Bland, unattractive and cookie-cutter? Try modern, elegant and surprising. These incredible remodels transcend all stereotypes about apartment and condo designs with unexpected materials like galvanized steel, design tricks that make small spaces appear bright and open and a masterful balance of vintage and contemporary.

Industrial Modern Metal Apartment Design

This minimalist, monochromatic metal apartment design in Moscow uses repetitive geometric shapes to add interest to what might otherwise feel like a cold and rather unwelcoming design. Remodeled by architect Peter Kostelov, the apartment is made almost entirely out of industrial materials in shades of black and gray with corrugated steel, visible welds and exposed rivets adding a little texture to this living space.

Minimalist Remodeled Warehouse Loft Apartment

To some, this apartment remodel may appear unfinished, but for those who find beauty in simplicity, it’s perfect just as it is. Once a warehouse building, this Tokyo loft was redesigned by Schemata to reveal the bare bones of the space and revel in the contrast between polished, modern surfaces and the raw, aging architecture.

Dramatically Designed Small Apartments

Tiny apartments with low ceilings can feel stifling and cookie-cutter, but the architects of A.A. Studio certainly gave this space personality and a sense of airiness with an unusual, surreal apartment redesign approach involving lots of white. Curved corners, built-in bookcases, reflective surfaces, patterned lights and niches make the space feel larger and also strangely timeless.

Glacier-Inspired Interior Design Idea

Inspired by the snow-and-glacier-capped mountains of Lucerne, architect Gus Wusterman remodeled this small apartment into a simple white living space that is somehow warm despite its chilly origins.  With strategically placed wood panels and lots of built-in surfaces including a tier of stairs leading to a rooftop deck, the design makes the space feel more like a landscape than a set of individual rooms.

21 Rooms in 1 Flat

Remodeling a 350-square-foot apartment-turned-condo on a budget, Gary Change somehow managed to create a luxurious space that transforms into 21 different layouts through the use of sliding walls, fold-down desks and other movable architectural elements. Simply by folding, unfolding and sliding some elements around, Change creates a steam room, home cinema, a guest bedroom and more.

Color- and Pattern-Based Apartment Design

Instead of making furniture and décor the focal points in a living space, why not do the opposite? This vibrant apartment design by Tham and Videgard Hansson gets all of its visual interest from the strategic use of color and pattern, with shades that shift from autumnal reds to cool blues to create different moods in various rooms. White furniture keeps the overall look of the apartment from being too busy.

Laid-Back Modern Luxury Loft

The juxtaposition of bright white surfaces with warm wood, especially when combined with metal and glass, can make a space look modern and luxurious – but achieving that effect doesn’t have to be expensive. Chart.Corb renovated this loft in Paris using affordable materials like plywood to create a cozy, contemporary living space that is simple without being stark.

Rustic Recycled Modern Home

Remodeling an unused space into a historic apartment is much easier when the space that you start with has as many beautiful features as this. Unfinished walls, peeling paint, concrete surfaces and exposed brick hardly look unkempt when finished with wood floors, white partitions and modern furniture. Designed by Gus Wusterman, this apartment is thoroughly modern, yet retains a vintage feel brimming with texture and character.

Religious Conversion: Church to Loft Condo

With its many desirable architectural features – from high ceilings to an open floor plan – it’s no surprise that a place of worship would make such a fantastic conversion into a loft. This East Village project by Manifold transformed a synagogue into a beautiful three-story private residence that is a shining example of adaptive reuse.

10 Amazing Tree Houses from Around the World

Here are ten incredible tree house designs that range from functional to fanciful, sustainable to strange and affordable to incredibly expensive. Click Here to See More

Railroad cars are big, heavy, and cumbersome. They’re notoriously hard to move into new locations off of their tracks, and because of their odd shape most people wouldn’t think of using them for anything else anyway. But in the spirit of recycling, green construction and shipping container homes, some enterprising people are recycling old train cars into homes, offices and even hotels.

