More than a decade ago, after his family relocated to Utah from California, Christensen experimented with sprinklers and icicles in his front yard to forge a one-of-a-kind ice cave for his children. People from all over the neighborhood soon started stopping by as word of the “castle” spread.

“I don’t know if I would call myself an artist, but I do love to create,” Christensen tells Dornob. “Ever since I was young, I’ve looked at things a little differently. There’s something about the creative process…to be able to step back and look at something, whether its paper or metal or ice…that wasn’t there before you came along. It’s very empowering and very satisfying.”

And what started as simply a winter boredom-buster for his kids has since expanded into a 400-employee, multi-site business for Christensen. Beginning with an interactive display in Midway, Utah in 2011, he and his company have put up Ice Castles all over the country to share the magic of their masterpieces.

This year’s frozen palaces – located in New Hampshire, Colorado, Utah, and Wisconsin – each required two months of construction before the season opened. Every hand built castle starts with an icicle farm: metal racks where anywhere from 5,000 to 12,000 icicles are grown daily. After being hand-harvested and placed into deliberate arrangements, these icicles get doused with water and subsequently together. This process is repeated layer by layer, aided by wind and different freezing temperatures, until the magnificent glacial cathedrals emerge.

“It is artwork, but I think the art is out of our hands. We set up the pipes, we design what we want this experience to be like, but then the real artwork is what happens at night when its freezing and water is running and it’s God taking over,” says Christensen, who adds that he’s “very careful to not take credit for what Mother Nature does – that’s something that just happens. When you spray water at 10 degrees Fahrenheit you get these crazy, amazing, beautiful formations. That’s the art in my opinion.”

Every location has its own unique architectural plan. “All designs are very different,” Christensen says. “I used to do them all myself. The designs tend to be a collaborative, cooperative effort, which always ends up better because you allow the individual site managers to get creative.”

Each frosty structure includes more than 25 million pounds of ice, taking up about an acre of space. The team takes care that the water is never wasted though.

“In almost every case it] goes right back into the water source,” Christensen explains. In Colorado, the melted ice is directed to a lake that heads downstream to become drinking water. And in Midway, the abundant geothermal resources are recycled into the water table at the end of the season. “We’re just borrowing it and freezing it and then returning it right back. It’s like water storage.”

Christensen’s frosty fortresses also incorporate music and colored LED lighting to foster added ambiance, but the entire operation uses very little electricity, making it an overall earth-friendly experience. His frozen inventions are also breathtakingly gorgeous, providing the perfect backdrop for family photos sessions, numerous wedding proposals, and even a music video.

“What I love most is bringing something novel and beautiful for people to experience,” Christensen explains. “I remember the first time I built one in my yard. A car stopped and it was an older couple. They got out and [the gentleman] said, ‘That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in 85 years.’”

“The number one thing [I enjoy] is the satisfaction, the gratitude involved in something that brings so many people joy, even if it’s just once a year.”

The Ice Castle season runs from late December through early March, depending on local weather conditions, with prices varying by location. Visitors should be aware that the attractions are operating at a reduced capacity this year due to COVID-19.

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Today, the castle also known as “La Tossa” has reclaimed its position as the “salta de la donzella,” or the “maiden’s leap,” the highest point in the vicinity. Architect Meritxell Inaraja stabilized the ruins and transformed them into a lookout providing the public with the same views once enjoyed only by royalty and nobles. Given the castle’s historic and cultural value, Inaraja took a delicate approach, preserving the experience of the original medieval architecture while also making it safe to climb.

Before starting on the renovation, Inaraja carried out a historical study that revealed the existence of a slab roof on the structure’s first floor. Based on the layout of similar buildings from the same time period, she determined that the original staircase ran along the now-collapsed western wall. The interior was divided into two floors and a basement, with the entrance on the eastern facade, which is itself about 33 feet tall (10 meters). It’s no wonder this building was used as a fortress, given that the walls are six feet thick.

