Stairs spiral up to the sky in strange configurations, going nowhere, in a tangle of surrealist sculptural structures in a Mexican jungle. Why is this series of concrete wonders hidden within the lush vegetation of Xilitlha, and who put it there? The answer lies within the mind of Edward James, a 20th century art collector described by Salvador Dali as “crazier than all the Surrealists together.” If Dali is calling you crazy, that probably says something, and photos of James’ creations reveal a visionary thinker on par with the artists he so admired.

James, a poet and well-to-do heir who was once painted by René Magritte, was a passionate and early supporter of Surrealism, sponsoring Salvador Dali in a crucial early period of his career during which he produced some of his most valuable works. A 1978 documentary called “The Secret Life of Edward James” shows off some of his personal art collection, as well as his quirky refurbishment of Monkton House, a small 20th century house plastered with surreal interior designs. He was certainly an interesting character, which explains how Las Pozas came about.

Built more than 2,000 feet above sea level about seven hours (drive) north of Mexico City, ‘Las Pozas’ was named for the natural pools and waterfalls that characterize the site. James saw it as the ideal romantic spot for his vision of a “Garden of Eden set up.” Between 1949 and 1984, he built dozens of towering concrete structures around the pools, each of them given names like “The House on Three Floors Which Will in Fact Have Five or Four or Six,” and “The House with a Roof Like a Whale.”

The sculptures were conceived by James and his guide Plutarco Gastélum, who helped him scout the site, after his living orchid garden decades in the making was destroyed by a blizzard. The concrete ‘flowers’ would be everlasting, much hardier than anything organic he could grow. It took a crew of about 150 people to build them all. It cost more than $5 million to construct, a sum James raised by selling his collection of Surrealist art at auction.

After James’ death in 1984, Las Pozas was opened to the public, and it’s know owned by Fondo Xilitlha, a foundation overseeing its preservation and restoration.

Top photo: Wikimedia Commons; all other photos: Victor DeLaqua, Julia Faveri and Herbert Loureiro/ArchDaily

One odd slightly off-kilter story after another was added to this once-modest house in Alaska as the trees decimated by a wildfire grew taller and taller, the owner insistent upon maintaining his view of Mount McKinley. Located in the woods of Willow overlooking the Denali National Park, the tower house began as a one-story that wouldn’t look out of place in any Alaskan neighborhood.

The forest recovered and the trees got taller and taller, obscuring the mountain. So, the story goes, the owner tacked on a second story. And then a third. After a while, it apparently just became a fun challenge to see how many tiny rooms could be stacked on top of each other until locals began calling the structure the Dr. Seuss House.

Alaska Aerial Footage swung by the house to capture a dizzying video that really gives you an idea of just how tall and whimsical the house really is. From the footage, it looks as though the upper levels are unfinished, their windows covered in ripped plastic sheeting. The snow-topped roofs and balconies on each level just add to the slightly surreal effect.

Unbound by gravity, the need for structural soundness or any sense of real-world aesthetics, architecture becomes like a life form of its own, multiplying and mutating in strange and unsettling ways. These fictional architectural assemblages explore unlikely configurations that are only possible with digital art and photo manipulation.

Surreal Structures by Matthias Jung

The architectural creations of Matthias Jung seem to inhabit a fairytale realm where gravity doesn’t apply, raising Brutalist concrete structures on tiny stilts, floating stained glass windows like balloons and untethering some from the earth altogether. Some designs, however, seem like they might actually occupy some hidden rural meadow in Europe where aging country homes are actually topped with sheep-dotted hills. Jung is a German-based graphic designer who refers to his strange photo collages as “architectural short poems.”

Fictional Architecture by Victor Enrich

Victor Enrich’s ‘architecture gone wild‘ twists, bends and turns, splitting down the middle as if the buildings are being unzipped or seeming to disassemble before our eyes. Balconies become giant slides leading down to the street, staircases meander off into the sky and individual apartments stretch out of their building toward the sun like leaves on a plant. The Barcelona-born designer travels the world and takes photographs of cities, digitally manipulating them for results that would generally be impossible in the real world.

“Once the object is chosen, it is shot from a point easy to recognize by users, not pretending to achieve the greatest picture ever, but instead, a picture that anybody could do. The shot is the basis to produce a replica of the building by using very detailed photogrammetric techniques that end with the creation of a three-dimensional model that fits almost perfectly into the picture.”

Jim Kazanjian

Shadowy passages and strange interiors from horror films like The Shining and the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft tinge the disorienting and disquieting work of Portland-based photographer Jim Kazanjian, who’s inspired by “our inherent anxieties about isolation and vulnerability.” Kazanjian draws on his experience as a CGI artist working on games to create these ‘hyper-collages,’ cobbling together images of buildings, sinkholes and foggy landscapes from an archive of over 30,000 photos.

“My interest in gaming stems from my fascination with architecture and its potential to generate narrative structures,” says the artist. “My time in game development has definitely informed my photographic work. I find that the immersive qualities in both mediums have a strong correlation.”

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Architectural Fiction 35 Surreal Fantasy Structures

You might feel like you’re dreaming or even drunk when you wander into these bizarre, surrealist interiors, from a bar that looks like the inside of an alien to a hotel room modeled after TRON. Going beyond mere concepts, these are real, existing spaces with interior design so surreal, avant garde or otherwise unexpected, it’s disorienting.

Conversation Pieces by HEAD Design

The entire room can be a conversation piece, as proven by this unique interior design series by students at ‘HEAD,’ the Geneva University of Art and Design. The designers created an entire apartment with dreamlike rooms including a bedroom that feels like a cloudy white womb, a library entrance that never seems to end, and a dining room that wouldn’t be out of place on the set of the latest Star Trek movie.

H.R. Giger Bar, Switzerland

Few spaces are more surreal than the H.R. Giger Bar in Gruyéres, Switzerland, which takes its cues from the artist’s work. The skeletal motif found within, with giant vertebrae arches, makes it feel like you’re inside some monstrous creature.

HITGallery Hong Kong

The paintings of artist Giorgio de Chirico inspired this surreal black, white and blue shop interior in Hong Kong. Symmetry, a restrained color palette and the scale of the humanoid shelves that take up the center of the store make it feel like stepping into a work of art.

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Disorienting Design 14 Trippy Surreal Interior Spaces

Some spots are such beautiful potential locations for a home, yet repeated natural disasters make them inhospitable for all but the strongest and most durable of dwellings. Architect Dionisio Gonzales imagines just how creative we could get in building disaster-proof structures with ‘Architecture for Resistance,’ a series of surrealist fantasies that often take their cues from natural shapes like shells.

Individual collections envision architecture for a particular location. ‘Dauphin Island’ is a series of hurricane-resistant designs for the island of the same name, located just south of Mobile, Alabama. The island has been hit by one hurricane after another. Gonzales believes that sustainable architecture could stop nature’s cycle of destruction with a dramatic change in the way our houses look.

The Dauphin Island creations are “real futuristic forts made of iron and concrete,” with shapes that call to mind sea shells, crustaceans and other marine organisms. It’s easy to imagine these structures closing up like forts to guard against high winds and flooding.

Gonzales also designed bizarro-world versions of Brazil’s favelas and the shabby settlements in the hills of Busan, South Korea, making a commentary on the coexistence of the wealthy and the very poor. The designs bring visually disjointed, futuristic structures into neighborhoods that are already chaotic in an attempt to legitimize the architectural vernacular of each location.