Village of Joy

The Basket Building (Ohio, United States)

Some Building Facts

• Building capacity: 500 employees
• Building footage: 180,000 square feet
• Total weight of building: Approximately 9,000 tons
• Number of windows: 84
• Seven stories in height
• 160 times longer, wider and taller than the Medium Market Basket
• Cost of Project: Approximately US $30 million

The Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio might just be a strangest office building in the world. The 180,000-square-foot building, a replica of the company’s famous market basket, cost $30 million and took two years to complete. Many experts tried to persuade Dave Longaberger to alter his plans, but he wanted an exact replica of the real thing.

image credits: addicted eyes, danahan, ricmcarthur

Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States)

This project, located in the heart of Kansas City, represents one of the pioneer projects behind the revitalization of downtown.

The people of Kansas City were asked to help pick highly influential books that represent Kansas City. Those titles were included as ‘bookbindings’ in the innovative design of the parking garage exterior, to inspire people to utilize the downtown Central Library.

You may see more photos by David Lee King here.

image credits:  mstephens7, jonathan_moreau’s, davidking

The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland)

Construction of the building started in in January 2003 and in December 2003 it was finished. House architecture is based on Jan Marcin Szancer (famous Polish drawer and child books illustrator) and Per Dahlberg (Swedish painter living in Sopot) pictures and paintings.

image credits: magro_kr, arekolek, pomocnik

Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)

Expo 67, one of the world’s largest universal expositions was held in Montreal. Housing was one of the main themes of Expo 67.

The cube is the base, the mean and the finality of Habitat 67. In its material  sense, the cube is a symbol of stability. As for its mystic meaning, the cube is symbol of wisdom, truth, moral perfection, at the origin itself of our civilization.

354 cubes of a magnificent grey-beige build up one on the other to form 146 residences nestled between sky and earth, between city and river, between greenery and light.

You can visit Habitat 67 website here.

image credits: Lorena & David, wiki, ken ratcliff, clemente

Wonderworks (Florida, United States)

Wonderworks is an amusmant park located in Orlando, Florida. The building and everything inside is upside down.

image credits: jkaty27, Go Card USA, SK Photography, baldiri