(images via: Jag9889, The Manimal, The Greenest Dollar, and Ramon)

With the mortgage industry in trouble and more people making the shift toward green housing, reusing train cars as homes is a logical step. Like shipping containers, it’s relatively easy to do the conversion yourself, provided you have the resources to get the car to its new location. Cabooses seem to be the most popular choice for train car homes, but there are plenty of dining and sleeping cars being converted as well. If you’re able to shell out between $8000 and $45,000 for an old car, another several thousand to transport the car and put it into place on your property, and whatever it takes in material and labor to transform it, you can have a home for much less than a conventional house would cost. And best of all, it will be completely unique and as green as you want it to be.

(images via: kgw.com)

This converted rail car home in Portland, Oregon, is a great example of how beautiful a home a converted railroad car can make. The outside may look plain, but on the inside it’s surprisingly luxurious. The home encompasses an impressive 807 square feet and features 10-foot-high ceilings, DSL, thoroughly new everything, a full electric kitchen, and an incinerator toilet. The siding it’s currently situation on is rented to the current owner for $150 a month, and since it’s not technically real estate there are no property taxes. The home is currently for sale, so if you want the train car home experience without renovating one yourself, now’s your chance.

(images via: HGTV and Roadside America)

If you’ve ever passed by the northern edge of Richardson Bay in Sausalito, California, chances are you’ve seen some pretty unusual houseboats moored there. One of the most unique is this one, made from an old railroad car. The car was once known as #41 on the San Francisco and Northern Pacific Railway in 1889. After it was retired in 1936, it was made into a land-based duplex and stayed put until 1979. At that time it was purchased to be made into this amazing houseboat. The home contains many of the original rail car bits, including the dining seats and some of the interior wood.

(images via: London Underground and Village Underground)

High above the London streets in Shoreditch, a few disused Tube carriages sit proudly, adorned with beautiful graffiti and shining with new life. They’re part of Village Underground, a collection of office and studio spaces that encompass the carriages above as well as a massive Victorian warehouse below. A wide variety of occupants take up the spaces, making a truly diverse and unique urban community encompassing some very distinctive recycled building elements.

(image via: Anne Vauclare)

Not all repurposed train cars are used as dwellings or offices. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of using the available material to solve the problem at hand. Though it’s not clear exactly where this train car bridge is or even how it got there – miles away from a highway or railroad network – it’s an amusing sight.

(images via: The Deptford Project)

In mid-2008, a remarkable project came together in Deptford, South London: a 1960s rail car was transported to the high street to become part of an urban reclamation arts project. The car was stripped and repurposed by designer Morag Myerscough, then turned into a café. The Deptford Project Café is now decorated with beautiful graffiti advertising its existence, and inside you can get a cup of sustainably-harvested coffee or a plate of locally produced treats.

(images via: Redcaboose Getaway B&B)

Some enterprising individuals put the homey feel of converted rail cars to good use as bed and breakfast rooms. The Redcaboose Getaway on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula manages to look both charming and exciting. If you ever wanted to be a train conductor as a kid, this is the place to live out that dream…sort of. The B&B features several cabooses, each of which is a separate guest chamber. There’s also a restored art deco dining car where the staff chef prepares breakfast each morning. The Olympic Peninsula is one of the must-see areas of the US, and this seems like an amazing place to call a temporary home while exploring the area.

(images via: Controversy B&B)

The Controversy B&B in Hoogwoud, Netherlands takes full advantage of the offbeat nature of the discarded train on its grounds. The compartment is 21 meters long and contains some truly wacky features: the sink basin in the bathroom is an old tire, the bed is a boat, and the jacuzzi tub is in the shape of a colorful sombrero. And if trains aren’t your thing, the transportation-themed property also features trams and a UFO.

(images via: Aurora Express B&B)

Fairbanks, Alaska boasts its own quirky railroad car bed and breakfast. The Aurora Express B&B features four historic railroad cars as sleeping chambers and one dining car. The cars were purchased from the Denali State Park Hotel for $1 each, with the agreement that the Wilson family would pay to transport them to their property. Today, the cars sit on 700 feet of private railroad track overlooking Fairbanks and the Tanana Valley.

