Enjoy: Creative

The Cube 6, from Japanese designer Naho Matsuno, lets you seat a ton of people without taking up your entire dining room. The sides of the cube all pull out to become six individual stools. When assembled, the cube is only a shade under 14 square inches on each side. It’s a simple design that works way better than having six folding chairs stashed in your closet.

unusual dining room furniture disappearing table

If you’ve ever lived in a tiny apartment, you know that “dining room” really means “itty-bitty corner of the living room where you can’t fit a table and chairs.” For small rooms, a space-economizing dining set like this disappearing round dining table from NYIT student designers is a must. The tabletop itself stays stationary while the chairs and eating spaces are pulled out from the column.

unusual dining room furniture stepladder chair

WebUrbanist loves transforming furniture, and this transforming chair (which may or may not have been invented by Ben Franklin) is a fine example. You can go from a dining chair to a step-stool in one simple movement, giving you an extended reach and eliminating the need to risk your neck by standing on your tiptoes on a dining chair.

unusual dining room furniture musical table

Designer Fumiaki Goto is on a mission to make meal times more musical. This marimba-like table allows you to gorge on beautiful sounds while enjoying a meal. Each time an object touches a bar on the top of the table, a sound resonates in the pipes below.

unusual dining room furniture xpand table

When you need a lot of seating area but don’t want the table to dominate the dining room, finding just the right dining table is not easy. You could get a table with a removable center leaf, but you’ve still got to figure out what to do with the leaf when it’s not being used and deal with assembling and disassembling it every time you use it. This ingenious table solves that problem by using some very clever accordion-style pieces in the middle of the table. While the expanding middle of the table allows it to become larger according to need, it also serves as an attractive and interesting feature.

unusual dining room furniture composting digestive table

Some ideas are so simple and common-sense that you wonder why no one has done them before…and then you realize that it’s because the idea is sort of gross. The Digestive Table from Amy Youngs is just such an idea. It incorporates eating with composting, something that makes a lot of sense. When you’re done with dinner, you throw the scraps into the built-in compost heap inside the table. Then sowbugs, bacteria and worms help the material decompose and turn it into luscious natural fertilizer that feeds the plants kept at the bottom of the table. If you want to lose your appetite (and so have more food to feed the table), watch the attached LED monitor to see live decomposition action from inside the table. The Digestive Table isn’t commercially available, but the website does include a construction diagram so you can build one yourself.

unusual dining room furniture cube table

Another space-saving dining room design, Cube Style features a tiny square table with two booths. All three pieces fit together to form a box when not in use. The table top remains available for holding decorative items or acting as a desk even when the benches are in place. This dining set may save you from eating dinner with the plate balanced on your knees.

unusual dining room furniture led lighted table

If you enjoy soft lighting with your meal, this LED-lighted table is perfect. It interacts with your movement above it, creating unique light shows every time you use it. The best part of all is that Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are giving away for free the plans to build this awesome table.

Not all buildings are the same and some are pretty darn unique. Construction and architecture have risen to a new level altogether with great minds working vigorously towards building a world with breathtaking structures that were a far cry from even imagining forget seeing them for real. The following 18 images are of amazing engineering wonders found across the globe. Which one is your favorite?

18. Dubai Rotating Towers

Dubai has garnered much attention in recent years with a never-ending supply of architectural wonders being built, or proposed, at a head spinning pace. Mostly these towering structures are grand and tall, but some are also green

An ambitious project by David Fisher’s firm Dynamic Architecture looks set to be yet another new addition to Dubai’s skyline.

The building’s 59 floors will be capable of rotating about a central axis, their continuous motion allowing residents in the tower’s 200 apartments to choose a new view at the touch of a button.

The form of the building would constantly change as each floor rotates separately giving a new view of the building as it turns.

The new tower is the first building of its size to produced in a factory. Each floor, made up of 12 individual units, complete with plumbing, electric connections, air conditioning, etc., will be fabricated in a factory. These modular units will be fitted on the concrete core or spine of the building at the central tower.

The 59-floor building will be powered entirely by sun and wind energy. And, the architect claims that the building will generate 10 times more energy than required to power it, thus making it a positive energy building. Solar panels will be fitted on the roof to harness sunlight, and a total of 48 wind turbines will be sandwiched between the rotating floors, placed so that they are practically invisible.

