The world’s first 360-degree rooftop infinity pool is set to shimmer atop a 55-story skyscraper in London, featuring transparent acrylic walls on all sides. Since acrylic transmits light at a similar wavelength as water, it will make the water appear crystal clear, so swimmers feel like they’re merging with the sky, high above the city streets. The pool itself is pretty awesome, but its most interesting feature is its unusual means of entering and exiting.

UK-based manufacturer Compass Pools want the pool to appear seamless from every direction, which means the perimeter can’t be interrupted by a staircase. The floor of the pool is also transparent so visitors to the five-star hotel directly below can gaze up at the sky through the water. Their solution? A rotating spiral staircase that comes up through the floor on demand.

“We faced some quite major technical challenges to this building, the biggest one being how to actually get into the pool,” says designer and technical director Alex Kemsley. “Normally a simple ladder would suffice, but we didn’t want stairs on the outside of the building or in the pool as it would spoil the view – and obviously you don’t want 600,000 liters of water draining through the building either. The solution is based on the door of a submarine, coupled with a rotating spiral staircase which rises from the pool floor when someone wants to get in or out – the absolute cutting edge of swimming pool and building design and a little bit James Bond to boot!”

“Architects often come to us to design roof top infinity pools, but rarely do we get a say in the building design because the pool is usually an afterthought. But on this project, we actually started with the pool design and essentially said, ‘how do we put a building underneath this?’ When we designed the pool, we wanted an uninterrupted view, both above and below the water.”

“Swimming in the SkyPool at the Shard, it’s quite a weird feeling to have helicopters flying past at your level, but this pool takes it a step further. Pop your goggles on and with a 360-degree view of London from 220m up, it really will be something else – but it’s definitely not one for the acrophobic!”

The pool will be heated using waste energy from the building’s air conditioning system, and will also feature a computer-controlled building management system to keep track of water levels and temperatures, while a built-in anemometer monitors wind speeds.

The building is called “Infinity London,” and once partners and contractors are confirmed, it’s set to begin construction in 2020.

A skyscraper filled with corpses may sound morbid, but soon, such things may become a necessity. The earth is already packed with dead housed in oversized caskets that have been designed to outlive us all – so what are we going to do with the never-ending stream of human bodies as we face life’s greatest inevitability?

Skyscraper Cemetery for Norway

A metal exoskeleton around a central core serves as the framework for a multi-story graveyard that looks, on each individual floor, the way any ordinary graveyard would. It’s got trees, benches and memorials. The only difference is, it’s high above ground level, and roofed by the next level of graves. Norweigian designer Martin McSherry envisions the Skyscraper Cemetery that can help solve the problem of lack of burial space in the country, with a crane permanently situated beside the structure to constantly add new floors as needed.

Memorial Necropole Ecumenica, Brazil

The world’s tallest existing cemetery is Brazil’s Memorial Necropole Ecumenica, a 32-story high rise where tombs are rented by the year and private memorial rooms go for about $105,000. Because of the hot Brazilian climate, bodies must be interred within 24 hours, so the MCE, as it’s known, is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The building also contains a chapel, lagoon, peacock garden, waterfalls, an aviary full of parrots and toucans and even a small restaurant.

Tower for the Dead, Mexico City

The population of residents aged 65 and older is expected to triple in developing countries over the next four decades. That’s a big problem when it comes to burying the dead, especially in places like Mexico City where buildable area is very scarce. Creating more conventional cemeteries would mean losing valuable agricultural land and what few unspoiled green spaces are left. This proposal, Tower for the Dead, actually combines vertical necropoles with inverted skyscrapers for an 820-foot-deep subterranean complex conceived as a massive screw driving into the earth. The experience might be a little intense, as each floor has a theme based on a stage of grief.

“This project proposes an underground vertical cemetery for Mexico City – a vision that takes into consideration the overpopulation, the scarcity of land, and the psychological and sensory experience of grieving. The ‘Tower of the Dead’ allows the family members of the deceased to be reborn, after a trip to the underworld, where they just buried their loved one.”