(images via: English Russia)

Perhaps the most bizarre train reuse is the Russian trend of converting old train cars into Orthodox Christian churches. They range from the simple repurposing to the elaborate redesign, complete with adding an entirely new facade. The end result is an unusual but inspirational presentation, showing us that these industrial giants don’t need to be discarded when their working lives are over; they simply need someone who cares enough to give them new life.

Cargo & Shipping Container Home & Office Designs

Cargo containers are of increasing interest to architects who plan to make them into homes, offices and other buildings through simple modifications and conversions. Click Here to See More

A good city, like a good wine, needs time to develop. As any Civilization-playing geek knows, it takes decades or centuries to turn a cluster of villages into a living, breathing metropolis. It cannot happen overnight. Or can it? Here are 12 urban centres that offer a radical alternative to the traditional model of urban development – they are brand new, fully-working cities from the first day they open for business.

King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia

(Image via: King Abdullah Economic City)

Saudi Arabia, as you may be aware, is not short on cash. It is therefore unsurprising that its king (Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud) can afford to put $80 billion on the table to finance a new city in his name that will hold an incredible 2 million people.

(Image via: King Abdullah Economic City)

Eventually covering 150 square miles – core plus suburbs – on the edge of the Red Sea and just an hour away from Mecca, the spiritual centre of the Islamic world, King Abdullah Economic City appears to lack nothing but a sexy name. It will house one of the largest sea ports in the world, it will provide over a million jobs (desperately important for the future of a country where 40% of the population is currently under 15 years old) – and if construction sticks to schedule, it will be complete by 2020. Truly amazing.

Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay Area

(Images via: Inhabitat)

Named after Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckling adventure novel (arrrr, that it be!), Treasure Island is yielding a different type of gold these days. The island is an entirely artificial construction built during the 1930s, and its massive derelict aircraft hangers have proved a popular resource for film-makers. A lively history – but soon to be entirely eclipsed by its redevelopment as a sustainably designed eco-city, incorporating an organic farm, wind turbines and a wastewater treatment plant. Most ingenious of all, the streets will all be realigned to minimize their exposure to the brunt of the wind, keeping residential energy bills as low as possible.

Songdo, South Korea

(Images via: Songdo IBD)

New Songdo City is much more than an agreement between designers and developers, accompanied by flashy computer models and artistic renditions…it’s rising higher every day. Perched atop 1,500 acres of reclaimed land, the city is designed with one overriding purpose in mind, as announced on its entrance gates: “Welcome: we will change the face of business“. With 80,000 apartments and 60 million square feet of office and retail space, it may be no idle boast. The $40 billion development will open in 2015 – and will probably only attract residents with deep pockets, as the average apartment will cost half a million dollars.

Waterfront City, Dubai

(Image via: OMA)

It goes without saying that ultra-wealthy Dubai has a new city in the works. It is at the centre of a development made of artificial islands and canals called Waterfront, the design-work of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. With a population of 1.5 million, Waterfront will double Dubai’s population, boost its job market by one million and add 70km to its coastline.

(Image via: OMA)

At its centre, Waterfront City – around 100,000 fulltime residents with a working capacity of three times that number, and arranged around a central island (pictured) comprised of a 5 x 5 grid of streets arrayed with high-rise buildings. (If you are wondering, the curious-looking silver sphere is a 44-storey skyscraper). However, the cultural focus of the development will be the second of Dubai’s Palm islands, appearing to sprout from one end of the Waterfront’s crescent.

Guangzhou, China

(Image via: Joncrel)

A city steeped in history, Guangzhou – better known to European history as Canton – is in the process of getting a much-needed makeover from the ground upwards…in essence by building a new city and threading it through the best remnants of the existing one. At present, derelicts buildings and crumbling concrete blight significant stretches of the metropolitan area (total population, a shade under 10 million).

(Images via: Inhabitat)

The new Guangzhou will be a place of green spaces, space-efficient housing, an expanded transportation system and a new waterfront. Designers Heller Manus Architects intend for the city to be arranged around networks of open courtyards, attempting to beautify the shabby, impractical areas of the city with greenery and planned gardens. The Southern axis of the city is currently under scrutiny, and when it is developed it will be linked with its already renewed Northern counterpart (also the work of Heller Manus) and the city’s transformation will be complete.

