Crazy Architecture

All over the world there are hundreds of architects, builders, carpenters, laborers and designers working on a single build project. However, there are exceptions to this including these five excentric individuals who primarily work on bizarre buildings by themselves and in many cases they take decades or even lifetimes to construct. Despite having this essential factor in common the ultimate build outcomes range significantly in style, execution, materiality and purpose.


Above: Mr Cheval's Palais Ideal

Facteur Cheval lived in Hauterives in France, he was a mild-mannered mailman by day and a pseudo-architect and builder by night, he had no formal design or construction training. His Palais Ideal (Perfect Palace) took him decades to construct.


Above: Nikolai Sutyagin's wooden skyscrapper

In Archangeisk, Russia Nikolai Sutyagin took what he had learnt from running a small construction business and built a wooden skyscraper in 13 stories (114ft). Sadly he later went to jail for supposedly imprisoning a worker and his building went to pieces and all that is left is the strange wooden skyscraper.


Above: Simon Rodin's Watts Towers

Simon Rodin was an Italian immigrant who moved to LA and started an architectural masterpiece known as Watts Towers. This comprised of shells, scrap metal, pottery shards, rocks, glass and pretty much any other random material he could find.

Justo Gallego was a Spanish monk in Mejorado del Campo before he was forced to leave because of ill health. He created a radically individualistic catedral. He used all sorts of donated and recycled building materials.


Above: Tom Avery Foreverton

Tom Avery from Baraboo, Wisconsin is responsible for the world's largest scrap-metal architectural sculpture known as Foreverton. Weighing over 300 tonnes, climbing 50 feet in the air and reaches 60 to 120 feet in either direction.