“The restoration proposal is based on these historical findings and the available information about the tower’s original construction,” Inaraja says. “The project proposes reinforcement of the existing walls and the construction of specific elements referencing historical details, which will allow us to climb to the highest part of the tower, offering a view of the region and the other frontier castles.”

With its original roof missing, the upper levels are now open air, turning the ruins into a sort of pavilion. Instead of enclosing the building, Inaraja maintained this openness, inserting a new floor and a staircase with several viewing platforms that go all the way up to the highest point of the remaining walls. Visitors can gaze out the original arched windows, taking in the landscape from all sides.

Inaraja adds that “the level corresponding to the original roof is reached by the stairs that consist of the west wall and recovers the idea of a possible original staircase located within the thickness of the walls, as is typical of many towers of this time. The sloping shape of the staircase also makes it possible to respect the unfinished appearance and the memory of the ruins. The same idea of uniting function and historical explanation is used in the construction of a small section of slab corresponding to the original level of the main floor of the tower as a balcony-viewpoint from the opening of the north sector, possibly the original access to the tower from the outside.”

With smooth modern materials that match the color and texture of the original irregular stone, Inaraja’s additions complement the original structure without trying to update it or achieve a faux-historical effect that matches. The result pays respect to the Castello’s historical importance and restores it as a functional landmark, drawing tourists from all over to the area.

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The Castle Cottage — Lake George, New York

If having a whole castle to yourself (or at least, your family or pod of quarantine buddies) sounds more up your alley, The Castle Cottage is your fairytale waiting to happen. Set on a mountaintop in the Adirondacks overlooking Lake George, this gorgeous stone keep sleeps up to six people.

Alpaca Treehouse — Atlanta, Georgia

Sometimes you need a place to get away without leaving the city. In Atlanta, this treehouse set within a bamboo forest comes complete with wandering llamas. Seriously. One of the most wishlisted Airbnbs in the world (and recently featured on the Netflix reality show Love is Blind, Delta’s inflight commercials, Animal Planet’s Treehouse Masters, and VH1’s Love & Hip Hop), this space sleeps four guests. Unsurprisingly, this spot is also super in-demand for small weddings, photo shoots, and music videos.

Silo Studio Cottage — Tyringham, Massachusetts

A romantic getaway ideal for a couple, the Silo Studio Cottage is an adorable two-story round house on the Santarella Estate in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Formerly the summer studio of sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson, it features a 35-foot-high conical ceiling with a canopied bed and views of a nearby lily pond and babbling brook.

Earthship Studio — Taos, New Mexico

Staying overnight in an awesome recycled Earthship is a must-do in New Mexico. This one in Taos includes all the cool features you’d expect in an Earthship, including glass bottle walls, polished earthen floors, and a passive solar sunroom, plus modern amenities like Wi-Fi, Netflix, and a luxurious deep tub.

River House — New Orleans, Louisiana

This one bedroom, one bath guest home tucked away in the historic neighborhood of Faubourg Marigny is well away from the crowds of downtown, but it still packs in all the New Orleans charm you can handle. Located on the second floor of a mansion, it features its own private 500-square-foot balcony with original cast iron railings and city views, as well as access to a swimming pool and lush gardens.

Desert Yacht — Terlingua, Texas

Looking for a highly unique place where you can be wild and free? This Airbnb getaway is literally a yacht in the desert near Big Bend in West Texas, and officially listed as “clothing optional.” It features one bedroom, a kitchen, an upper deck for all the stargazing you can handle, and best of all, loads of privacy. The property itself is a good 20 miles outside civilization, but Wi-Fi access and an indoor shower are just a quick drive away.

Desert Sage House — Yucca Valley, California

Dreaming of a place where you can safely gather with your friends or extended family? This complex of cabins, yurts, and trailers is spread out on five acres of land in California’s Yucca Valley, and set up so you can hang out together outdoors or retreat to your own private spaces. You’ll have the whole property to yourselves (but no parties or weddings are allowed). It’s capable of hosting up to 12 guests in five bedrooms, with eight beds total.