Malabo II, Equatorial Guinea

(Images via: skyscrapercity)

The capital of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo, is eager to leave its past behind – not just a troubled post-colonial history, but an urban infrastructure that can’t keep up with a booming population. The answer is Malabo II: an attempt to relocate the heart of the city on its outskirts and rebuild outwards from there. Many of Malabo’s principal governmental buildings will be resituated at the new site, surrounded by good-quality paved roads and cutting edge infrastructural technology. The money for all this is coming from huge oil and gas reserves found off the coast in the 1990s – and the eventual aim is to absorb the old capital into Malabo II, replacing the city from within.

Rawabi, West Bank

(Image via: Rawabi)

If ever a place was desperate for new cities, it’s the Middle East’s West Bank. For the last 50 years, Israelis and Palestinians have struggled to find common ground in every sense imagineable – and the fallout has blighted the Palistianian economy and the region’s standards of living. The new city of Rawabi intends to change all that.

(Images via: Rawabi)

As well as offering a place for Palistinian professionals to set up home in beautiful, airy, well-kept surroundings, the city is also designed to anchor the region’s economy and provide a place for long-term investment, research and learning. It is a place built to endure in a land in flux for decades – and more than that, it is an unambiguous political statement for the Palistinian people: We Are Here To Stay.

Masdar City, Abu Dhabi

(Image via: Masdar City)

With a projected population of 50,000 people, the planned 6-million-square-metre city of Masdar may seem thoroughly overshadowed by all the cities we’ve already outlined – but when it comes to green living, this is the winner on the grounds of sheer ambition.

(Images via: Masdar City)

Designed by Brit architects Fosters + Partners and being built by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, Masdar wants to show the world how a city can go green from the get-go. Automobiles will be banned within the city walls. The city’s energy needs will be entirely met with renewable sources including solar, wind and geothermal sources, and even the world’s largest hydrogen power plant. Up to 80% of the city’s water supply will be recycled, and waste will be reduced to as close to zero as possible. (No news on accomodation prices for those lucky 50,000, but we suspect this green utopia comes at a hefty cost).

Destiny, Florida

(Images via: Destiny Folrida)

The environment is top of the list of priorities for Florida’s new urban wonder, Destiny City. Planted on 40,000 acres of Osceola County land, the city is an attempt to make “the Silicon Valley of green technology, in the words of its developer Anthony Pugliese. Once completed it will house a quarter of a million people, with a large proportion of them working in newly-created green collar jobs in the area. Recycling facilities, electric car filling stations, gray water irrigation, a possible biomass power plant producing super-cheap energy – the list goes on. It sounds too good to be true…and since ground hasn’t been broken yet (that’s scheduled for 2011), it’s very early days. In every sense – watch this space.

Ziggurat Project, Dubai

(Image via: )

Moving further into the realm of what-if, we have the return of the ziggurat – the colossal terraced pyramids of antiquity, typified by the famous monumental temple at Ur in what is now modern-day Iraq. Ziggurats are back – except on a scale we’ve never seen before.

(Image via: Business Intelligence Middle East)

The Ziggurat Project is a proposal for a self-containing sustainable community of one million people. Renewable energy would power this enormous multi-tiered machine, while its occupants would get around using the integrated transport system (removing the need for personal vehicles).

Crystal Island, Moscow

(Images via: Foster and Partners)

A new city proposal with similar designs on the sky is the dazzling Crystal Island. Covering 27 million square feet and nearly half a kilometre high, this structure would house 30,000 people (making it more of a new town than a new city) and its terraced gardens and dynamic frame would moderate the inner environment depending on the season – allowing cool air in and reflecting unwanted sunshine in the summer, insulating and illuminating during the winter. 3,000 hotel rooms, 900 apartments and a thriving business sector complete the picture of the world’s first inhabited steel volcano.