17. Regatta Hotel Jakarta

Taking the form of ten apartment towers, a five-star hotel and an Aqua Park in a complex spawning over 11 hectares of reclaimed land, the Regatta project is certainly one of the best structures you will come across. Regatta’s development follows a nautical theme, the centrepiece of which being an aerodynamically shaped hotel bound to be one of the most striking landscape features overlooking the Java Sea. I would kill to live in some place like the Regatta, with sea as your backyard an a spellbinding view.

The Chicago spire stands tall at no.3 and literally so as it is touted as one of the most significant residential developments in the world and also the tallest. A simple inspiration and a great result that is there for everyone to see by the year 2010. It is inspired by nature and its complexities and beauty. This 609m structure will dominate the Chicago skyline and our hearts too.

15. Chicago Spire

14. Singapore Green Building

A new green complex from world renowned architecture firm Foster + Partners will be adding more than a dash of green to the Singapore skyline. As sustainability becomes an essential ingredient to development in this island nation, the UK-based firm is leaving no stone unturned to make good use of alternative energy sources in this 150,000 square meter mixed-use project. As the winning design from an international competition, Singapore’s new eco-complex from Foster + Partners is pushing the green envelope from top to bottom in this sophisticated downtown design.

The complex will fill an entire city block between Singapore’s Marina Center and the Civic District with commercial, residential, retail, hotels, and a ‘green’ link to an Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station. All facades will be fitted with solar cells and, to help control solar gain, direct sunlight will be filtered through ribbon-like canopies rising from the base of the entire complex to the exposed east and west elevations of the towers.

The canopies will form vertical louvers at the elevations and provide more renewable on-site energy with integrated thin-film solar arrays. Vertical green spaces, and extensive sky gardens are also important components of the towers, further greening the whole structure with natural vegetation and ambient temperature moderation.

The slanted facades are designed to catch the wind and direct it downwards for natural cooling of the ground floor spaces. A rainwater harvesting system, geothermal heating system, chilled beams and ceilings, and an ice storage system for cooling are further enhancements planned for the complex.

13. River Gym

The River Gym will fulfill one of the major contemporary fitness goals of “functional training”. This training protocol will exploit the inherent disequilibrium of floatation devices. Often the average urbanite exercising at the gym performs controlled repetitive single plane movements using industrial fitness equipment. All of this energy is summarily dissipated and ultimately exhausted for the sake of a single individual’s wellbeing. Other potentials exist to harness this vast human expenditure of caloric energy. Why not have the simple transfer of this workout vigor supply New York with needed supplemental transport and amenities? How can we extend and capitalize on this untapped group potential? Into what form will this new kind of gym evolve?

12. Bio Marine Inspired

Malaysia is all set to get another iconic structure that will surely become one of the landmarks of the country when it gets done. Green architecture and green building has taken a new meaning in the last couple of years with green features looking more stylish than the regular ones. This can only be good news for those who have been trying to give green architecture a mighty big push forward. Yesterday we came to know that the already green Reichstag building is set to become the greenest parliament in the world. Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur is not too far behind in the green race though.

Two of the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Twin Towers, are located in Kuala Lumpur. So it comes as no surprise to us that a stunning new residential development is planned for the Putrajaya waterfront known as Precinct 4, just 30km south of Kuala Lumpur. The design is special with green features and amazing architectural splendor inspired by marine life. It also draws from traditional Islamic designs and is arranged in a permeable, radiating block of bioclimatic architecture.

11. Moscow Crystal Island

Moscow’s rapidly growing skyline will soon feature an eye-popping new addition: Crystal Island, which will be the world’s biggest building when completed. Sir Norman Foster’s mountainous 27 million square feet spiraling “city within a building” will cost $4 billion and it is scheduled to be built within next 5 years.

