Unique Houses From Around the World

1. Unique Houses From Around the World Some of the styles are part of distinct cultures.

2. Earth House • This unique house is located in Switzerland. It is an earth house, an architectural style characterized by the use of natural terrain to help form the walls of a house. An earth house is usually set partially into the ground and covered with thin growth, and is often intended to have a small ecological footprint.

4. Rondavel • This pretty amazing house is called a rondavel, a traditional African-style house. They are usually round in shape and traditionally made with materials that can be locally obtained in raw form. The rondavel's walls are often constructed from stones. The mortar may consist of sand, soil, or some combinations of these mixed with dung. The floor is finished with a processed dung mixture to make it smooth. The roof braces of a rondavel are made out of tree limbs, which have been harvested and cut to length. The roof itself is made out of thatch that is sewn to the wooden braces with rope made out of grass.

6. Shell House • One distinct house is the Shell house. It is the most original house in Mexico or maybe in the world. It is one of the most beautiful houses you will surely enjoy. It is located in Isla Mujeres northeast of Yucatan peninsula in the Caribbean Sea.

8. Rumah gadang • Rumahgadang which means "big house," are the traditional homes of the Minangkabau in Indonesia. The architecture, construction, internal and external decoration, and the functions of the house reflect the culture and values of the Minangkabau.  A rumahgadang serves as a residence, a hall for family meetings, and for ceremonial activities. With the Minangkabau society being matrilineal, the rumahgadang is owned by the women of the family who live there - ownership is passed from mother to daughter.

10. Toda Hut • The peculiar hut of a Toda Tribe of Nilgiris, India is noted for the decoration of the front wall, and the very small door. The Toda people are a small pastoral community who live on the isolated Nilgiri plateau of Southern India.  Prior to the late eighteenth century, the Toda coexisted locally with other communities, including the Badaga, Kota, and Kurumba, in a loose caste-like community organization in  which the Toda were the top ranking.

12. Korowai Tree House • This bizarre house is home to the bizarre tribe called the Korowai or also called the Kolufo. They are a people of southeastern Papua  (i.e., the southeastern part of the western part of New Guinea). Until the 1970s, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves and some immediately neighboring villages.  Only a few of them have become literate thus far. They are one of the few surviving peoples in the world that are thought to possibly still engage in cannibalism. Others dispute this, saying that these practices ended decades ago and that there have been no reported instances of cannibalism in over twenty years.

14. Trulli House • Trulli houses, distinguished by conical stone roofs, are traditional in the southeastern region Apulia, Italy.

16. Palloza • A palloza is a traditional thatched house as found in the in Galicia, Spain. They are circular or oval, and about ten ortwenty meters in diameter. These houses are built to withstand severe winter weather  at a typical altitude of 1,200 meters. The main structure is stone, and is divided internally into separate areas for the family and their animals, with separate entrances. The roof is conical, made from rye straw on a wooden frame. There is no chimney, the smoke from the kitchen fire seeps out through the thatch.

18. Icelandic Farmhouse • Earth sheltering is the architectural practice of using earth against building walls  for external thermal mass, to reduce heat loss, and to easily maintain a steady indoor air temperature. Earth sheltering is popular in modern times among advocates of passive solar and sustainable architecture, but has been around for nearly as long as humans have been constructing their own shelter. The picture above is Earth covered farm houses located in Keldur, Iceland.

20. Crannog • A crannog is an artificial island, usually originally built in lakes, rivers and estuarine waters, and most often used as an island settlement  or dwelling place in prehistoric or medieval times. The name itself may refer to a wooden platform erected on shallow floors, but few remains of this sort have been found

22. Mardin Stone Houses Turkey • This Arab-style architecture is located in Mardin, a city in southeastern Turkey. It is commonly recognized for its Arab-style architecture, and it also has a strategic position on a rocky mountain overlooking the plains of northern Syria.

24. Beehive Mud Houses: Harran, Turkey • These traditional mud houses are located in Harran. The interesting thing about them is that they were constructed entirely without the use of wood. The design of these mud houses is believed to have stayed the same for at least 3,000 years, until about the 1980s, when they officially stopped being used as living space.

26. Tongkonan • Toraja People House: Sulawesi, Indonesia These distinctive wooden houses have curved roofs with tall gable ends that make them look likes boats. The houses are built on stilts and are entered by curved steps and beautifully decorated doorways. They are the homes of the Toraja peoples, who live in central Sulawesi

29. House of Marsh Arabs: Iraq • The Houses of the Marsh Arabs are built from reeds. They are often constructed on floating platforms woven  from tips of reeds still growing up out of the swamp. The people travel around by canoe. The Marsh Arabs' lifestyle is threatened by drainage projects that are taking water from swamps, causing them to dry up.

31. Log Cabin House: USA • The log cabin house is among the first house designs of early America.  It is sturdy and easy to construct, and can be built by hand to provide shelter in a very short period of time.