Speaking of custom home design — er, like we did the other day — I have a real thing for builders and/or designers who go all out. And by “all out,” I mean they have this vision in their heads that is nothing like the usual house or apartment building, but they go right ahead and construct it anyway, oftentimes to the scorn of their nearby neighbors. Junker House, Lemgo, Germany is one such structure.

Karl Junker was as severely schizophrenic as he was talented when it came to architecture, and this fact is evident in the home that became his legacy. The world inside his head provided the blueprint for Junker House, a home like something out of a nightmare, complete with human faces that stare down from ceilings, twisting caged staircases, skeletal furniture, and “ghosts.”

Not content to build it and let the fantasy go, Junker spent his life (and a sum of money left to him by his grandfather) building onto and perfecting Junker House. He lived therein alone, though elements of the design such as a nursery and a formal salon suggests that he intended to have a family and perhaps even an active social life.

Junker did to some extent achieve the latter goal, and then only at the end of his life when strangers began to arrive daily to request tours of his life’s work. He gave these visitors what they wanted, sure that one day in the future his fascinating style of building and interior design would be appreciated by mankind. In a way, Junker is now appreciated, though only as an example of a man whose madness drove him to new heights of architectural creativity.

(Don’t forget to enter to win a FREE hand-woven jute rug!)

Obesity and this unique house designed by Jo Crepain just don’t mix. Built in and around an concrete water tower in Brasschaat, Belgium using mainly glass, steel, and striking fluorescent lighting, there is a lower level in addition to the water tank itself.

Spend a few weeks jogging up and down those stairs, and you’ll (maybe) be slim and trim in no time.

Ross Russell doesn’t throw any stones. After deciding that he’d made plenty of money, Russell built his own sliding glass house that can be customized with the press of a button.

The entire 20-ton shell –- 52ft long, 20ft wide, and 23ft high –- slides on rails, allowing Russell to control exactly how much sunshine and shade his home receives.

It was tricky to design. Obviously, nothing can stick up through the roof of the house below – so no chimneys, television aerials or even gutters. (The rain instead runs down behind the timber slats to soakaways at ground level.) To keep out the wind, the moving part hovers close to the fixed part and is sealed with red nylon brushes – rather like the draught-excluders on letter boxes.

The whole thing moves very slowly and beeps like a truck backing up to ensure that no one is squished in the mechanism. But there have been minor mishaps that taught Russell and his family to be very careful when the house’s motors are active. I, for one, have to wonder how long the mechanism will last before needing to be repaired or replaced. Normal home maintenance is troublesome enough without having a 20 ton structure on rails to contend with.

When I was a wee one, I was enthralled by a book of my grandmothers that featured beautiful color photographs of underground houses. Artfully rendered, the images perked my interest. Underground houses? Who lives in an underground house, and where does one build an underground house? I’d never seen one in person… in fact, I still haven’t, but I’ve never really lost my enthusiasm for the idea.

That’s why I’m a fan of the above book. The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book, written in 1981 by Mike Oehler and illustrated by Chris Royer, is a DIY manual for those interested in building their own underground houses on the cheap. When they say $50, they’re not kidding. In fact, one blogger described the book thusly:

The methods are so low tech, a bum could make himself a mansion. Other books get into engineering with concrete, steel, rebar, etc., which cost a fortune and don’t necessarily function any better and, in some cases, maybe not as well. With this book and the videos, which are a must if you get serious, you really can build a home for the cost of a roll of plastic and a few other items, provided you do the labor by hand and scrounge materials.

But be warned — the book’s author doesn’t give a lick about pesky things like building codes or safety regulations. Unless you’re planning on squatting in a plot of wilderness where it’s unlikely that the home inspector will ever find your subterranean property, the tips and hints offered in the book aren’t going to get you your $50 home. Still, it’s an interesting and fun read that shows you what could be if lawlessness ever becomes the norm.

Oh, the jokes that come to mind. You might, for example, say that this house is kind of a dump. Novelty toilets in houses fascinate me already, so you can just imagine how tickled I am by this novelty toilet that IS a house.

The late Sim Jae-Duck, founder of the World Toilet Association, built the sanitary structure to mark the launch of said organization. The house is named Haewoojae, which a bit of Korean meaning “a place of sanctuary where one can solve one’s worries,” which I suppose does describe the potty to some extent. Unless, of course, one doesn’t have access to modern sanitation marvels like flush toilets.

That’s the World Toilet Association’s whole shtick… it was created to promote worldwide sustainable toilet and water management and to build and improve sanitation conditions on a sustainable basis. Sure it sounds a little silly — and the toilet shaped house is definitely a lot of silly — but if you’ve ever gone camping properly, you know that flush toilets (or composting toilets) are a wonderful thing.

I was reading archived entries in Jetson Green and came across this wonderful minimalist modular home.