Chelan Hobbit Haven — Orondo, Washington

A global pandemic is enough to make anyone wish they could hide away in a hobbit hole. Lucky for you, you actually can! “Underground Hygge” is an earth house nestled into the Columbia River Gorge mountainside in Orondo, Washington featuring an iconic round front door, gorgeous views of the surrounding countryside, six acres to explore, and one bedroom ideal for one or two people.

The Silos at Prairie Vale — Green Ridge, Missouri

You’ve heard of tiny houses, but what about tiny silo houses? Experience one for yourself on a family-owned farm in Green Ridge, Missouri. You’ll get a taste of farm life complete with Nigerian Dwarf goats, miniature donkeys, chickens, and other animals while staying in a silo apartment with its own full kitchen, bathroom, and loft.

The Ark Tiny House — Virgin, Utah

Location, location, location! Utah’s Zion National Park is unlike anywhere else in the United States, and The Ark is a great way to experience it. Sure, it’s a tiny house, but it’s actually capable of sleeping up to six people between its bedroom and common spaces. It also boasts a loft, bathtub, office desk, TV with Netflix, Wi-Fi, a hot tub and fire pit, and a breathtaking bay window overlooking a 75-acre property with a stream.

Find more unique places to stay near you on Airbnb’s website.

The post The 10 Most Amazing Airbnbs for Your Quarantine Vacation first appeared on Dornob.

Michaelis was initially approached by a developer to help design something to take up a challenging long and narrow site on Blythe Road in West London’s Hammersmith area. Back then, the only thing on site was a dilapidated garage the would need to be demolished. Though he had already designed his own home in Oxford Gardens, something about the plot spoke to him, leading him to eventually purchase it from the developer himself.

Because it’s so narrow, and the neighboring houses rise so high on either side, Michaelis knew that getting enough daylight and outdoor space would be challenging with a conventional layout. On top of that, the planning permissions called for a conventional infill house, but the architect saw potential for something a lot more fun. He imagined what it might look like if he played with unexpected shapes, drawing the boundaries of the house away from the neighbors slightly without compromising square footage.

The result almost looks like a modern castle on an urban scale, with turret-like rounded forms visible from the street. He chose to stick with brick to complement the architectural vernacular of the area, but in a lighter, softer tone, and mimicked the variety of window shapes seen on the houses of his neighbors. The home’s rounded walls also allow sunlight to come in from multiple angles all day long, on all four sides of the property.

Just past the wooden entrance gate, the front volume contains the home’s common areas, with sliding glass doors opening out onto the deck and swimming pool. A connecting bridge leads to the second volume containing bedrooms. Both structures have their own rooftop gardens overlooking the city.

It’s common for residents of packed urban neighborhoods to worry about what will happen if an empty or non-residential lot next door is sold. After all, you never know what’s going to go up. It could easily be a monstrosity of a bland condominium tower that suddenly crowds your own home, blocks your access to daylight, and dominates the entire block. Michaelis’ design not only satisfies his own desires, it also avoids casting shadows on those of others.

“The Round House is a new build eight-bedroom, four-bathroom residential project on the site of a former MOT [vehicle safety test] center,” explains the firm. “The house uses traditional building materials whilst showcasing modern design, demonstrating that new builds can be imaginative and family homes need not sacrifice style. Maximizing light was key to the design, so the building was pulled back from the neighboring walls to allow light to seep in to all four sides.”

“From slides and a pool to hidden areas and a fireman’s pole which mischievously connects the ground and first floor, there are plenty of playful details that elevate the project to a truly bespoke piece of residential architecture.”

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Eager buyers from places like Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia snatched up 350 of the 587 villas while they were in early stages of construction. But not only are these hundreds of identical faux chateaus packed onto a relatively compact plot of land like spiky sardines, but they’re also all sitting empty and abandoned in the midst of Turkey’s economic downturn.

