No matter how far and often you might wander around your city, there’s one way you most likely never get to experience it: from above. Approached from directly overhead, the bird’s-eye-view renders virtually any urban scene unrecognizable, reducing landscaped streets and towering skyscrapers to mere shapes within an abstract composition, as if it’s a work of art. And perhaps, for some urban planners, it is. Thanks to photographer Jeffrey Milstein, we can all appreciate New York City and Los Angeles from a new perspective.

Captured from a helicopter both at night and during daylight, Milstein’s aerial imagery of these two iconic American cities presents entire neighborhoods as tapestries of geometric shapes. New York’s Stuyvesant Town looks like a bunch of crosses embedded in greenery, and the Statue of Liberty is strikingly jewel-like on its island. 

Some of LA’s most posh neighborhoods are unsurprisingly picturesque from above, laid out in their carefully-arranged grids and often centered upon parks. In comparison, the shots of downtown look downright bleak, sort of like you’re looking at a circuit board rather than a full-scale city. The photographs are on display now at New York’s Benrubi Gallery and LA’s Kopeikin Gallery.

If looking at the pictures gives you vertigo, good, says Milstein. That’s the effect he’s going for. “That’s exactly what I want. To get a visceral reaction from it,” he told City Lab. 

Take a seat, fasten your seatbelt and allow an usher to wheel you into a giant eyeball dangling outside of a building so you can take in all of the sights without anyone else present. The exhibit, entitled EYE, asks you to look first at the city, and then at yourself. Installed in five different buildings throughout the city of Den Bosch in Holland, the project by Belgian artists Pascal Leboucq and Lucas De Man features enlarged reproductions of the real pupils of local residents.

EYE is currently installed in a theater, a modern hospital, an old factory that’s about to be redeveloped, a monument and a corporate business. Billed as “an extraordinary audio-visual theatrical experience,” each eye seats one visitor at a time. After taking a seat and entering the eye, they’re invited to relax and take a look. Then, the guide asks them, “What do you see?”

“A city with eyes is a city that looks and shows itself,” says De Man. “No closed doors or shut windows, but open. We gave the city eyes so you can hang in the air above the world and look. Just look.”

The installation will remain in place until November 1st, with tickets available online, and will tour the world in 2015.

Google’s Street View has made it easier for us to find our destinations, but has it influenced us in other ways as well? When Google sent out a fleet of automobiles armed with GPS units, laser rangefinders, and multi-eyed cameras, their goal was to make it easier to navigate places around the world. But the cameras caught much more than street signs, storefronts and city scenes. They recorded a never-before-seen side of humanity, urbanity and photography itself.

Though these images were all captured by Google’s Street View cameras, they were compiled by artist Jon Rafman. By combing through various blogs dedicated to Street View images, and by exploring the street view function on his own, Rafman was able to identify images that stood out from the rest. He collected those that interested him into an online portfolio of the amazing, the mundane, and the surprisingly intimate.

Rafman published a small book of his findings, and his essay about the project is touching. He describes how it was the unemotional, amateur aesthetic of the images that first attracted him to Street View photos. But as he dove in further, he began to see the unintentional documentary portrayed by these candid, neutral depictions of our world. The cameras make no judgments and display no prejudices. They simply capture the world, semi-autonomously, documenting a brief moment in time again and again and again.

Since May of 2007, Google’s vehicles have been roaming the streets of the world. The nine-lens cameras atop the vehicles shoot photos every ten to twenty meters. Later, the images are stitched together to create 360-degree views of everywhere the vehicles have gone. The drivers of the vehicles don’t strive to catch interesting scenes; nor do they avoid unusual sights when they come across them. The project’s goal is simply to make public information available to the public.

But inevitably, when the vehicles capture pictures of streets and neighborhoods, they see other things as well. They see the people occupying those streets. They see crimes or celebrations in progress, the aftermath of accidents, humorous situations, and couples passionately embracing. The people who are enraged at the presence of the cameras, the people who are clueless, and the people who play to the presence of their impromptu paparazzi. The presence of remarkable humans, the poignant lack of humans. These roving cameras are the voyeurs of the new millennium, yet they make no comment on any sight. The product of their worldly travels is a new class of photography: the utterly detached, emotionless, right-place-at-the-right-time scavenger hunt that is Google Street View.

Looking through pages and pages of photographs from Street View, Jon Rafman found a kind of rhythm in the images. Their slightly distorted proportions (thanks to the panoramic aspect), the faces and license plates blurred out (along with the occasional missing head or distorted body), and their ever-present navigational arrow and Google copyright all contribute to the unique style.

Rather than detracting from the experience, Rafman says that the frankness about how the images were made only enhances the experience. These images clearly are not meant to be art, yet we as humans feel the drive to assign an emotional value to them. Regardless of the method of recording, when we see another human being we have an emotional reaction to it. And that is the often-overlooked beauty of Google Street View images. They are a representation of what we have become. We live in a world that is automated and detached, we are so overloaded with information that we often overlook experiences, yet we still seek meaning in even the smallest things: a gesture, a look, a photograph of a stranger.

