If you doubt people would put a ton of energy into doing weird stuff, you've clearly never
met another person.
When there's something we can make unnecessarily complicated, we do it.
And when it comes to where we live, we can get a bit crazy.
As a result, there are a bunch of fascinating houses out there that are bizarre, beautiful,
and sometimes kind of genius.
Heliodome
Shaped like a diamond the size of a UFO, the Heliodome in Strasbourg, France may look strange,
but it has a pretty cool purpose: it's designed to get maximum power from the Sun.
The angle of the house is placed specifically to keep it cool in the summer and warm in
the winter.
Sure, it might seem like you're living in Leonardo DiCaprio's totem from Inception,
but your electric bills will be a dream.
Coral Castle
Florida's Coral Castle is something of an ongoing mystery.
Ed Leedskalnin began building the castle from slabs of rock in the '40s and kept at it for
28 years.
By the end, he'd fashioned a straight-up castle with a 40-foot obelisk, a sculpture garden,
and a 9-ton gate that could be swung open like a regular door.
How Leedskalnin managed to do this all himself with no modern construction equipment has
piqued visitors' interest for years.
According to the stories, Leedskalnin worked alone and only at night.
No one ever saw how he built any of it.
When asked, he said he was using the technique Egyptians used to build the pyramids.
Crazy or not, the guy built one heck of a house.
World's largest treehouse
When you hear "World's largest treehouse", it sounds like faint praise.
But this isn't some kids' hideaway in the backyard.
This house is amazing.
It's supported by six trees and has 80 rooms, a church, and a basketball hoop.
Horace Burgess, a minister, built the house himself over the course of 14 years for only
$12,000.
Why bother building such a huge tree home?
Well, God told him to.
That's a pretty hard guy to say no to.
The house attracted visitors for years, but the fun ended in 2012, when the house was
closed off due to fire code violations.
Guess the Tennessee Building and Safety department didn't get God's memo.
Nautica House
If you've always wanted to start a new life under the sea, but have pesky, human, non–water-breathing
lungs, you may finally have an option.
Javier Senosiain built a giant seashell house in Mexico City in 2006.
The house is all spirals and smooth surfaces, so you really get that authentic seashell
feel inside and out.
Also, the windows are made of colorful mosaics of glass.
That really has nothing to do with shells, but it does look pretty cool.
Quetzalcoatl's Nest
Javier Senosiain, the architect behind the seashell house, also created Quetzalcoatl's
Nest, an apartment complex that looks like a giant snake.
Up among the hills and caves of Naucalpan, Mexico, the snake twists its way through the
land to give people a one of a kind living experience.
One of the apartments is also on AirBnB, so you could live right in the snake's belly
and live to tell the tale.
Plastic bottle house
Ever wanted to see what a sofa made out of Coke cans and old CD cases feels like?
Head down to Argentina, because everything in this home is 100-percent re-used garbage.
Alfredo Santa Cruz built his home out of discarded plastic bottles and other trash, with the
products ingeniously arranged in a way to be both practical and pretty.
Tours are allowed in the bottle house, so you can see firsthand the limitless potential
of trash.
Smith Mansion
In the middle of isolated Wapiti Valley, Wyoming, sits Smith Mansion.
Lee Smith started building this intricate wooden home for his wife and kids...and he
never quite finished.
He kept going, adding floors and balconies with logs he collected in the valley, until
he fell to his death while working on the roof alone.
Since then, the mansion has stayed empty, an abandoned monument to one man's frenzied
obsession.
Mushroom House
At the end of the block on a very average street in Cincinnati stands...this house.
Terry Brown started building it in 1992 by adding onto his one-bedroom home.
Brown worked for 14 years to create his twisted fairy tale vision, but unfortunately only
got a chance to enjoy his work for two years before he died in 2008.
The house was put up for sale in 2012, but the listing was removed the same year, so
who knows — someone may be living in the mushroom today.
Just don't tell Gargamel.
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