submerged Resort in Qatar

The Amphibious 1000 is a semi-submerged resort planned for Qatar. Costing $US500m ($465m) and designed by the Italian firm Giancarlo Zema Design Group, it features both land and see developments. It will be built in the middle of a marine reserve and will feature four giant hotels with underwater rooms, resembling super-yachts. The resort’s main lobby has an interactive sea life museum featuring water

Jade Mountain St Lucia - most breathtaking hotel

Architect by Nick Troubetzkoy, Hade Mountain hotel on the Island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean can be condsidered most luxurious nature hotel of the world.

World's most amazing prison hotels

1. Jailhotel, Lucerne, Switzerland

Built in 1862 and operating as a prison until 1998, Jailhotel in Lucerne, Switzerland kept prisoners from attempting to escape for more than 135 years.

Now a full-fledged hotel, it offers guests “unplugged rooms” that mimic the sparseness of imprisonment (cold, technology-barren digs) to those who want a taste of the criminal life.

Make sure to visit the library suite, complete with the former prison’s books, and the Barabas suite, the prison’s old rec room. If that’s too isolating, imbibe with fellow inmates at the Alcatraz-Bar.

Everyone’s been on a vacation they wish could last forever, but there’s little doubt any traveler would wish to stay anywhere indefinitely or without choice. While they may now be renovated, luxurious escapes, these hotels put properties to use that otherwise would have been raised, demolished, or deserted – namely, jails and mental institutions. Some of these hotels honor the building’s former identity by naming rooms or dishes after it, some simply rebuild where an institution once stood, a few chillingly remind of the inmates (not guests) that came before, and still others try to forget it all together.

Amazing Elephant Building

A National Historic Landmark in New Jersey, Lucy the Margate Elephant is an elephant-shaped building located on the beach at Margate. The elephantine structure stands 65-feet high and weighs 90 tons. Since its construction in 1881, Lucy the Elephant has enjoyed several different “careers.” Originally intended to encourage real-estate investment on the Jersey Shore.