As long as heights don’t make you queasy, you could enjoy one of the best meals of your life from as high as 1,350 feet above street level, gazing out onto bustling cities like Dubai, Tokyo, Toronto, Shanghai and Chicago. Or, take a higher altitude approach at a restaurant that’s not just tucked into a mountain range in France, but also located almost 9,000 feet above sea level. These dining establishments are the closest you’ll ever get to eating meals in the clouds, outside of an airplane (unless, of course, you’re an astronaut, in which case, congratulations.)

Catch: Guangzhou International Finance Center, China

100 floors above ground level in the Four Seasons Hotel at Guangzhou’s International Finance Center, seafood restaurant ‘Catch’ looks down onto the city from an astonishing 1,312 feet in the sky through floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The 103-story building is the 15th tallest in the world, and opened in 2010.

At.Mosphere: Burj Khalifa, Dubai

The highest restaurant in the world crowns the top of the tallest tower, the Burj Dubai. Located on the 122nd floor, At.Mosphere is a 200-seat French restaurant set 1,350 feet above the ground. From your dining table, you can watch the frenetic pace of Dubai life or get a bird’s eye view of various ongoing construction projects.

Top of the World: Stratosphere Hotel and Tower, Las Vegas

800 feet above the Las Vegas Strip, ‘Top of the World’ is tucked into the highest floor of the Stratosphere Casino, Hotel & Tower and revolves 360 degrees every 80 minutes.

Club Jin Mao: Grand Hyatt, Shanghai

Gaze out at the Shanghai skyline from an unusual angle at Club Jin Mao, a showcase of classic Shanghainese cuisine on the 86th floor of the Jin Mao Tower at Grand Hyatt Shanghai. There’s seating for up to 40 guests, and six private rooms.

The Metropolitan Club: Willis Tower, Chicago

Chicago is actually packed full of sky-high restaurants, many notable enough to make it onto lists of the world’s highest. That means there are plenty of opportunities to dine with an amazing view of the city, the Chicago River or Lake Michigan. The Metropolitan Club is a classic, located on the 66th and 67th floors of the famous Willis Tower (which has 110 stories in total.) The Club has long been open to members only, but recently invited the public to dine as well.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
High Elevation Dining 12 Sky Scraping Restaurants Around The World

Convertible couch beds are great if you are having a couple over to stay and have the space to fold out into, but these double-decker solutions is a great alternative for smaller apartments or multiple-but-single overnight guests. Here are three designs from different companies that show off the potential of this strategy (and give you a few color, size and style options to choose from, too).

First, the Coupe deploys as fast as a regular transforming sofa, but expands vertically rather than horizontally to create a pair of beds stacked on top of one another. Based out of Greece, Proteas is a 50-year-old furniture company specializing in high-end designs. The Coupe comes in blue, red, green, brown or beige.

An alternative option that transforms slightly less quickly but unfolds along similar lines (and may be more robust due to its use of side supports) is the DOC.

Designed by BonBon, a UK company, it likewise lifts up to reveal a ladder and second-level sleeping area for guests, starting as a sofa. The DOC comes in in red, purple or orange.

Finally, from Resource Furniture, “the Palazzo bunk bed system, an innovative design that transforms from a sofa to a bunk bed, provides multiple functions while maximizing space. The beds are available with low or high armrests and come equipped with wood-slatted bed springs and removable mattresses. The bunk bed system includes exceptional safety features, including a locking mechanism and a complete barrier around the top bunk.”

For the space-saving fanatic who hates to leave even one square inch unused, or the minimalist who wants everything to work smoothly and simply, this collection may be the ultimate(albeit ambitious and not-inexpensive) all-in-one solution.

Rolands Landsbergs designed the Boxetti Collection to address every major type of living space, “driven by three basic design principles – functionality, advanced technologies and contemporary aesthetics of minimalism. Each of Boxetti modules is designed to achieve maximum efficiency of particular demands for functionality and suitability.”

Five boxes form the basis of the system: a bedroom box with a bed, closet and more; a living room box with couch and tables; a media center with television, music player and stereo speakers; an office with seating and work surfaces and a kitchen with storage, cooking and food preparation surfaces and spaces. Each one uses the same language of angular geometries, glossy white exteriors and warm orange interiors.

From the designer: “The capability of the modules to be transformed into compactly solid blocks is essential for the design concept in order to obtain an unobstructed and comfortable space – free of uselessness. The Boxetti Collection is a handmade product – the quality of materials as well as structural and technological solutions endues the collection to the extent of exclusiveness.”

When it comes to tall apartment and condo buildings, the idea of adding more space is almost always out of the question – but what if you could push a balcony outward on demand, rather than adding an entire deck or patio? Here are three designs to expand outdoor space in creative ways.

The Bloomframe is a Dutch architect-designed system that turns a simple set of windows into a spacious exterior extension that can be electronically deployed and retracted – like a convertible top, you can experience the outdoors during nice weather, take out the grill, then close the unit as desired.

An alternative from Fakro works with existing frame sizes on angled roofs, and provides you both a way to lean out (a form of Juliet balcony, with window frame doubling as front rail) as well as overhead shelter from the rain. This system is also simpler and entirely mechanical, so deploying it is as easy as opening a normal glass window.

And for those who already have a deck, but not enough room to put any furniture on it, this space-saving furniture solution (Spaceless) by Sandy Lam is a great source of inspiration: her designs for a table and seat set that fold up for use and hide, camouflaged amid wood decking, when tucked back away.

From the designer: “the average price of residential buildings in downtown Vancouver BC has reached $800 per square foot. Many people have to give up their garden living and move into concrete buildings because of this increase in housing prices. Even though living space is expensive, there is one space rarely used in condo buildings—the balcony. The goal of having “Spaceless” is to use the condo balcony to maximize living space and to improve the building environment by enhancing the functionality of the balcony space.”

Missing from most survival kits are the less-obvious but still-essential elements for preserving not just life and limb but sanity along with them. Hence the more diversified offerings of this lovely bug-out box, just in time for the much-misunderstood (and not actually) Mayan-predicted apocalypse.

Siesta dovetails with survival in this kit created by the Mexican branding firm Menosunocerouno. Seven pie-shaped slices of a circular chocolate give you a week’s worth of treats – rewards, perhaps, for staying alive. Then wash your dessert down with some original Mayan liqueur from Casa D’aristi in Yucatan.

But aside from the fun stuff, there are some core materials as well: a liter of water to stay hydrated, a pack of matches, survival knife and waterproof notebook to document the good and the bad as you make your way through the world’s end. All of this is packaged in a suitably-austere black-and-yellow box with instructional tips should anything less obvious come your way during the end of days.