Vertical Cemetery for Paris

This vertical cemetery concept for land-challenged Paris would create “a symbolic tower with a rightful place within the city that the deceased so much loved,” a city that currently has so little space for graves that many remains have still not been properly buried. A skylight pours natural light into the center of the tower, down into a water pond at the base, with a spiral ramp offering a walkway to the top floor. Flexible filaments on the outside of the tower each stand for a deceased person, aiming to embody their essence as they move in the wind.

Stacked Cemeteries of New Orleans

New Orleans is one city that already stacks its dead vertically, up to four tombs high. The reason for this is simple: the city is set well below sea level, so the water table is far too high for underground burial. Dig just a few feet down, and you’ll hit soggy sand. For a while, residents attempted it anyway, stacking heavy stones on top of the caskets to hold them down, but storms would bring them floating up to the surface. Families are typically stacked together within individual vaults. At the city’s infamous Lafayette Cemetery, human remains are even interred right in the walls that surround it.

Moshka Tower Cemetery, Mumbai

The Moshka Tower was designed for Mumbai to free up a significant amount of ground space for the living, accommodating all four of the major cultures and religions found within the city (Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Parsi.) Facilities are available for both garden burial and cremation. A tower of silence is located on the roof for Parsis, and additional space is available for worship, prayer and meditation. The multi-layered facade is filled with vegetation to absorb heat and CO2, and new technology enables more sustainable cremation that doesn’t fill the air with pollution.

Mountain of the Dead, Egypt

Egypt’s Mountain of the Dead, also known as Gebel al Mawta, is a Roman-era burial site that towers above the landscape of the Siwa Oasis, looking a bit like an ant hill. Made of limestone, it was developed during the 26th Dynasty of Egypt, and served as a hiding place for soldiers during World War II. Tombs cover virtually every square inch of its base as well as its terraces and all sides of the conical portion. Many of the tombs have been raided over the centuries, and robbery continues to be a problem.

Amphitheater for the Dead: Hong Kong Hillside Cemeteries

Look out onto the hillsides from a high-rise in Hong Kong and you’ll see something that’s highly uncommon in the west: tier after tier of graves built onto hillsides resembling ancient amphitheaters. Each grave within these cemeteries is shoehorned beside the other. It didn’t take long for this trend to die down in the city – the practice began in the ’60s, and by the ’80s, space ran out, so officials had resorted to interring bodies in nearby high-rise buildings. Hong Kong is twice as dense as New YOrk and four times as crowded as London, so it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with next.

There’s the inside-out skyscraper, the horizontal skyscraper and the wooden skyscraper. There’s a bizarre three-towered structure made to vaguely resemble an elephant, tusks and all. And then there’s the giant pickle. These 14 buildings are among the most bizarre in the world, and they stand out all the more for their sheer height.

Genex Tower, Belgrade, Serbia

(image via: wikipedia)

It’s the third-largest building in Europe, designed to look like a huge gate greeting visitors as they arrive in Belgrade from the west. But Genex Tower is hardly a welcoming sight to many, called “phenomenally ugly” in more than one place on the internet and dismissed as one of the worst examples of Brutalist Architecture. The twin concrete towers, joined together by a revolving restaurant, are certainly among the stranger skyscrapers in the world.

Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang, North Korea

(image via: wikipedia)

Is this the world’s ugliest skyscraper? Veiled in secrecy in North Korea, the Ryugyong Hotel sat in construction limbo for so long that people thought it had been abandoned. Its unusual triangular shape paired with a raw concrete finish made it a bit of a laughingstock among architecture enthusiasts, though recent changes since construction resumed have made it look a bit less severe.

Elephant Building, Bangkok, Thailand

(image via: thomas riddle)

Perhaps the architects who designed this bizarre building in Bangkok stepped back from their plans and thought, hmmm, this set of three concrete blocks needs something. We know – round windows for eyes and shapes that vaguely suggest ears and tusks! Or something.

Robot Building, Bangkok, Thailand

(image via: wikipedia)

When you spot this skyscraper in the Bangkok cityscape, there’s no question of what it’s supposed to be. The Robot Building was designed for the Bank of Asia to reflect the computerization of banking and is one of the last examples of modern architecture in the city. Architect Sumet Jumsai, who reportedly found inspiration in his son’s robot toy, made the building so blocky as a protest against the neoclassical and high-tech postmodern architecture that was sweeping the world in the early to mid 1980s.

