Bubble Palace and other bizarre buildings that exist on Earth! 

When you visit a new country, its architecture is one of the first things you notice, because it’s all around you. We are talking about the buildings that you see everywhere. They are long-lasting symbols of creativity, innovation, and arts. Significant structures, like the Colosseum of Rome, Kansas City Library of the USA, Burj Khalifa of Dubai, and the Lotus Temple of India, are a few examples of architectural marvels. Many architects have built unique buildings that go beyond the bounds of nature or are renowned for their unusual forms, breath-taking designs, distinctive aesthetics, or sheer eccentricity! We have found out three of the most bizarre buildings from around the globe that you probably didn’t know exist! 

The basket building in Ohio, USA 
The magnificent Basket Building, shaped like a giant basket in Ohio, USA, is a visual delight. The Longaberger Company, an American manufacturer of handcrafted maple wood baskets and lifestyle goods, has its headquarters in this strange building. Initially, the building, named the ‘Big Basket’, was designed to be 160 times larger than their best-selling product, the “Medium Market Basket.” Architecture and design firms NBBJ and Korda Nemeth Engineering had proposed designs suggestive of a basket; however, Dave Longaberger, the company's founder, pointed at a basket and told them, "Make it appear exactly like that." Rest is history! 

This 180,000-square-foot building was constructed in 1997 with a budget of $30 million. It has a central atrium and a glass ceiling to let natural light illuminate its seven stories. The Basket Building is topped by two 75-ton steel handles shielding the glass atrium from falling ice, fixed with heating elements to keep them from freezing. The Big Basket was sold to local developer Steve Coon for $1.2 million in January 2018 after the Longaberger company recorded ongoing losses since 2016, and what Coon plans to do with the structure is unknown.  

Casa Terracotta, Columbia (The Flintstones house) 
Casa Terracotta, the odd house composed entirely of clay, is located in Villa de Leyva, Columbia. The locals call it Casa de Flintstones because it looks like a building from the sets of The Flintstones, a popular American animated series in 1960, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. This is an enormous piece of pottery which measures a massive 5,400 square feet and resembles a huge mound of clay randomly moulded to resemble a cottage! Delightful, isn’t it? 

Octavio Mendoza, a Colombian artist, and environmental activist spent nearly 20 years building the stunning Casa Terracotta, with his own hands, using dried clay. Mendoza, renowned for his sloping, natural style of architecture, began the construction in 1999 by making an oven to bake clay, that was later included as part of the house. The clay was heated and transformed into intricate, durable pottery over several weeks using coal. Nothing more than what was already there was used to build the edifice - no cement, no steel, no reinforcement, just clay! The curves of the rooms give you an illusion that the home was cast in a mould. Solar panels provide water to heat showers, and mosaic tiles adorn the bathrooms, basins, and toilets.  

Bubble Palace, France 
The Le Palais Bulles, or Bubble Palace is a 1200 square metre residence in Théoule-Sur-Mer, the south of France, created in the 1970s, by Hungarian architect Antti Lovag. The landmark home was constructed for French manufacturer Pierre Bernard between 1975 and 1989 over 14 years. It was purchased in 1992 by the late fashion designer Pierre Cardin as a vacation home. Ironically, he never lived here as he owned several properties in the town. 

Le Palais Bulles is faces the bay of Cannes and was designed as a collection of bubble modules interspersed with terraces and swimming pools. Reinforced wire mesh was sprayed with a concrete mixture to create domes that resembled caves. This bubble Villa has 10-bedroom suites, gardens, water ponds, a pool, and a 500-seat outdoor auditorium that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and the gorgeous bay of Cannes. The gardens, ponds, and pool cover more than 8500 square meters of land.