Transformed into a compact three-story apartment, a decommissioned 1957 crane overlooking Amsterdam’s IJ River from a former industrial harbor now offers tourists a highly unusual vantage point of the city. It’s the lone survivor of a mass demolition of old cranes that once stood on KNSM Island, and hasn’t been in active use since 1979, when container transport made it obsolete. It stood as a sort of curiosity for decades before Dutch designer Edward van Vliet renovated it into a luxurious residence with a homey yet fittingly industrial feel.

Now operated by Yays, a vacation rental service offering concierge-serviced boutique apartments in historical buildings, ‘The Crane Apartment’ is certainly unique. Three stacked shipping containers are built into the body of the crane, with the lowest containing the living area, kitchen and dining area, the middle containing a bedroom and bathroom with a spacious tub, and the top level containing a second bedroom with panoramic views of the river.

The 430-square-foot apartment offers more than just a place to stay and spectacular views of the city; guests have access to meal deliveries, airport pickup, aforementioned access to a concierge and even coffee delivery. Leave the baby at home, however; the rental is said to be ‘not safe or suitable for infants (under 2 years.)’ It sleeps up to four guests and costs around $880 per night via AirBNB.

Lunar Cycles is a massive site-specific installation featuring 15,000 paper-crafted birds in the 13th arrondissement of France’s capital city, requiring (non-paper) cranes to hang the elaborate avian collage.

Created by French street artist Mademoiselle Maurice in collaboration with Mathgoth Gallery, the work represents the biggest mural Paris has ever seen, a massive flight of birds landing on a 20,000-square-foot wall.

The artwork was installed on a condemned building, allowing the artist to first apply a layer of black paint as a backdrop for the colorful array of geometric paper birds added to the wall. She also painted on a series of two-dimensional origamic patterns to bridge between the physical papers and flat surface.

The artist notes that the neighborhood contributed to the design, including those most impacted but the upcoming demolition of this long-standing structural pillar of the community. Previous projects from Maurice have featured similar themes in other settings, from birds and other geometric origami shapes gracing the walls of city streets and ancient castles alike. This work will be up through August.

Featuring three suites toward its peak (and a spa pool to top it off), this boutique hotel is situated in one of the tallest and oldest maritime cranes in the world – and despite the steel frame weighing a whopping 250 tons, it still slowly rotates with the weather.

After three years of rehabilitation, code approval and other obstacles (include the search for a 500-pound bomb left from a previous World War), this remarkable transformation is complete and rooms are now open for rent at the Faralda Crane Hotel.

The lower part of the structure also features a conference, television and festival room that can be tied to renting out the rest of the spaces or used independently. If that isn’t exciting enough for you and your friends, guests can also bungee jump from the top of the crane as well.

The rotational effects (top able to move independently of the bottom) are not to be underestimated, demanding a great deal of engineering ingenuity: “Because the Faralda Crane hotel keeps spinning in the wind it is fit with a rotating shaft and a pivot bearing with gold. In the drag link are the gold connectors to guarantee the Internet connection to the Amsterdam Fire Department. The genius and always turning piping system has been specially designed for this Crane.”

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Converted Crane Hotel 150 Foot Tall Resort Spins In The Wind

The imagination readily fastens onto the anthropomorphic figures like those found in shipyards, turning looming metal giants into huge toy beasts, origami cranes writ large.

Lighting designer Dean Skira takes things a step further in this public exhibition titled Lighting Giants, using nearly 100 RGB LEDs to produce an array of colorful effects at a massive scale – 16,000 different possible hues in total.

Located in a major Croatian shipyard, the show involves a shifting spectrum of illumination that ranges from pure white to wild rainbows, all directed up into the rugged frameworks of industrial monstrosities.

The installation, funded by the ministry of tourism, was in part a response to calls for the relocation of the shipping infrastructure, seen by many as an eyesore. Instead of doing away with the cranes, a part of local industry and history, this work celebrates and highlights them.

About the artist: he is a “lighting designer with over twenty years of experience in designing innovative lighting solutions for urban, landscape, commercial and residential spaces. Even in his early childhood he was fascinated by light and its sources, strongly influenced by his father’s professional work in stained glass. He promotes an architectural lighting design concept that goes beyond utilitarian where lighting can have high impact on person’s emotional states.”