The effect is almost that of a mirage, especially from a distance. A ribbon of the villas twists through the valley nearly as far as the eye can see. Set alone within a grassy yard, each individual villa might look like the mansion it is, albeit one with a Disney-like feel modeled after historic European architecture. Instead, they’re crammed so close together that some of them have views of nothing but each other. Architectural aesthetics aside, they’re already starting to feel a little bleak on their muddy building site, which itself is surrounded by debris.

The $200 million development broke ground in 2014, but in the midst of construction, Turkey’s economy contracted. The developer, Sarot Group, ran out of money to complete the project when buyers failed to follow through on their $400,000 – $500,000 purchases. Sales were canceled and investors pulled out. Sarot sought bankruptcy protection for its $27 million debt, but the court ordered the group to stop all construction immediately. Nonetheless, Sarot Group Chairman Mehmet Emin Yerdelen says just 100 of the villas need to be sold to pay off the company’s debt, remaining optimistic that the crisis could be over within five months for a full inauguration of the project by the end of 2019.

In the meantime, the stalled project remains an eerie spectacle, particularly with the roads unfinished and many of the houses missing their doors and windows. For all of their elaborate decorative flourishes, the villas lose most of their potential for an interesting final result thanks to the builder’s strange stipulation that they all remain identical — which means zero modifications are allowed to the exteriors once the owners move in.

“The fees of the parcels paid by those who do not comply with the architectural drawings and specified periods shall be refunded to them and received back by the investor firm,” notes the Burj al Babas website, though buyers putting their own creative spin on the houses seem like the least of the developers’ problems right now.

Even if the Burj al Babas development does recover by the end of the year, there’s still the question of just how much luxury can really be enjoyed when you’re right on top of your mirror-image neighbor. Do you want to feel like royalty badly enough to live in this abandoned village of shrunken Disney castles?

The post Would You Move into This Abandoned Village of Disney Castles in Turkey? first appeared on Dornob.

That’s exactly what the committee judging the Ross Pavilion International Design Contest was looking for, so it’s no wonder that this proposal from the American architecture firm wHY took home the top prize, beating out a number of strong contenders from big-name firms like the Bjarke Ingels Group. The shortlisted proposals were selected from 125 entries and can all be seen on the competition’s website.

The brief called for an original design that would enhance Edinburgh’s reputation and image “as a dynamic and creative city,” rejuvenating the existing gardens and enhancing their biodiversity. The gardens not only act as a “green lung” for the city, but they also serve as a tranquil getaway full of visual and sensory pleasures. The brief also called for entrants to incorporate sustainable values, improved physical and intellectual access, a variety of changing usages from dawn to dusk, and a modern, flexible venue space that could host a combination of small and large-scale events 365 days a year into their proposals.

The winning design from wHY features a “butterfly” pavilion and a new visitor center subtly folded into the landscape, ensuring that the castle remains the primary focal point. Drawing inspiration from the gardens’ history and geological features, wHY’s Victorian-style “pleasure garden” offers entertainment, art, and thousands of botanical delights. Plus, sliding the architectural elements beneath the gardens maintains the greatest amount of green space relative to manmade surfaces.

“This is a special opportunity for a special place, not just for Edinburgh but for the world,” says Mark Thomann, wHY’s Landscape Design Director. “The new Ross Pavilion and Gardens draw from the rich natural history, heritage, and creative spirit of Scotland, embodying a model approach for integrating public architecture and urban space in a top global city. Our team looks forward to realizing this vision with the Ross Development Trust and the people of Edinburgh.”

Paved pathways meander around the gardens to provide views from a variety of angles, making them easy to navigate for all visitors. The lines are all fluid and organic. A big part of this proposal’s appeal over those by architectural titans like BIG and Sou Fujimoto is the sense of balance it creates, keeping everything within a human scale so that no one element overwhelms the design’s overall program.

“Their proposal is a landscape scheme that is really more like an energy-field: using animation and drama as well as open vistas, they transform the Gardens and create an experience that is much freer and organic,” says competition director Malcolm Reading. “As is their style, they conscientiously sampled local opinion and have come up with a design proposal that is engaging and refreshing.”

