10 Extreme Homes From Around The World

Thought your pink walls were a bold statement? Sure, your place might have character. But does it have a Wikipedia entry? Feast your eyes on these mind-bending properties from around the world.

These amazing homes prove anything is possible if you dream big enough. Perhaps one of these properties might inspire your next DIY or renovation project (though possibly on a smaller scale).

10. Bubble treehouse

Floating among the branches of a Canadian forest are a small cluster of some of the strangest houses you may ever see.

Free Spirit Tree Houses has created a little village of these unique structures for holiday-makers to discover while enjoying the incredible natural surrounds.

Ever wondered what life in a bubble is like? Picture: Kerry Maguire / Free Spirit Spheres

Love treehouses? Check out the 10 coolest treehouses in the world

9. 732 copycat Disney castles in Turkey

No this is not a mirage. You’re looking at hundreds of luxury houses built in neat rows, their pointed towers somewhere between the iconic Disney castle and a classic French chateau. These houses are located in Turkey and they stand empty, like a deserted Disneyland theme park.

The villas, close to the town centre of Mudurnu in the Bolu region, are sadly sitting empty due to a sharp dip in the housing industry in Turkey, causing investors to file for bankruptcy protection.

There are more than 700 villas in the development. (Photo by Adem ALTAN / AFP)

Read more about the ill-fated Disney-like housing project here.

8. Pole house, Great Ocean Road

Created in 1972 by architect Frank Dixon, this house sits on a 15m-platform, 40m above Fairhaven Beach on Great Ocean Road, with spectacular views of the ocean and Aireys Inlet lighthouse.

It was a family home for years before it was saved from demolition and transformed into a luxury holiday home. It features retractable floor-to-ceiling windows, a perimeter walkway with a glassed balustrade, a floating fireplace, and now has more living and accommodation space.

The Pole House in Fairhaven. Picture: Alison Wynd / News Corp

7. Beer Bottle Temple, Thailand

Buddhist monks from Thailand’s Sisaket province collected more than a million empty beer bottles to build their stunning Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple.

This temple is located in the city of Khun Han, more than 600km northeast of Bangkok, near the Cambodian border. Heineken Beer gives the building its green colour and local Chang beer adds a contrasting dark amber. Bottle caps are used to create colourful murals and natural light creates amazing, ever-changing prisms and shadows around the temple.

It’s a perfect place to reflect on the world as it reflects back on you. Putting it together took six years, and the monks are still adding to their unique habitat. The temple lures tourists in with its unusual charm, and the monks who call it home accept donated bottles to finish their masterwork.

The main building at Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew, more commonly know as ‘The Million Bottle Temple’. Picture: Mark Fischer / Creative Commons

Think your beer bottle collection could match this? Read about what could be Australia’s best-ever man cave.

6. Hotel Costa Verde

Fancy spending time in the cockpit of a former jet while relaxing in four-star luxury? Costa Verde’s Phoenix hotel suite is located in Costa Rica and is made from the salvaged body of a 1965 Boeing 727.

The plane sits on stilts at the edge of a lush rainforest and features a renovated interior of Costa Rican teak wood panelling, all the way from the cockpit to the tail.

Check out more homes that were once vehicles.

“Our 727 home features two air conditioned bedrooms – one with two queen-sized beds and the other with one queen-sized bed, each with its own private bath,” writes the company on their website.

You’ll have a private entrance up a river rock, spiral staircase, and 360-degree views of surrounding gardens from $US180 a night.

Hotel Costa Verde is forged from the body of a Boeing 727. Picture: Costa Verde

5. Shoe House, USA

Created in 1948 by shoe maven Mahlon N. Haines, the Shoe House has become a must-see road trip stop in York, Pennsylvania.

Patterned after a high-topped work shoe, the five-level house is made of wood, covered with wire and coated with cement stucco.

Conceived as an advertising gimmick, the property is full of riffs on the shoe theme; including a shoe-shaped dog house out the back.

The giant shoe has passed through the hands of various owners (many connected with Haines) and has undergone extensive preservation and restoration in recent years. It’s currently run as a museum to the Haines legacy.

The Haines Shoe House in Hellam, Pennsylvania, United States. Picture: CrazyLegsKC / Creative Commons

Is your shoe collection taking over? Read 3 stylish (yet practical!) ways to store shoes.

4. Stone House, Portugal

On the Nas Montanhas de Fafe of Northern Portugal sits “the House of Stone” – Casa do Penedo.

The home was built in 1974 as a family retreat, fashioned from several boulders located on the mountain. Though it may look basic, the home has two storeys, a fireplace and a swimming pool.

It’s the ultimate in sustainable home design and offers its residents a blissful escape from noisy 21st-century surrounds.

It looks like a stone, but is actually a comfortable home perched on a hill. Picture: Feliciano Guimarães/ Creative Commons

Love a remote dream home? Read about a remote ‘steel tent’ home perfect for getting away

3. Mushroom House, USA

Looking as if it’d be more at home on Mars, New York’s Mushroom House (also known as ‘Pod House’) is as distinctive as they come.

Located in the Rochester suburb of Perinton in upstate New York, the house is a popular local landmark, which hasn’t bothered the three sets of owners a bit.

Created in 1971 for Robert and Marguerite Antell by architect James H. Johnson, the five interconnected ‘pods’ are meant to look like the Daucus Carota flower (dubbed Queen Anne’s Lace in North America), but to most people it ends up looking like otherworldly toadstools or lily pads.

Either way, it’s one dramatic way to live. Mushroom House was sold for $799,900 in February 2012 (the original asking price was $1 million).

The Mushroom house is also known as the Pod House and is tucked into the natural surrounds in New York state. Picture: Daniel Penfield / Creative Commons

Check out more stunning concrete dream homes from around the world.

2. Bubble House, France

Architect Antti Lovag created this jaw-dropping wonder for fashion designer Pierre Cardin. Palais Bulles, or the ‘Palace of Bubbles’, was built in 1989 in Théoule-sur-Mer, just outside Cannes.

The bulbous creation has been a popular destination for the European social and entertainment scene and boasts stunning views over the Mediterranean Sea. It features 28 rooms, an amphitheatre, gardens and pools.

Palais Bulles’ 10 bedrooms are decorated by famous contemporary artists and are intended to inspire a return to the caves of our ancestry.

Palais Bulles (“Bubble Palace”) is a large house in Théoule-sur-Mer, near Cannes, France, that was designed by the Hungarian architect Antti Lovag. Picture: Getty

Check out another incredible bubble house in Ipswich, Queensland.

1. International Space Station, the Universe

There’s a bunch of fabulous and fascinating properties around the world, but we’ve looked skyward for number one.

Space. The final real estate frontier.

The International Space Station (ISS) is our only true home in space, having housed a rotating crew of astronaut residents for more than 15 years.

A research outpost for the best and brightest, the ISS has to make extraordinary people as comfortable as possible while they’re floating weightlessly 400km above the planet.

They live in 14 pressurised modules and even have a stunning picture window, called the Cupola, that lets them enjoy a view to trump pretty much all others.

Wonder how much a module rents for…?

An image of the backlit International Space Station, taken in March of 2009. Picture: NASA

This article was originally published on 22 Jul 2019 at 12:00pm but has been regularly updated to keep the information current.

10 extreme homes from around the world