Category:
Architecture

How To Avoid Property Taxes

"Back in 1955, the Marquis de Maussabré took drastic action when faced with a wealth tax. He blew up his château in Airvault, near Poitiers, using 150kg of dynamite."

Posted By: Paul - Wed May 13, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Antisocial Activities, Architecture, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Government, 1950s

Interama

A Utopian project in Miami that never materialized.

Wikipedia article here.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 29, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Architecture, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Government, Regionalism, 1960s

Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Visionary Architect

Lots of bizarre stuff from this creator, seen at this page, and also here.

And if you're in New York City over the next couple of months, you can visit an exhibit.



Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 05, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Architecture, Art, Eccentrics, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century

Hi-Rise Camping

A great architectural project that might have been: a hi-rise campsite. The idea was the brainchild of demolition expert Wesley Hurley and architect Albert Ledner. In 1972, they founded Hi-Rise Campsites, Inc. with the goal of raising $4 million to build a hi-rise campsite in New Orleans. The Saturday Review (Jan 20, 1973) offered this description of it:

Their idea calls for the construction of a twenty-story, open-sided high-rise complete with a security guard in the lobby and a swimming pool and barbecue pit on the roof. In between, the lower floors will be reserved for parking, while the twelve upper stories will be divided into 240 campsites, each one carpeted with Astroturf and equipped with a utility hookup and deck furniture. The ground floor will house an all-night supermarket and a fast-food facility dishing out “camper burgers” to hearty outdoorsmen famished after a bone-crushing day in the traffic. Plans are also afoot to include a beauty parlor, a barber shop, and an automobile service garage in the building—but plans are the only thing afoot. The campers themselves will watch as their trailers are placed on a turntable-like platform and hoisted up to the appropriate slot then follow along in elevated comfort. All this for $11 per night for each vehicle.

Ledner was a respected, modernist architect. So his attachment to the project added some credibility to it. However, the financing was never secured, so the hi-rise campsite was never built.

I couldn’t find any pictures showing what the campsite would have looked like, but below is a 1966 sketch of another Ledner-designed high rise in New Orleans. So imagine this, but with open sides.

source

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 30, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Architecture, 1970s

Nancy Sinatra for RC Cola

Nancy tries to escape the all-white dystopia of George Lucas's THX 1138.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 13, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: Architecture, Business, Advertising, Surrealism, Soda, Pop, Soft Drinks and other Non-Alcoholic Beverages, 1960s

Home for Incurables

As late as 1952, "homes for incurables" were a going concern. Contemporary medicine seems to have abandoned the term "incurable" in favor of others that are perhaps less of a downer.



Source.



Source.



Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 03, 2019 - Comments (2)
Category: Architecture, Charities and Philanthropy, History, Medicine, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century

ReActor—a house that spins and tilts

Located in upstate New York at the OMI International Arts Center’s Architecture Field. It can rotate 360 degrees, blown by the wind, but also tilts up and down based on the movement of its inhabitants. From the YouTube description:

ReActor is the newest work in an experimental, performative series of "social relationship architecture" designed and built by internationally renowned architect-artist duo Alex Schweder + Ward Shelley…. ReActor is a habitable sculpture, where Schweder + Shelley will live in full view of Omi's audience. The 44-foot by 8-foot structure rotates 360-degrees atop a 15-foot concrete column in response to its inhabitants' movements, exterior forces, and interior conditions, making visible the intimate relationship between architecture and its inhabitants.

The question I can't find answered is if they put any plumbing inside of it, and if so, how.

More info: AlexSchweder.com

Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 26, 2018 - Comments (9)
Category: Architecture, Art

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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