7 Mind Boggling Buildings

Structures that fascinate the human eye

7. The Dancing House, Prague

The inspiration behind this house came from the dance skills of a famous film couple: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. For the architects at least, Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry, the stone tower symbolizes Astaire while the glass tower just "is" Ginger Rogers. The Dancing House was controversial at first, with critics complaining that it didn't fit its historical surroundings. But such views gradually disappeared and the building became increasingly a must-see site for tourists alongside the city's other landmarks, the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle.

6. Spitbank Fort, Portsmouth

As you arrive via helicopter, Spitbank Fort looks like a military outpost from a computer wargame like Red Alert or Total Annihilation. And, indeed, when it was built in the1860s its purpose was military: to defend Britain's Portsmouth Harbor from the French. Today, the French are more likely to stay there, as it has been revamped as a luxury hotel with nine suites, three bars, three restaurants, a swimming pool and spa. All around, according to the publicity at least, "the waters are brimming with crustaceans, flopping fishes, and crabs" and while (being the English Channel) it is a tad cold for swimming, a peaceful sea kayak ride around the fort is offered.

5. La Grande Motte, Occitanie

Apparently the buildings - of which there are no less than twenty seven – were inspired by the Teotihuacan pyramids in Mexico. The architect, Jean Balladur later explained the design by explaining that since concrete was "a flowing product", he absolutely wanted the buildings to take on "a somewhat liquid form".

4. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

In the 1970s, Bilbao was one of the most polluted cities in the world, as smog from its mines and furnaces mingled with the humid Basque air. But twenty years later, when the Guggenheim was built on a former wharf on a curve of the river Nervión, it represented recovery of the riverside zone and the arrival of a new city of culture and leisure.

Frank Gehry's design is a triumph of mathematical complexity worthy of the aerospace industry, which provided the software to design the structure. And like a modern plane, the outer skin of the building, is titanium, 33,000 extremely thin sheets of it that provide a rough and organic effect, with the color changing depending on the weather and light. The other two materials used in the building, limestone and glass, harmonize to create what the commentators Guy Hedgecoe and Helen Whittle have called "a huge titanium-plated fantasy ship moored on the edge of the Nervión River."

3. Volklingen Ironworks, Saarland

Since opening to the public in 2000, the 600,000 square-meter site has become a UNESCO-World Heritage site and the most popular cultural attraction in the Saar-Lor-Lux region, bringing well over a million visitors.

The thirty meter tall charging platform, where the coke and the ore were poured into the blast furnaces, is now a gigantic viewing platform, surpassed in height only by the hot-blast stoves that reach up forty five meters. One writer, David Angel, summed it up as "A vast cathedral of rust, with brick chimneys for spires and blast furnaces for flying buttresses".

2. Allianz Arena, Munich

The structural frame of the bowl of the stadium consists of reinforced concrete while the roof consists of steel latticework. The whole building is wrapped in illuminated air cushions that give it the appearance of a huge mattress. Surely the building's most striking feature is the changing colors of this facade which glows for about three hours after sunset each night – red and white on non-match days, solid red on match days.

1. Bubble Palace, Cannes

Palais Bulles (Bubble Palace) is a large house in Théoule-sur-Mer, near Cannes, France that is believed to be one of, if not the most, valuable property in Europe! It was originally built for the French industrialist, Pierre Bernard, and designed by the Hungarian architect Antti Lovag. Later on it was bought by the fashion designer Pierre Cardin as a holiday home.

Lovag has explained his interest in spherical architecture by saying that straight lines are an "aggression against nature" and that curves are better suited to the mobility of man. The cave-like domes were built from reinforced wire mesh spray-coated with a concrete mix. The fashion designer, Pierre Cardin has said of the house "Its curves and its softness" made him see the shapes of a woman, of a mother.