In the trash-ridden outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, precariously lofted structures rise up on stilts, home to birds that, come sunset, are set loose as the strange race begins to reroute and capture the free-flying flocks of one’s neighbors. The goal: to use flags and whistles to navigate your own birds and bring them back to their roost, all while hopefully entrapping your neighbors’ pets in the process.

Photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro (via CityLab) flew in from London to document this bizarre phenomenon. Dating as far back as 4,000 years ago in various forms, this sport-like activity involves breeding, raising, releasing and recapturing huge collections of pigeons.

Garbage City, the informal name of the trash-collecting suburbs surrounding Cairo, plays host to many of participants, its lack of building code regular contributing to the unsteady-looking structures used to house the birds.

Not made to support heavy loads, many of these informal roosts are cobbled together from scraps and assembled like scaffolding from wood and whatever else is available.

PigeonNews gives a great deal of detail on everything from the types and ratings to behaviors of the birds and their masters, including stories of training, endurance and skill as well as sickness, predators and other mishaps.

Notably, pigeon is also eaten in the region, so while many treat it as a hobby or sport, some participants may also have other incentives for breeding (or catching) these birds.

There are as many as 2,000,000 people actively raising these birds in Egypt today, with some people spending hundreds of dollars a month on the upkeep of hundreds of birds.

A Modernist classic, the famous Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe was originally built with a raised platform but that has not managed to save it from floods, leading its custodians to an extreme solution: jacking the building up when the neighboring river rises.

Per the Chicago Tribune, options under consideration include moving the home back away from the water’s edge or raising it permanently in place, but both of these (argue advocates of the third alternative) fail to preserve the structure in its planned context.

As ArchDaily reports, “The mechanism itself would use a series of trusses, which ordinarily lie flat on their side, but are raised to a vertical position by hydraulic rams when a flood is detected. The cost of installing the system is estimated at $2.5 million – $3 million.”

The cheapest option would be to move the house away from the river, but that, in turn, takes away its key views and a critical driver of its raised and cantilevered form – imagine, if you will, shifting Falling Water away from the river over which it sits.

The favored option might sound far-fetched, and raises preservation questions, like: what lengths should we go to in order to save widely-studied buildings, and how justified is their position in history books in the first place if their structural design features such flaws?

256 plastic barrels support this multistory marvel, which stands up and out even amid a sea of buoyant and stilted architecture in this fishing village alongside Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city.

Nominated for a Designs of the Year 2014 award, the structure accommodates up to 100 students and serves as a community space when school is out. Children, parents and other guests arrive and depart this offshore center exclusively by boat.

In visiting the structure, surrounding residents get to experience relief from the dense adjacent stilt-supported sprawl, as well as higher views than most of the single-level homes in the area can afford.

A collaborative pilot project spearheaded by NLE, a group focused on the architecture of developing cities, the Makoko Floating School is a working prototype designed to address local needs “in view of the impact of climate change and a rapidly urbanizing African context.” 

A simple wooden stick-frame approach made it possible to construct the building inexpensively, using largely local building techniques and upcycled materials. The project’s “main aim is to generate a sustainable, ecological, alternative building system and urban water culture for the teeming population of Africa’s coastal regions.”

Amy Casey is a painter and Cleveland native who has a style all her own. Her pieces are of tangled, rickety, and unstable worlds that are unreal enough to excite the imagination, but realistic enough to hit home. With events in the last decade as any indication, today’s society feels increasingly insecure, as if everything could fall down at any moment; Amy Casey taps into this with a beautiful array of work:

(Images via dailydujour, emilyandabigail, fortserious, lushlee)

Amy Casey’s worlds are stilted, literally, and their fragility lends an appeal. Despite the obvious risk of catastrophe at any moment, her homes seem solid, and not at all dark.

(Images via flavorpill, dailydujour)

Amy’s worlds have a tendency to come crashing down, but this action is counterbalanced by tranquil scenes before any devastation.

(Images via art-spire, skintandmint, artnicks)

As if out of Tim Burton’s imagination (though his version would be darker), Amy Casey likes to create tentacle like vines that always seem to be reaching toward you, ready to pull your precariously balanced life into a pile of rubble. She has no problem depicting what happens after the collapse, either.

(Images via mocoloco, diskursdisko, freetimes)

We’re all in this together! Amy creates a unique sense of community by piling enough upside down and topsy turvy communities against each other that it’s obvious a single missing piece would cause the whole thing to crash down. All of the struts and structure only provide the illusion of solidity.

(Images via tbpdesign, skintandmint, tbpdesign)

When the destruction is over, the piles of debris create a sense of chaos that is almost more action oriented than her action pieces. In my opinion, the serenity of the moment right before the collapse is much more tranquil than the moments after (I thought there would be some sense of relief, that the worst had already happened).

(Images via clevelandartsprize, cia)

A student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Amy Casey graduated in 1999 and has found herself back in her hometown working for galleries and perfecting her craft.