X-Seed 4000, Japan

(Images via: Inhabitat)

Of course, you can go too far. Take the X-Seed 4000, a building so absurdly ambitious that the designers later admitted it was never meant to be built (they were trying to impress the industry – or put another way, showing off). With a 6-kilometer-square footprint, it would reach 800 floors into the Japanese sky and cost anything up to $900 billion to build. The shape is inspired by Mount Fuji, except (you may want to sit down for this part) the X-Seed 400 would actually be taller than Fuji by 200 metres. Madness?  Here and now, perhaps…but since the design is perfect for lower-gravity environments, is this the first draft of humanity’s first offworld city from scratch?

Bricks and Scones: British House Built Entirely of Legos

Have you ever wished you could build a Lego house big enough to walk into? UK TV presenter James May and a team of volunteers and builders are doing just that. Click Here to See More

The world’s worst skyscraper disaster is still fresh in our minds, and every year sees a new calamity in our global obsession with building storey after storey, higher and higher. You would think that all architects would be careful to  make their buildings look as stable as mountains. You’d be wrong. Thanks to modern building materials and behind-the-scenes architectural wizardry,  the new field of precarious-looking urban architecture is on the rise – as these ten vertigo-inducing examples illustrate.

(Image via: arch daily)

Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi – the most acutely leaning building in the world. It bows out 18 degrees from the vertical – in comparison, Pisa’s famous tower is only leaning at 3.99 degrees. Technologically ambitious and architecturally stunning, it looks like nothing on earth. (Well, okay, it does look like something in particular, but this is a family-friendly corner of the Web and we refuse to draw certain parallels).

(Image via: cosmoworlds)

And by the looks of the first concept drawings, Capital Gate was meant to be even more ambitious. How on earth would this design have stayed up? Judging from the reworked shape, the designers couldn’t answer that question either.

(Images via: luxuo)

If you live in the Danish principality of Rødovre, you may see this queasy-making structure against the skyline. This ‘Sky Village’ is made up of 60 metre square blocks built up around the building’s core. Exactly how is up to the buildiers – meaning that in theory, no two buildings would look alike. We applaud engineering flexibility, but our applause for rock-steady stability is louder. Exactly how will it stay upright, please?

(Image via: freshome)

It may look like a bad or possibly drunken attempt at Photoshopping – but the Walters Towers will soon be reality. Forming an enormous W (possibly standing for “weird”), this apartment block complex in Prague is the slightly fevered work of architects Bjarke Ingels Group, and for obvious reasons, uses the latest in load-bearing building materials.

(Image via: freshome)

Our questions are endless. Do the lifts go diagonally? Is it safe? How would it fit in with the current Prague skyline? Is it safe? Exactly how is the weight distributed? Oh, and is it safe?

(Images via: design boom)

How would you feel about living in a building that looks less built than balanced? This Singaporean residential complex by OMA comprises of 31 six-storey apartment buildings stacked up in a thrilling haphazard manner, with the aim of circulating fresh air around every building. Since this is Singapore, heat loss wouldn’t be a problem – but what about air-con efficiency? And that certainly isn’t a balcony-view for the squeamish.

(Images via: gayol87 and IASeNews)

Costing over $600 million and reaching 51 floors into the blue, the China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing was completed in December 2008. It is built of steel, and its two rakishly-skewed towers had to be joined in the dead of night when the metal was coolest, to prevent expansion distortion. The local nickname? “Big shorts”.

(Image via: daylife / Reuters)

In February this year, it narrowly escaped damage when the nearby Television Cultural Centre caught fire after opening ceremony fireworks went awry. This event has sparked an inquiry into the widespread use of high-explosive fireworks in China – and into the subsequent attempt by national authorities to suppress coverage of the blaze.

(Images via: coolboom)

Commanding what must be one of the most spectacular views in Sydney, the Holman House teeters on the brink of architectural possibilities. Although not quite as unstable as the above photos suggests, the house juts out from the cliff edge so alarmingly that we commend its current occupants for their nerve (and try to hide our jealousy at having that view). But isn’t the Sydney basin prone to earthquakes?

(Image via: dezeen)

The new Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro is an award-winning response to the question “How unconventional can we make a museum look?” Looking like a stylishly collapsing carpark (ahem, arguably), the front-facing “vertical boulevard” hides galleries, auditoriums and even an outdoor cinema perched on top. No word on what the residents of the surrounding tower-blocks think of this last feature.