CCTV Headquarters, Beijing, China

(image via: buyalex)

This 44-story skyscraper, which serves as the headquarters for China Central Television in Beijing, earned the nickname “big boxer shorts” soon after completion in 2009 for its rather unusual shape. It’s described as a loop of six horizontal and vertical sections and figuring out how to translate the design into a structural reality was no easy task, especially in a seismic zone.

Torre Velasca, Milan, Italy

(image via: david.orban)

Why is that tower shaped like a mushroom? Standing tall in the city center of Milan, the Torre Velasca definitely contrasts with surrounding architecture, though it was designed to be a modern interpretation of typical Italian medieval castles when it was created in 1954. It’s a divisive presence in the city, with some residents regarding it with affection and others bemoaning its dominance of the skyline.

Kingdom Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

(image via: the full wiki)

With its unusual keyhole design, the Kingdom Centre in Riyadh would be a standout even if it weren’t Saudi Arabia’s tallest skyscraper and the world’s second tallest mosque. Also known as Burj Al-Mamlaka, the Kingdom Centre was selected as the world’s most well-designed skyscraper in the 2002 Emporis Skyscraper Awards. The architects created the keyhole in the top in order to conform to city laws that don’t allow occupied floors above a certain height.

Lloyds Building, London, England

(image via: towrs)

The Lloyds of London building is undeniably weird between its mish-mash of architectural styles and the bizarre jumble of structures clinging to its exterior. The building, which has all of its ‘guts’ including water pipes and elevators on the outside, was ostensibly designed this way so that the interior would remain uncluttered. Whether or not this approach worked (bottom two photos) is perhaps a matter of personal opinion.

Lippo Centre, Hong Kong

(image via: wikipedia)

Distinctive? Definitely. Dubbed the ‘koala tree’ for its resemblance to koalas clinging to a trunk, the Lippo Centre in Hong Kong is unlike any other office building in the world. American architect Paul Rudolph hoped to make these towers less severe with C-shaped clusters of windows that stand out in relief against the exterior.

Wooden Skyscraper, Archangelsk, Russia

(images via: the telegraph, english russia)

Built by a single man out of an improbable material, Russia’s wooden skyscraper became the tallest wooden house in the world at 144 feet and 13 stories. Nikolai Sutyagin, a former gangster, spent 15 years continuously adding additional floors to his home because he was never satisfied with the way it looked. With its creator imprisoned, the structure (never fully permitted in the first place) was crumbling and neighbors were worried about fire, leading to the building being mostly demolished in 2009 (update: the rest burned down in 2012).

Simon Rodia Towers, Los Angeles, California

(images via: wikipedia)

Reaching over 99 feet into the air, the Watts Towers – also known as the Simon Rodia Towers for the Italian immigrant who spent decades building them – aren’t exactly skyscrapers. They’re more like towering sculptures. But the steel pipe, rod and wire structures are undoubtedly landmarks in the Watts district of Los Angeles and are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Umeda Sky Building, Osaka, Japan

(images via: aleksander dragnes, rmonty119)

Strange and futuristic, the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka features bridges and a glass-enclosed elevator that criss-cross the empty space between two towers, which are connected at the top by a rooftop observatory. The building is so tall, it provides a 360-degree view of the city.

Norman Foster Gherkin, London, England

(image via: marc wathieu)

It’s been called Gherkin, Towering Innuendo and Crystal Phallus, but the unorthodox building that stands out like a sore thumb in London is officially known as 30 St Mary Axe. Designed by Norman Foster, the skyscraper was purchased for over a billion U.S. dollars, making it Britain’s most expensive office building.

Vanke Center, Shenzen, China

(image via: steven holl)

Who ever heard of a horizontal skyscraper? It may sound strange, but it actually exists, and it’s one of the most iconic designs in famed architect Steven Holl’s repertoire. Also known as the Vanke Center, the horizontal skyscraper looks like a series of towers turned on their sides and suspended above a tropical landscape in Shenzen, China.