But this overarching meaning certainly isn’t Google’s intention. Their project consists of supplying neutral information about locations, not making any type of commentary on the human condition. However, Rafman points out that by removing these selected images from their original context and framing them in a more human-affected light, the artist returns the humanity to them. He bears witness to the frozen moments originally captured with no emotion and no affection, and he holds them out for everyone else to do the same. These tiny moments are a shared scrapbook, a global family photo album of unintentional tenderness.

San Francisco street cars in plastic? The Eiffel Tower in cheap bronze? A paperweight of the Great Pyraminds? When most people go to a landmark or tourist attraction, they take home a little kitsch to remind them of their trip. Michael Hughes prefers to re-do the attraction – inverting it in his own unique way and reversing the roll of the reminder and that which one is normally reminded of.

(image via: Daily Mail)

Born in Britain and now living in Germany, Michael Hughes is a freelance photographer who has gained international attention lately with his quirky photographs of tacky souvenirs perfectly lined up with monuments and landmarks. The attention has been so great, in fact, that the photographer was offered a book deal. He isn’t just about the souvenirs, though – visit his site to see some of his other fascinating projects and click below to learn more about this hilarious project.

Design-wise, condos and townhouses are known for being less-than-thrilling examples of architecture. They are typically boxy and boring with little variation between them. Believe it or not, there are some condos and townhouses that are truly unique and interesting. These buildings push the conventional applications of the architectural styles and prove that living in a condo or townhouse doesn’t have to mean living in a boring, cookie-cutter building. And check out our complete collection of 70 Amazing Houses from Around the World.

(images via: Paul Warchol)

The popularity of “green” architecture has most definitely been on the rise in recent years, and this townhouse in Tribeca is the perfect example of how style and Earth-friendly design can happily co-exist. The home features a unique geothermal climate system which controls the heating, cooling, and water heating. The home was completed in 2002 by architect John Petrarca who lived there with his wife, but he sadly died the year following its completion. In addition to its forward-thinking geothermal system, the house boasts over 6,000 square feet of space and five stories.

(images via: Daily Dose)

In an increasingly urban world, outdoor space is highly coveted. Apartment and condo dwellers especially are at a shortage of green and airy spaces to connect with nature in their homes. The designers of the Urban Cactus in Rotterdam want to change the experience of condo inhabitants by giving them amazing views and a personal garden space. The shape of each unit is dictated by the outdoor space it provides, with the terraces arranged in a staggered configuration so that each terrace features an open space overhead rather than the floor of the above unit.

(images via: WallyG and: New York Architecture Images)

New York City is famous for its eclectic architecture and tiny (but expensive) living spaces. These townhouses are both historic NYC abodes that also happen to be some of the most visually interesting. The house on the left was once the hideout of radical leftist Weathermen group. It was here in 1970 that part of the group’s bomb factory exploded, destroying the house in the process. It was then rebuilt in 1978 with this oddly tilted angle.

The house on the right is known as the narrowest house in the city. Featuring a maximum interior width of 8 feet, 7 inches and a minimum width of just two feet, this house requires some getting used to. It has been the home to several notable people, including the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, cartoonist William Steig, and actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant. Today it’s something of a tourist attraction for architecture and history buffs, although it’s still a private residence.

(images via: Collaborative Designworks)

The forward-thinking team at Collaborative Designworks in Texas are working to change the image of townhouses. They were tired of seeing the same boring boxes, so they set out to design townhouses that were not only more attractive to look at from the outside, but that would offer more outdoor space and fewer shared walls for occupants. The result was The 505 in Houston. The units feature abundant windows with a spectacular view of the newly rejuvenated downtown area along with roof decks on the third floor. The clever design of the building means that occupants share only one wall and can enjoy a much greater sense of privacy than most townhouse dwellers.

(image via: e-architect.co.uk)

Although it’s not yet completed, the Museum Plaza Skyscraper in Louisville, Kentucky promises to be a giant of the downtown Louisville skyline. When finished it will feature 1.5 million square feet and be filled with luxury condos, offices, a hotel, retail shops, and a huge contemporary arts center. The designers and architects involved are striving to create a city within a city to combat urban sprawl and rejuvenate the area of downtown Louisville which was previously full of derelict buildings.

(image via: Space 1999)

One of the best-known unusual condo complexes in the world is Habitat 67 in Montreal. Designed to give condo dwellers a better living experience than the plain urban skyscrapers, these condos allow inhabitants great views and a unique urban environment. The stacked-boxes appearance of the units creates interesting outdoor spaces as well as reducing the possibility that residents will glance out of their window and directly into another resident’s window.

Crazy Houses 1: Beach and Lake Houses

Crazy Houses 2: Mountain and Cliff Houses