(Image via: dezeen)

Due to open in 2011, the design is meant to channel the energy of the beach promenade, providing an extension of its movement rather than an interruption. If they could turn one side of those steps into a waterslide, we think it would be made completely perfect.

(Images via: homedesignfind)

As well as challenging our assumptions and sensibilities, good architecture should make us feel happy. So what about this house from Ensamble Studio that seems designed to perturb, upset and make us permanently uneasy? From the swimming pool sticking out into thin air to the apparently badly-supported slab of concrete poking high above the roof, this void-riddled structure  is certainly fascinating and challenging…but is it lovable?

(Image via: skyscrapercity)

Unlike with Capital Gate, there is no attempt to subvert the shape of the two towers that make Madrid’s Puerta de Europa. These massive structures (115 metres tall) look like conventional skyscrapers – except ones that lean towards each other at a 15-degree angle.

(Image via: luciapensache)

Completed in 1996, they were the world’s first leaning high-rise buildings (so urbanites who suffer from vertigo, you now have someone to blame for the trend). They are positioned so far apart to provide the room for a subway interchange.

(Image via: arch daily)

The new housing development of Strandkanten in Tromsø, Norway, is 900 decided modernistic homes making best use of reclaimed land – and of design possibilities. The waterfront properties lean out over the water as if they long to go for a dip.

(Image via: arch daily)

After hundreds of years of straight-up window design, how do we feel about windows that themselves lean out, making it impossible for us to safely do so? And there is the potential problem with all these designs: they’re built for people, and need a warm public response to become a success. No matter how ingenious the techniques or how space-age the materials used…are we truly willing to step inside the latest and craziest skyscraper designs?

7 More Abandoned Cities and Towns of the World

Check out these urban abandonments of the modern world. Click Here to See More

Architect Marlon Blackwell does something with his designs that many architects seem unable or unwilling to do: he takes the building’s environment into consideration when designing a structure. His Southern designs all resonate with their environments rather than fighting with them for attention. His buildings may be modern, but Blackwell ensures that they are always in harmony with their surroundings. The architect’s designs have won several awards and been featured in numerous books.

Keenan TowerHouse

This stunning 80-foot tall tower home/office almost looks like a fire tower converted into a house. But it is a new structure built for a family who wanted to enjoy the stunning views of the Ozarks provided by their 57-acre building site. The structure seems to be at once both natural and industrial, with the wood and the white metal panels each providing complementary yet opposite facets to the design. A steep interior staircase takes one up to the main part of the building, where one room provides a 360-degree view of the landscape. The very top of the tower features an open-roof outdoor room for enjoying even the overhead view.

Arkansas House

Marlon Blackwell’s firm was called to repair the fire damage to this existing home. They were only allowed to work in the areas that had been damaged. By adding light monitors and suspended lofts, they were able to bring a greater degree of light into the space, making it feel airy and bright. Blackwell won an award for this design in the restoration category, but the judges were somewhat apprehensive to award it: they said the restoration was so successful they couldn’t tell where the old sections of the home ended and the new section began.

L-Stack House

Blackwell’s own home is equally impressive as his other ventures. The L-Stack House design centers on a glass-surrounded staircase that brings together the public and private sections of the stacked layers. Blackwell, who is also a tenured associate professor at the University of Arkansas, wanted the home to react well to its surroundings: a dense urban neighborhood with a generous dose of nature nearby.

Porchdog House Prototype

The Porchdog House was designed as a part of the Architecture for Humanity Model Home Program in Biloxi, Mississippi. The program is providing affordable prototype houses to families who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The Porchdog house is raised 12 feet off of the ground, creating a home that is less prone to flooding. However, there is a traditional front-porch culture to maintain in Biloxi, which Blackwell preserved in this design with a ground-level porch and parking area. The resulting home is not only stable in the face of a Category 4 hurricane; it is also an efficient urban design that could conceivably be adopted anywhere in the country.

Brutalism to Postmodern:Concrete Architecture

Concrete construction has been used at least as far back as the Roman Empire. In the modern age, the overuse of concrete has created a mixed reputation (no pun intended). Click Here to See More