This gorgeous collection of photographic montages highlights regional similarities and differences between types and styles of door and window designs all across Europe, starting with Porto, Portugal:

The Alps:

Santa Susana, Spain:

Sesimbra, Portugal:

London, England:

Burano, Italy:

Andre Goncalves, a photographer from Lisbon, set about creating this catalog of colors and textures with his ‘Windows of the World’ series (mostly by city and region), then expanded to develop ‘Doors of the World’ as well (sorted by country):

Romania:

England:

Portugal:

Individually, a single door might not say much about a city or country, but taken together: patterns emerge, from tile work around doors to color preferences and decorative touches.

Barcelona, Spain:

Montemor-o-Novo, Portgual:

Evora, Portugal:

Venice, Italy:

Bucharest, Romania:

Lisbon, Portugal:

Throughout the rolling hills of rural Switzerland, tucked inside idyllic works of regional vernacular architecture, lie disguised fortifications of a country always ready for war. Some of these bunkers conceal gun caches, communications infrastructure and even anti-aircraft artillery.

The camouflage is incredibly convincing: a worn wood-sided barn, countryside home with cracking paint or a cute small-town cottage could all house militarized surprises.

The public is not privy to precise numbers, but estimates suggest the country contains 250 or more such structures variously disguised as buildings or parts of the natural landscape.

The Swiss are world-famous for their perpetual state of military preparedness, but few outsiders (as well as many citizens of Switzerland) are unaware just how much they are surrounded with infrastructure of war.

Christian Schwager’s relatively recent book on Fake Chalets helped make these buildings an open secret, in turn aiding preservation efforts for many of these facilities that no longer serve an official purpose.

Reporter Anneke Bokern has also delved into the history of these buildings, many of which date back to the 1930s and 40s: “Theatre painters were in charge of the paint jobs, supplying each bunker with a customised skin inspired by the local chalet style.”

“As the results prove, they went about their job with Swiss precision – although the bunkers only had to deceive at a minimum distance of 20 metres. They painted realistic window shutters, created perfect imitations of wood grain, and even took the position of the sun into consideration.”

When planning out world travel, one typically dwells on destinations more than times, but some of the best sights can only been seen at a particular point in the day or, in the case of these marvels, at night.

WebUrbanist is pleased to announce a new partnership with Google Field Trip, bringing some of our best and brightest travel articles to their mobile platform, allowing you to find hidden wonders of the world wherever (and whenever) you may be. In this article, we have teamed up to highlight seven amazing places to visit by night, each offering special surprises to the nocturnally inclined.

World’s Largest Urban Bat Colony in Austin, Texas

At dusk, people flock to watch the emergence of 1.5 million bats from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, designed and built in 1980 in a way that inadvertantly turned out to provide an ideal roost for a particular breed of flying nocturnal predators.

Often under-appreciated or even feared, these night flyers consume between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of food each evening, helping them earn their keep. Today, there is even a dedicated Statesman Bat Observation Center from which visitors are encouraged to experience the spectacle.

World’s Largest Ice & Snow Festival in Harbin, China

By far the biggest such event in the world, the Harbin International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival consists of huge works of art and architecture that truly come into their own once the sun sets and glowing lights behind and within bricks of ice come to life.

Using swing saws to cut ice directly from an adjacent river, artists then turn the frozen building blocks into human, animal and mythical figures as well as huge staircases and structures. Among other honors and awards, a snow sculpture featured at the festival holds the world’s record for size at 750 feet by 28 feet (13,000 cubic meters of snow). Other similarly-impressive global ice festivals can be found in Japan, Canada and Norway as well.

Synchronous Firefly Swarms near Knoxville, Tennessee

Fireflies can be a wonderful sight regardless of the species, but one rare type in particular (Photinus Carolinus), is even more special than its cousins: the so-called Synchronous Firefly swarms light up in unison, pulsing every few seconds at the exact same time.

At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, viewers can buy tickets in advance and be taken by shuttle to special viewing areas from which to observe these lightning bugs. Within the park, 18 other species of firefly can also be found, but only one whose constituents almost all flash simultaneously.

Ghost Ship Water Hologram in Amsterdam, Holland

A maritime marvel in more ways than one, this 3D optical illusion involves two intersecting planar projections beamed onto perpendicular planes of vertical water.

Created for the Amsterdam Light Festival by VisualSkin, the resulting real-life rendering looks like a 17th-century seafaring vessel seemingly held in stasis and composed of water and light. The effect, naturally, works best at night, turning a fountain by day into a marvelously surprising evening display.

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Nocturnal Field Trips 7 World Wonders Best Explored At Night

Grand or gaudy, brilliant or just big, this giant-sized, crystal-styled structure is to be the first in a series of gemstone-inspired hotels in which guest rooms are tucked behind colorful glazing – even its designers at NL Architects concede the scheme is at least “slightly insane.”

Dubbed the Amethyst Hotel, this project draws on a long history of cultural associations with this crystal: “The violet-coloured quartz stone has been the subject of numerous myths through history – in Greece it was believed to prevent drunkenness, while medieval soldiers used it for protection during battle, and others thought it could strengthen the immune system or prevent nightmares.”

Kamiel Klaasse and Pieter Bannenberg also drew inspiration from the long-standing tradition of having huge atrium spaces at the heart of hotel designs, seen in major chains like Hyatt and Marriott in the United States and around the world.

Instead of constructing the whole building around an central atrium, however, this approach conceptually slices the structure through its center, just as a geode is cut open to reveal the inner cavity and its hidden crystals.

Set to be built on an artificial island in China (though shown here in various theoretical settings), the design is already arguably serving part of its purpose simply by having been proposed: it is being discussed, debated, critiqued and commented upon by architects and designers around the world and as they say: all press is good press.

Blending fiction and reality, art and history, this series of superimpositions takes ‘then-and-now’ imagery all the back to the 18th Century on the streets and rivers of England’s capital city. Most of the added classics (spliced with Google Street View shots) are largely unedited, a few are strategically cropped but many show a naturally stark contrast in colors, tones, lighting, and of course: street life.

Collected and collaged by Halley Docherty, these hybrids show historical structures in their built environments like St. Martin in the Fields, shown at the top (painting by William Logsdail in 1888), a church situated on the opposite side of Trafalgar Square to Northumberland House, pictured directly below (painted by Canaletto in 1752 and since demolished).

Various views of the River Thames show how the riverfronts, skylines, ships and boats and shifted in type and number over time, or highlight key points and storytelling scenes of local history set against the everyday backdrop captured by Street View vans.

Many major streets are shown at least partly as they were, albeit with some embellishments or artistic license here and there, as well as the vehicles and people that populated them (just surrounded by contemporary persons and contexts).

Other paintings shown in this collection include: A View of Greenwich from the River by Canaletto (1750–52), Blackman Street London by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1885), View of The Grand Walk by Canaletto (1751), The 9th of November, 1888 by William Logsdail (1890), The Strand Looking East from Exeter Exchange by Anonymous (1822), Covent Garden Market by Balthazar Nebot (1737), The River Thames with St. Paul’s Cathedral on Lord Mayor’s Day by Canaletto (1746) and Westminster Abbey with a Procession of Knights of the Bath by Canaletto (1749).