Our ideas of home are usually cemented in the places where we grew up, but the world is vast and fast-evolving, and there are people everywhere living in buildings that break the mold. Check out this gallery to see the intriguing, hilarious, clever, or just downright bizarre places that people have actually called home.
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Living under a rock
The perfect excuse to not keep up with the news is by living in this sun-dried brick home that is literally under a 40 m (131 ft) of rock.
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Tiny home
This incredibly small portable home is part of the Tiny House Movement, a minimalist movement favoring simplified lives. These tiny houses can range from 1,000 sq ft (93 sq m) down to less than 100 sq ft (9.3 sq m), and they’re quite comfortable!
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Troglodytes in Tunisia
Located in southern Tunisia is a small city called Matmata, made up of buildings called “troglodyte,” or “cave-dweller” structures.
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Troglodytes in Tunisia
The buildings were created by digging a big pit and carving out artificial cave walls to make a living space.
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Between a rock and a hard place
Casa do Penedo, also known as the Stone House, is a tiny residential home, originally used as a holiday destination, built between big solid rocks in northern Portugal.
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An ancient Greek temple
Whoever lives in this house shaped after a Greek temple must feel like Zeus. It’s located in the village of Miziara, Lebanon, which prides itself on building residential homes that resemble ancient Greek temples and Egyptian ruins.
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Life in the sky, sort of
Most people probably see airplanes as a way to get from point A to B, but a select few in Miziara get to call an airplane home. Hopefully the food is better!
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A home fit for a pharaoh
This pyramid house in the quirky town of Miziara is meant to emulate the Egyptian ruins, but hopefully the people inside don’t feel like they’re living in a tomb…
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The juxtaposition
The pyramid really adds a new flavor to the neighborhood.
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House on a rock
No man is an island, but his house might be! This unique home in Serbia was reportedly built in 1968 by a group of young men who decided that the rock in the middle of the river was an ideal place for a house.
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Shipping containers
While this might look like cargo, it’s actually a two-story, three-bedroom home that was priced at around US$100,000 in 2005.
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Shipping containers
It includes two bathrooms, timber floors, air-conditioning, a kitchen, laundry, balcony, and a sewage treatment tank. It’s what’s on the inside that matters!
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One of the world’s narrowest buildings
See that little slice of building wedged in the alleyway? Someone calls that home.
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One of the world’s narrowest buildings
It’s reportedly just 92 cm (36 in) wide at its narrowest point!
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One of the world’s narrowest buildings
Israeli writer Etgar Keret created the building in Warsaw, Poland, as a home away from home, which also honors his parents’ family who died in the World War II Holocaust.
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One of the world’s narrowest buildings
It’s equipped with everything a person might need, however it should be avoided by those who experience even the slightest claustrophobia.
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The most optimal use of 32 sq m
Hong Kong architect Gary Chang, dubbed the “domestic transformer,” turns tiny, cramped urban spaces into multi-functional ones.
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The most optimal use of 32 sq m
By using track-mounted, easily movable walls that make up his kitchen, counters, and bathroom—and by having a bed that folds up into the wall—Chang crafts a unique and spacious living experience in a dense urban center.
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New-age Hobbit house
Far from New Zealand’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ set is this eco-friendly home in Scotland that brings the Hobbit home to the next level.
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Saving space
A visual representation of a compromise between an apartment and a house, this precariously balanced structure is perched on top of a factory.
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Bioclimatic solar house
This spinning top-shaped structure in eastern France is called the Heliodome, though it’s also called home by a French designer. The giant three-dimensional sundial shape is set on a fixed angle in relationship to the sun’s movements.
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Bioclimatic solar house: interior
The angle and shape of the house are set in such a way to provide shade in the summer and let in more sunlight and warmth in the cooler months.
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The belly of the beast
The late artist Moussa Kalo designed and built this crocodile-shaped house in the Ivory Coast’s largest city, Abidjan.
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Blasted from rock
At the Rockland Ranch community in Utah, USA, approximately 100 people live in homes blasted from the red rock.
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Blasted from rock
The people literally live in a hole-in-the-wall.
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Shark attack shack
It’s raining more than cats and dogs in Oxford, London, where a 25-foot (7.6-m) long fiber glass shark extends from the roof.
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A toilet-shaped house
“Haewoojae,” which means the house for satisfying one’s anxiety, is seen in Suwon, South Korea. According to Reuters, sanitation activists marked the start of a global toilet association in 2007 by lifting the lid on the world’s first lavatory-shaped home. It offers plenty of bathroom space!
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In a wine vat
During the annual six-week harvest in the vineyards of Socuéllamos, Spain, the grape-pickers create makeshift homes in overturned wine vats.
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A rotating home
An hour away from Prague sits a unique home created by 73-year-old Bohumil Lhota, who can turn the whole structure to get his preferred view and as much sunlight as he wants.
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A rotating home
The house, which also moves up and down, was built close to nature to benefit from the cooler ground temperature.
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Dome homes
After many villagers in Sumberharjo, Indonesia, had lost their houses to the 2006 earthquake, a company called Domes for Homes set up about 70 new shelters for them. It’s just an added plus that they look like something out of ‘Star Wars.’
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An illegal rooftop villa
A wealthy physician in Beijing once somehow built a villa, surrounded by imitation rocks and a garden, on the rooftop of a 26-story residential building. He really should’ve asked first, as it was deemed illegal and he was forced to tear it down.
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Turbulence-free living
This enormous home in Abuja, Nigeria, is hiding something in “plane” sight.
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“Kingdom of the Little People”
These mushroom-shaped homes are part of a community of over 100 dwarfs who work at a unique theme park in China, which provides employment opportunities, respite from discrimination, as well as accessible dormitories for anyone shorter than 51 inches (130 cm).
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House on a highway
A house stands in the middle of a newly-built road in Wenling, China. An elderly couple refused to let their house be demolished for the amount of compensation offered to them, and so their home is the only building left standing.
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