Amazing Architecture: Chicago Spire

The Chicago Spire, another Calatrava-designed structure, is under construction in the Windy City but has not yet been completed. The rendering above shows what it will look like if the remaining financing can be secured. The Spire would be located near the shores of Lake Michigan near Navy Pier and if completed, would be one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world at 2,000 feet and 150 stories. About 350 of the residential units have been pre-sold, including the penthouse to Ty Warner, CEO of Ty, Inc., manufacturer of Beanie Babies.

Amazing Architecture: New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York

New York City’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, opened in 2007 and named one of the seven architectural wonders by Conde Nast Traveler the following year, rises out of the gritty Bowery neighborhood in lower Manhattan like a layered wedding cake. It’s an appropriate venue for the contemporary works exhibited inside its walls.

Amazing Architecture: City of the Arts and the Sciences, Valencia, Spain

The City of the Arts and the Sciences complex in Valencia, Spain, houses a science museum, theaters, performance halls, an aquarium and more. Built in a dried-out riverbed, its space-age educational and recreational structures were designed and developed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava as a present to his home city. Shown above is “L'Hemisfèric,” a dome opened in 1998 that includes, among other features, an Imax cinema.

Amazing Architecture: Hearst Tower

The Hearst Tower in New York City, designed by British architect Norman Foster and opened in 2006, is the headquarters of the Hearst Publishing Company. The 46-story structure extends above the six-story building that housed the original Hearst headquarters that was completed in 1928. The triangular pattern of the tower’s exterior provides a sharp contrast to the stone façade of the original building at its base. It was the first skyscraper to break ground in New York City after September 11, 2001, and was the first “green” high-rise office building completed in the city.

Amazing Architecture: Seattle Central Library

The Seattle Central Library, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and opened in 2004, is a beacon for bookworms in a city said to be one of the most literate in the U.S. Its steel-and-glass exterior is modern and futuristic, yet the interior includes some intimate reading spaces. Visitors can also catch a glimpse of Puget Sound from inside the 11-story downtown building.

Amazing Architecture: Ray & Maria Stata Center

Another Gehry design is the Ray & Maria Stata Center, opened in 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Although the building’s aesthetics have been hotly debated, its teetering walls and swooping curves certainly leave an impression on visitors. One reviewer suggested that the structure is “a metaphor for the freedom, daring, and creativity of the research that's supposed to occur inside it.” 

Amazing Architecture: Oslo Opera House

The Oslo Opera House in Norway, opened in 2008, appears to emerge out of the neighboring Oslofjord like an iceberg. The sloping marble roof is an open plaza for the public to enjoy and covers the 1,350-seat auditorium below. In 2009, the Opera House received the Mies van der Rohe award for contemporary architecture.           

Amazing Architecture: Theatres on the Bay, Singapore

Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay in Singapore, opened in 2002, houses a concert hall and a theater beneath its distinctive spiked shells. Some have likened its spiky glass domes to the durian fruit or the eyes of a fly

Amazing Architecture: Dancing House, Prague

Known for designing grand venues from Spain to California, renowned Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry transformed a neo-Renaissance house in Prague to a structure known as the "Dancing House" upon its completion in 1996. It was initially named the Astaire & Rogers Building since it resembles a dancing couple. Even though some initially referred to it derisively as the Drunk House, this tipsy, tilting modern edifice is now considered a highlight of Prague’s modern architecture.

Amazing Architecture: The Gherkin, London

Nicknamed the Gherkin for its unique round, tapered shape, the office tower at 30 St Mary Axe in London’s financial district opened in 2004. Despite its appearance, there is only one piece of curved glass on the entire building, a lens-shaped piece that caps the very top. The tower reaches nearly 600 feet high, and its 40 stories house insurance companies and other financial businesses.

Amazing Architecture: Melbourne Recital Center and Theater Company

These modern structures being designed and built in cities around the world may be some of the most spectacular architecture you’ll ever see.

The Melbourne Recital Center and Theater Company complex opened earlier this year and is helping to revitalize Melbourne’s gritty Southbank neighborhood. The exterior features a combination of angles, two-dimensional textures and glowing tubes. The walls inside the main performance space are covered with famous theater quotes that are illuminated when the stage is dark. The complex won the 2009 Victorian Architecture medal for best new building in Australia.

Unusual Monuments: Russia

Unusual Monuments: Russia

The Mashuk-Akva Term  spa in the city of Zheleznovodsk southern Russia recently unveiled a particularly unusual monument. The Enema Monument is a nearly 800 pound bronze statue of a syringe held by three children. This area of the country, near the Caucasus Mountains, is known for its mineral springs, the water of which is used in enemas to treat digestive disorders as well as other ailments.