The new West Princes Street Gardens are expected to open to the public by December 2019.

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A ruin can be a priceless piece of antiquity – or a worthless pile of rotting timber and crumbling stone when left to waste away in the elements. This may be the most daring building conversion of our times – a collection of castle-like ruins on top of a hill that has been radically remodeled into something barely recognizable as a paid retreat.

Maybe the name Million Dollar Donkey should have been a clue that this is not the kind of stay the typical tourist is expecting. A bed hangs in the hair – cantilevered out in space, suspended within a steel mesh cage – not at all an experience one expects to find on a cozy getaway in some ancient castle space. These converted ruins still resemble their pre-makeover state with some added flair and functionality.

There is something gritty and real about this offbeat hotel – clearly-new construction adds a layer to the existing architecture rather than seeking to detract from or overwhelm it. Steel girders support spartan beds and minimalist interventions make the rooms seem barely habitable, but in a strangely good way.

Avoiding conventional hotel aesthetics as well as a contemporary tendency toward cliche historicism, this medieval hotel redesign project by Feld72 is unlike anything most visitors have ever seen. The approach is a unique attempt to “focus on the relation between identity, territory and social space” – a unlikely union of modern design, postmodern art and historic preservation. The question was how to “transform lost spaces of migration” for “the future … without denying its past?”

Making for an even more authentic feel, many of the interior areas have been left unrenovated. This is more than just a hotel filled with rooms – it is a series of spaces packed with all kinds of potential. “They can be used as meeting places, bedrooms, siesta spaces and a public bathroom. Occasionally they are filled with the protagonists of a new, much more contemporary kind of migration: the nomad of nowadays, the tourist, which in some moments can transform these spaces into a non-commercial version of a Hotel. But this all depend on the public itself on their own responsibility how they use and how they share their new spaces.”

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One can almost picture tar pouring forth on would-be invaders from the symmetrical sets of holes left by rebar in the massive concrete facade. From layered fortifications to elevated walkways, solid stone-faced walls to towering wooden boxes, moat-like hallways to slot-like windows … you might say this house concept has a fair bit in common with a classic fairy-tale fortress or real-life medieval castle.

Inside and out, the most striking set of features on this fortress-like structure are the hovering wooden boxes that sit to the back of the site and rise up with views all around. Their thin windows are reminiscent of archery slots – made wide enough for arrows, not people, to pass easily through.

A series of organic, maze-like walkways connect interior and exterior spaces within the walled abode – some of them elevated like ramparts and others carved moat-like through the middle or along the edges of the property. Courtyard and garden spaces within are well-sheltered from the outside world, while a more open green roof allows residents to look out on the world below.

Once within the innermost sanctum of this huge home, everything seems solid and safe – heavy concrete walls hold along the exterior borders while floating wood boxes seem lighter but likewise more protected for being set in the middle of the space. Whether real security was the issue or the goal was simply a sense of being secluded and protected, Iroje Kimhyoman architects created the ultimate contemporary castle for modern living.

“This land, located at the edge of the city center and at the border with nature, is buried in the city and is filled with the ideal urban living environment for modern people who are in contact with nature.
Two masses with different angles of viewing the city and nature are stopped on the large plate of the second floor Nodaemadang that is spread out and spread out, and these two are the masses of the space used by the owner and the space used by the children. Divided into the mass of the city, they have a friendly conversation, standing out of the strong axis that connects the city and nature.”

“The exterior yard of this house starts from the entrance yard of the lower gate level one floor, and is connected to the staircase yards of different levels from several places, and is lifted up to the 2nd floor nodae yard, the 3rd floor rooftop yard, and successively rising. do. Through this landscape architecture spatial composition, the lands here move dynamically while creating several paths and places throughout the house. As if navigating a path to an unknown world… The owner of this house is a lawyer. I hope that it will be a home with a way to reach the world of achievement, such as achievement as a judge and a successful future for children…”

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