Documenting Africa’s Old Cinemas

Sneaking around old art deco cinemas is something we like to do quite often on this site as you know, but today I came across something a little further afield. Starting in Angloa, Germany’s cultural Goethe-Institut is putting together a fascinating website dedicated entirely to documenting the architecture of Africa’s old cinemas; photographing them, mapping them and…

Summer Sleepovers at the Mad Hatter’s new Digs

In a parallel world, at the end of the rabbit hole, where tea parties are just part of the daily routine, I hope this is what the architecture looks like. But this house seems to have made it out of Wonderland and into the real world to the tiny English village of Wrabness in Essex, overlooking the…

Living like Luke Skywalker

Star Wars films (pre-Disney) were a big part of my childhood growing up. My brother and I would watch them again and again, and then when we had friends over, we’d make them watch the films again too. When it came to writing college applications, my brother actually wrote his essay on Luke Skywalker (I…

The Remains of a Paris ‘Kowloon’ Walled City

You may recall we once discovered Kowloon City, the Hong Kong ‘historical accident’, an urban enclave so densely populated by squatters that even the law lost its grip on the seven-acre plot crammed with 300 interconnected towers. It turns out we had one just like it right here in Paris. And unlike Kowloon, which was…

The House at the End of the Street

We need more of those oddball houses at the end of the street that neighbours complain about because it doesn’t look anything like the other houses. Graphic designer Matthias Jung is not an architect but he creates what he calls ‘architectural short poems’, surreal homes put together from photo material that he collects, building his own architectural misfits. Don’t you just…

China’s First Stock Exchange is a now a Forgotten Dusty Apartment Building

Tucked away in an inconspicuous alley of one of the last functioning old-town neighborhoods in Beijing, hiding in the shadows of the historic city gate that once guarded the direct entry into the imperial city, lies the dusty forgotten shell of the first Beijing Stock Exchange. For a country that has one of the world’s largest stock markets, I couldn’t…

The Wreckers of New York City, 1951

It’s an enduring, ongoing cultural conflict everywhere in the world: progress vs tradition. There are those for “progress”, be it visionary forward-thinkers or money-driven demolishers of precious history and culture. Then there are the “traditionalists”; identified as either pillars of reason and impeccable taste or bitterly out-of-touch relics who really ought to quit their hollering, move aside and let the rest of…

Borrow an East London Time Capsule House

At number 4 Princelet Street in East London, there is an 18th century yellow brick Georgian time capsule behind the Old Spitalfields Market. The double fronted merchant’s house, conserved in its original condition from top to bottom, is one of the last of the original houses to be built on the street where dozens of…

Documenting the Giants of Roadside America

California native, Debra Jane Seltzer, must have the most sizeable independently-run website I’ve ever come across– and that’s not just because it’s full of the roadside giants she documents. Roadside Architecture is literally huge, containing more than 2,300 pages and over 60,000 photos. Banging away at her website for nearly 15 years now, Debra has…

Stop Everything, it’s the Tiniest, Coziest Home on Wheels

You know what camping RV’s are missing? A neo-classical columned porch, obviously. And vintage-inspired interior decor perhaps too…. Presenting the Heirloom Tiny Home, a fully-equipped hand-made custom house on wheels made by an innovative young company based in the American city and birthplace of all things quirky, Portland, Oregon. Their motto: Home is where you park it. And…