The world of future-focused artwork tends to examine extreme outcomes, but this artist’s visions represent a compelling range of possibilities from catastrophic to optimistic, Dystopian to Utopian with other shades of gray in between.

First consider the range of negative outcomes and what they would do to villages, towns and cities around the world (as illustrated in this first round of images above and below) – built environments afflicted by surprising climatic changes like heat waves, ice storms and droughts.

On the one hand, Evgeny Kazantsev considers these disaster scenarios, from dust storms in Barcelona and villages in the Alps without snow to Venice gone dry and oceans overrunning desert cities. But this is only half of the story.

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Altopias Speculative Art Explores Both Dark Light Futures

Rendering luxury-class house designs accessible to the public is just part of the beauty of Paperhouses, an endeavor to raise the quality of free house plans and and explore the potentials for architecture to be as open as technology can be. As with Wikihouse, anyone is welcome to download and begin construction on any of the uploaded homes without paying an architect fee.

The latest submission to Paperhouses is a houseboat by Carl Turner Architects composed of prefab parts and design to move freely in narrow urban waterways and allow for expansion in ever-more-crowded European capitals.

As with other homes in the database, this one is intended to be flexible, able to be adapted to different conditions and clients. While intended to float, the modular construction allows the design to be built on land with equal ease while an adjustable pallet of colors and materials allow it to be individualized by each builder or owner.

Our Private Sky by Florian Busch Architects is part of the same initiative but approaches modularity through the idea of privacy and views. The primary focus of the structure is upward, while variable windows can be added, moved or removed depending upon its context.

The Module House by Tatiana Bilbao is based on series of same-sized blocks that can be arranged and oriented depending on the layout of a site and desired directions relative to the sun, featuring concrete walls and cantilevers to balance daylight and shade.

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Open Source Homes 6 Free Plans Put High End Design In Reach

You see them all the time as polished finished products, but for those looking to try the ultimate do-it-yourself home-building project, these videos will help show you how various ISO container houses were really built in different environments and at various budgets and scales. From timelapses and diagrams to interviews and walkthroughs, they will help introduce you to what someone attempting a similar endeavor could or should expect along the way.

In this HGTV segment, you can get an overall sense of how the Seattle architects of Cargotecture shifted two containers to create a livable container retreat of their own. The result is as much an experiment and demonstration model as a working residence, and a good introduction to what is possible and what can be problematic.

In this timelapse footage and subsequent tour, you can see a whole multistory house, designed by David Fenster (filmed by FairCompanies) for the Redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, coming together in a single day. The structure celebrates the industrial aesthetic of its containerized components, but also reflects the difficult reality of moving building materials out to such a remote location.

Part of the building is cantilevered over one side, supported by a hollow concrete column below (that in turn also contains an outdoor shower). The layout uses the space between shipping containers to let in light and widen spaces beyond containers while also framing views. The steel shells also make the building more robust, resistant to natural disasters like falling trees and forest fires.

The Kuziel Residence consists of a series of shipping containers set around a central space on concrete foundations, taking a half-year in total to build – the video above shows photos throughout the process. On the builder’s website, you can “read about the idea, all required prep-work, creation of the foundation, six months long endeavour of making of a chassis, build of the timber roof structure and pouring of lots of concrete for floor slab, work on the house exterior and interior and [all the other] things happening along the way.”

Perhaps one of the most audacious shipping container structures ever attempted, this dream ‘Sea Can’ home of Bill Glennon will have 31 total containers when it is completed, using solar for heat and electricity and boasting a windmill as well. Amazingly, some containers are turned vertically, creating turret-style protrusions making the whole thing look like a modern-day castle in its early stages. In the first film, Bill introduces the project. In the second, he gives a brief tour of the interior and explains some of the passive and other sustainable strategies going into the design. In the third, you can see how massive the almost-finished project turns out to be.

Meanwhile, a series of videos from ContainerHomes.net shows the step-by-step process of constructing a small-sized, single-shipping-container abode DIY-style in Costa Rica, highlighting the actual tools and time required for such an undertaking. After all, a container is made of metal and can require a great deal of additional work, particularly when it comes to adding doors and windows, even if it is in a location that does not require a foundation or insulation. Unlike some of the other video series shown here, this is a start-to-finish look at a low-budget cargo home solution, including a walk-through of the modest final product.

Not sure where to look next for inspiration on what or how to build your own cargo container home? Here are 30 additional cargo container homes, 30 container offices, 20 cargo city and container shelter concepts, and some additional cargotecture. Whatever you do, keep in mind that building codes vary between cities, states and countries, and climactic demands also impact what degree of finish your shelter may require.

Regular readers will know that this site love tree houses of all types, but in researching articles a few have slipped through the cracks, their stories and histories unknown, yet the images of them are too amazing to go un-shown.

These more mysterious examples come from a combination of Pinterest and Repinly, and range from pragmatic well-constructed residences to wild and overgrown structures that seem to have grown alongside the trees they surround, with a few derelict and deserted ones somewhere in between. Above are two examples that seem organically evolved, pieced together around the growth of their trees.

Of the sturdily-constructed sort, this one looks like a regular small family home simply lodged in the branches of a big deciduous monster and bolstered by basic framing.

Finally, the tree homes of fairy tales – these two magical examples show that plans are one thing, but fantasy is another – sometimes the tree is just a foil for boisterous expressions of amazing and spontaneous architecture.

Consider what Le Corbusier would think if he were alive to see his famous church in France duplicated as a Chinese barbecue restaurant. Or imagine what an Austrian village  must feel about its entire township being copied to a lake in China. But more on that later – first: Zaha Hadid now is experiencing it all in real time, as she races to complete her original before its copycat takes shape.

Copycats exist in all disciplines, but reputation-sensitive architects are often self-policing, as they want their work to stand out as original – but there are exceptions. Hadid’s new project is the victim of the bold copiers (above) are not only building an identical complex to her Wangjing SOHO (below). And while the developers of the legitimate project may well be able to sue, it would only be for damages – not to stop (or undo) construction.

From Der Spiegel: “Satoshi Ohashi, project director at Zaha Hadid Architects for the SOHO complex that is now being cloned, said: ‘It is possible that the Chongqing pirates got hold of some digital files or renderings of the project.’ From these, he added, ‘you could work out a similar building if you are technically very capable, but this would only be a rough simulation of the architecture.'”

As for the aforementioned village: Der Spiegel covered this strange phenomena a while back as well. Pictured above is the Chinese copy (top) of the Austrian original (bottom). Architects from China, passing as tourists, simply documented the entire town of 800, and, without permission, planned to replicate it back home as part of a large development. This may, of course, turn into a mixed blessing in the end – after all, it will almost certainly boost tourism as people experience the copy and seek out the original.