Unusual Monuments: Prague

Unusual Monuments: Prague

St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech Republic, is honored with many statues around the country. But the sculpture of St. Wenceslas Riding a Dead Horse in Prague turns those monuments — literally — upside down. Hanging in the gallery of a shopping and entertainment complex, it was created in 1999 as a parody of a right-side-up statue in a nearby public square

Unusual Monuments: Cadillac Ranch, Texas

Unusual Monuments: Cadillac Ranch, Texas

Located in a cow pasture off Interstate 40 in Amarillo, Texas, the Cadillac Ranch is a bizarre roadside attraction. Created in 1974, it consists of a row of half-buried Cadillac cars. Spray-painting graffiti or other messages on the cars is encouraged by the Ant Farm art group, which created the monument, so is has a colorful and ever-changing look

Unusual Monuments: Concrete Park, Wisconsin

Unusual Monuments: Concrete Park, Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips is an outdoor museum displaying 237 sculptures built by a retired lumberjack, Fred Smith. The figures are constructed of concrete and have been embellished with broken glass, ceramic and other reclaimed materials. The display depicts the history of the region and the nation between the late 1800s and early 1900s, including subjects such as American folklore and Native American history. Smith says he built the park "for all the American people everywhere. They need something like this."

Unusual Monuments: Memento Park, Budapest

Unusual Monuments: Memento Park, Budapest

The open-air museum called Memento Park, in Budapest, is a peculiar collection of statues and monuments. After communism ended in Hungary in 1989, the country removed statues of Communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx that had been placed around the country. Four years later, in 1993, this park opened to the public to display the symbols of a once-celebrated era.

Unusual Monuments: Manneken Pis, Brussels

Unusual Monuments: Manneken Pis, Brussels

The statue of a little boy urinating into a fountain, the Manneken Pis, is arguably the most well-known landmark in Brussels. The statue, built in the early 1600s, is thought by some to honor a young ruler who was known for urinating on troops. Others believe it commemorates a missing young boy who was found while peeing in the street, while a third legend refers to a small boy who saved the city from peril by putting out a fire with his good aim.

Unusual Monuments: Stone Mountain, Georgia

Unusual Monuments: Stone Mountain, Georgia

Stone Mountain is a large granite dome that reaches nearly 1,700 feet high with a circumference of approximately 5 miles. Located in Georgia, in a town sharing the same name, the side of the mountain displays a bas relief that depicts three key figures of the Confederate States of America: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

Unusual Monuments: Fremont Troll, Seattle

Unusual Monuments: Fremont Troll, Seattle

Lurking under a bridge in a quirky neighborhood of Seattle, the Fremont Trollstares down visitors with its one hubcap eye. The 18-foot-high troll, sculpted by artists in 1990 who received the commission after winning a national competition, clutches a Volkswagen Beetle in one hand.

Switzerland

Unusual Monuments: Switzerland

In the Swiss city of Bern, a disturbing fountain depicts an ogre devouring a naked child, while holding an armful of other terrified-looking children. Built in 1546, the Kindlifresserbrunnen, or child-eater statue, is said to depict the story of Kronos from Greek mythology, who eats his children to keep them from taking his throne. There are other legends about the statue’s origins, but regardless of its meaning it remains successful at reminding local children to behave.

Switzerland Unusual Monuments

>Unusual Monuments: Switzerland

Unusual Monuments: Crazy Horse Memorial

Begun in 1948, the still unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota will someday be the world’s largest sculpture, at a planned 563 feet high and 641 feet wide. The model pictured above, with the actual carving in the background, will immortalize the Oglala Lakota warrior, bare-chested and on horseback.

Unusual Monuments: Crazy Horse Memorial

Unusual Monuments: Crazy Horse Memorial

Unusual Monuments: Le Palais Ideal, France

Ferdinand Cheval was a French postman in the village of Hauterives in south-east France, who gathered stones on his mail route each day to build Le Palais Ideal, “The Ideal Palace.” The work took 33 years, from the late 1800s until the 1920s, mixes a variety of architectural styles, and drew inspiration from the Bible as well as other religious sources. Cheval is buried in a cemetery nearby, in a mausoleum he also constructed from stone.

Unusual Monuments

Unusual Monuments: Le Palais Ideal, France

Unusual Monuments: Carhenge

Monuments around the world honor important individuals or movements in politics, religion and history. The message and intent of most of these tributes is clear, but some are more obscure than others. Here are a dozen of the most unusual monuments around the world.

In the northwest corner of Nebraska, a unique replica of England’s Stonehenge rises out of the high plains. Carhenge was constructed in 1987 with vintage automobiles painted gray to replicate stone. The site was built by Jim Reinders as a memorial to his father, who once lived on a farm located where Carhenge stands today.