Designed to be a fittingly strange work of architecture on the grounds of famous painter Edward Munch’s former home, A House to Die In has sparked controversy since its proposal some years back.

Modeled in collaboration with the artist who now owns the estate, the building features cartoonish characters act as support columns for this algorithmically generated architectural endeavor.

Accepted at national and state levels, the local city has its reservations, not so much about the form than the placement. “We want the site where the death house was intended to be placed to remain a green area for the benefit of the local population, and we encourages Bjarne to find a new site for the project” wrote the Oslo City Council in a statement.

The scheme has generated much editorial discussion of late, with the The New York Times describing the building as a U.F.O. Earlier this year, the project was put on public display by the Selvaag Art Collection, showcasing the artistic process of designing the unique home. One has to wonder whether Munch, a bit of an eccentric personally and professionally, would have approved.

The site and setting of Modernist masterpieces is a key ingredient of their aesthetic, so what, wondered one architect, would happen if these famous buildings were repositioned, set instead in oddly idyllic landscapes ala painter Thomas Kinkade?

Suddenly, the Eames House, Farnsworth House, Eames and Glass Houses are all transformed into surreal standouts against incongruous backdrops of cobblestone walks, colorful gardens and old-fashioned wells. Some, though, like Gehry’s Deconstructivist home (actually located on a residential street in Santa Barbara) look surprisingly cozy in an impossibly idyllic rural setting:

Robyniko explains that it started as a one-off suggestion: “A fellow architect I’m friends with on Twitter asked if anyone did modernist paintings in the style of Thomas Kinkade. It was one of those things you chuckle to yourself thinking about ‘what if’ and then move on with your life.

“But my family was gone for the weekend,” he explains, “so I decided to indulge my curiosity about how these famous modernist homes would fit into Kinkade’s universe.”

The architect started with well-known photographs of these iconic structures, then set to work in Photoshop hacking them into new environments. The result is weirdly jarring in some cases, and oddly satisfying in others.

Overall, the mixed effects show just how much buildings (and our images of them) rely on what surrounds them, for better or worse.

Resurrecting the signature writing styles of famous musicians and songwriters, this series of downloadable typefaces puts the unique scrawls of performers passed in the palm of your hand(-held device).

Designers Nicolas Damiens and Julien Sens drew from handwritten notes by David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg to create these free fonts. Some came from song-related writings — Cobain’s, though (morbidly enough) was crafted in part from his suicide note.

Each one reflects elements of the source artist. Cohen’s stylized letters, Lennon’s well-ordered words, and Cobain’s erratic characters all say something about the person who created them.

Accompanying images of each artist and the letters, notes and notebooks they scratched away in also provide some context for each creative, illustrating how they worked in a time before computers and typing more fully took over the world.

Pop quiz: can you identify these iconic companies by their typefaces alone? Italian graphic designer Emanuele Abrate decided to run an experiment of sorts and trade names for fonts. In his renderings, iconic (non-text) elements sometimes give the brand away, but even without those the color scheme and type can provide clues.

Called simply Logofonts, it spans famous commercial brands including Nike, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook Twitter, Adobe and AirBNB.

Abrate is an art director focused on identity design, and decided to see what he could learn by reverse-engineering these classic graphics.

Perhaps not surprising upon reflection, but most of these major companies use relatively obscure fonts — even if they look a bit like familiar ones, they are a bit more unique than one might guess at a glance.

Known for designing dynamically curved structures in cities, Zaha Hadid’s only single-family residential project is certainly aligned with her signature style but also reacts to a very different and much more remote, natural and green context.

At the pinnacle sits the master suite, rising above the Russian forest canopy over 60 feet above the ground. Its glass walls and dual balconies were designed to give residents stunning views of the landscape. It sits at the top of a support stem housing a glass elevator (to enjoy the surroundings riding up and down).

The client recalls telling Hadid about his dream home: “I want to wake up in the morning and I want to just see blue sky. I don’t want to see any neighbors and I want to feel free.” Realizing this would mean the building would have to reach above the trees, she quickly sketched out the concept. The final structure, though, would be a complex one, richly and three-dimensionally expressive.

Below, a series of flowing volumes with wide roofs make up the majority of the home, with living spaces, swimming pool, lounges and kitchen on the lowest floor, a level embedded partly below ground. Guest quarters, childrens’ bedrooms and a library are located a floor above, as well as the main entrance.

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The design was sketched out over a decade a go, and conceptual renderings were published over the years, but the building wasn’t completed until recently, after Hadid had passed away. The client recalls she was a “very intellectual, smart and sharp woman,” he continues. “It was very tragic what happened, we lost one of the greatest architects of this century.”

This is a once-in-a-lifetime type project for an architect, being given a high budget and a lot of creative freedom. And it shows. “This project is an absolute testament to Zaha’s genius. This is a masterpiece. It has Zaha’s signature features of organic intricacy, complexity of spatial arrangement, a lot of surprises, and a lot of craftiness and beauty.” (Images courtesy of the OKO Group).