The Crystal Island will be Lord Foster’s second large scale project in the Russian capital, and his third new building design that resembles a volcano (we’re talking about his two mountainous buildings in Astana, Kazakstan). Although many people are calling this design the ‘Christmas Tree’ of Moscow – we can’t help but be reminded of the utopian and also rather volcanic X-Seed 4000 design for Tokyo. Unlike that pipe-dream project, however, Foster has a track record of getting buildings built, so the likelihood is high that we will see this striking structure towering over the Kremlin within 5 years time.

10. Millennium Dome

The Millennium Dome, often referred to simply as The Dome, is the original name of a large dome-shaped building, originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. Located on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London, England, the exhibition opened to the public on 1 January 2000 and ran until 31 December 2000. The project and exhibition was the subject of considerable political controversy as it failed to attract the number of visitors anticipated, leading to recurring financial problems.

While all of the original exhibition and associated complex has since been demolished, the canopy or shell of the dome still exists, and it is now a key exterior feature of the The O2 entertainment district.

9. Crooked House

8. Book Themed Building

7 Spiky Tower

6 Grocery Basket Building

5.Honeycomb Building

4.Rabbit Building

3.Burj Al Khalifa

Burj Khalifa (Arabic: ??? ?????? “Khalifa Tower”),known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 828 m (2,717 ft).
Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009. The building officially opened on 4 January 2010. The building is part of the 2 km2 (490-acre) flagship development called Downtown Burj Khalifa at the “First Interchange” along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai’s main business district.
The tower’s architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill of Chicago. Adrian Smith, who started his own firm in 2006, was the chief architect, and Bill Baker was the chief structural engineer for the project. The primary contractor was Samsung C&T of South Korea, who also built the Taipei 101 and Petronas Twin Towers. Major subcontractors included Belgian group Besix and Arabtec from the UAE. Turner Construction Company was chosen as the construction project manager. Under UAE law, the Contractor and the Engineer of Record, Hyder Consulting, is jointly and severally liable for the performance of Burj Khalifa.
The total cost for the Burj Khalifa project was about US$1.5 billion; and for the entire new “Downtown Dubai”, US$20 billion. Mohamed Ali Alabbar, the Chairman of Emaar Properties, speaking at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat 8th World Congress, said in March 2009 that the price of office space at Burj Khalifa had reached US$4,000 per sq ft (over US$43,000 per m2) and that the Armani Residences, also in Burj Khalifa, were selling for US$3,500 per sq ft (over US$37,500 per m2).

2. Shanghai World Finance

The Shanghai World Financial Center was planned to be the tallest building in the world when it was designed in 1997. The 97 Story building would surpass the spires of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. When Construction was restarted in 2003, the 508 Meter Taipei 101 in Taiwan was already underway to becoming the World’s Tallest Building. Plans where changed but the Tower couldn’t be built any higher than its present height at 492 meters since the already done foundation was meant to support a 460 meter tall building.
The structure features 3 floors of underground parking, shops and a conference center on floors 1 through 5, offices on floors 7 through 77, a hotel located on floors 79 through 93, and finally observation and exhibition areas on floors 94 through 100.
To protect the building from fierce winds, the Shanghai World Financial Center holds two tuned mass dampers below its observation floors to reduce the building’s sway during windstorms and earthquakes.
After the events of September 11th, 2001, the building was redesigned to withstand a disaster such as a plane crash including 12 fireproof refugee areas, and two external elevators.

1.Beijing Olympic Stadium

Sports stadiums have long followed the enduring design of one of the original wonders of the world, Rome ’s Coliseum. Herzog & de Meuron’s National Stadium in Beijing is an attempt to rethink the classic sports-arena layout for more ecologically correct times.

The Swiss architects (of Tate Modern fame) wanted to provide natural ventilation for the 91,000-seat structure — perhaps the largest “eco-friendly” sports stadium designed to date. To achieve this, they set out to create a building that could function without a strictly enclosed shell, yet also provide constant shelter for the audience and athletes alike.

To solve these design problems, they looked to nature for inspiration. The stadium’s outer grid resembles a bird’s nest constructed of delicately placed branches and twigs. Each discrete space within the facility, from restrooms to restaurants, is constructed as an independent unit within the outer lattice — making it possible to encase the entire complex with an open grid that allows for natural air circulation. The architects also incorporated a layer of translucent membrane to fill any gaps in the lacy exterior.

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