The Drop House won the Modular Architecture Challenge in 2005 in part due to its good looks and the fact that it’s so easy to customize. Architects Antoine Cordier, Olivier Charles and Armel Neouze created the Drop House concept to illustrate “private housing, industry and customization.” Apparently the design lends itself to passive solar heating and other green ideals we should probably all be looking for when buying real estate.

But I just think it’s really cool looking.

A few years back, a beloved friend went through a Southwestern/Spanish phase. Everything was colorful braided rugs, turquoise, and rusty ceramic tile. She was even thinking seriously about selling her house and moving to New Mexico to spend her days making art inspired by the original inhabitants of this lovely continent of ours.

While I can’t fault her for her worship of the Southwestern and Spanish aesthetics, I do believe it’s easy to go overboard. Not that there’s anything wrong with going overboard… it just isn’t me. I much prefer a stylized version of the look, as in this Santa Barbara house I found on Sunset Home.

What do I love best? While the tile rugs are a little kooky (restaurant-ish, really), the fabric canopy on the upper terrace and the lanterns on the ground floor are awesome. I’m also seriously digging the tiled fountain — yes, that is a giant pistachio.

The new year is here! And the new year makes me think of the future that will be and the future that’s here now. For your perusal on this most auspicious of days, here are four houses of the future. The house of the future has been envisioned many times in many ways, with plenty of variation. The house of the future frequently features curves, environmentally-provided heating and cooling, Coke bottles, and indoor gardens, but not always. I like these houses of the future because they’re attractive and fun, yet also eco-friendly and conscious of the surrounding landscape. Scope them out in a clockwise direction.

Designed by Luigi Colani, the first house maximizes use of land space by having one central space serve as every room through the clever use of rotation. There’s a living room area, then a rotating bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen set-up. The Zero House by architect Scott Specht, on the other hand, is listed as a house of the future for being totally off the grid and more than a little automatic. It’s pretty good looking, too, if you like the super duper modern look with angles and more angles. Looking for a home design that would bring the organic and the inorganic together, a New Mexico family commissioned Arquitectura Organica to create a house in tune with Momma Nature’s curves. The result was the Nautilus house, which is curvy inside and out and featured lots of indoor greenery. Finally, from Xenian comes the aptly named House of the Future, which pairs a warm wooden design with a rainwater harvesting system, passive ventilation, and solar cells for power.

Thinking of updating your house or perhaps moving in 2010? Best wishes on your home adventures! And have a wonder and prosperous new year!

I love niche blogs. Back when Manolo for the Home was just getting off the ground, I posted about a blog devoted entirely to faux bois and another that concerns itself with nothing but Ikea hacking. I just recently came across another such blog — this one a tribute to ugly mailboxes.

Where I live, no one keeps a roadside mailbox. All of ours are attached to houses or porches, and some people even have slots in their front doors, as I’m led to believe is quite common in England. My father, mother, and grandparents all receive their mail in regulation-height boxes located on the very edge of their properties so the mail person needn’t get out of their truck. Now and then, jerky teens with driver’s licenses whiz by with bats and knock them over. Perhaps this is simply one of the perils of suburban living?

A certain Tim Morris wrote about suburban mailboxes, and I found his description of the average specimens to be apropos.

I began to look at everyone else’s mailbox on my walks. Were they as nice as mine? Did they have the E-Z Up construction? How did the neighbors manage to attach those foot-thick oblong cedar braces with the provided “Self-Tapping Wood Screws”? I certainly hadn’t been able to do that. Mailboxes were worth another look.

There are two kinds of mailbox: the ugly, and the hideous. Ugly mailboxes consist of a rounded steel box mounted on a plain length of pipe. Hideous mailboxes try to look like they are not mailboxes. Or rather, they try to look like mailboxes that are attractively shaped unlike mailboxes. No one wants to camouflage a mailbox so well that they hide its purpose completely. In this respect, mailboxes are like lamps. You know the lamps that purport to be coffee grinders, clocks, Chevrolets, Elvises, objets d’art, cigar boxes, stumps of petrified wood . . . each one with a lightbulb coming brazenly out of the top of it. So it is with hideous mailboxes. They flaunt their obvious disguise of their own obviousness.

The mailboxes I like least are the ones embedded in the chests of half-sized concrete manatees. It’s a Florida thing, I think. What did the ugliest mailbox you’ve ever seen look like?

Ah, Antoni Plàcid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet…better known to most as Antoni Gaudí. When he received the title of architect from the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura in Barcelona after five years of study, his instructor allegedly said, “Who knows if we have given this diploma to a nut or to a genius. Time will tell.”

Indeed, time is very telling.

Have his designs maintained their otherworldliness? Do they continue to awaken awe in those who gaze upon them?

Can we, as mere spectators, appreciate what Gaudí was trying to convey? Will his hyperboloids and paraboloids stand the test of eons?

Who can say? Perhaps only time. I personally find myself entranced by the curves in his creations, but that’s just me. There are those for whom beauty can only be found in the straight line. What does it all mean? Simply that YMMV.