1. The Heliodome, a bioclimatic solar house is seen in Cosswiller in the Alsacian countryside near Strasbourg, Eastern France, August 4, 2011. The house is designed as a giant three-dimensional sundial, set on a fixed angle in relationship to the sun's movements to provide shade during the summer months, keeping the inside temperature cool, and during Fall, Winter and Spring sunlight enters the large windows as the sun's position is lower in the large windows as the sun's position is lower in the sky, thus warming the living space
2. A Bulgarian woman looks inside her wine vat home in Socuellamos, central Spain, October 2, 2007. About 40 people living in this makeshift camp. At night they sleep in 20 or so overturned wine vats -- car-sized concrete barrels dumped on the outskirts of Socuellamos, a farming community in the hot and dusty region of Castilla-La Mancha.
3. A house partially built in the shape of an airplane in Abuja, Nigeria.
4. A man walks past Huaiyuan Lou, one of the best protected Fujian Tulou built in the year 1909, in Nanjing county, Fujian province, November 19, 2012. The earthen Tulou buildings, which set up enclosed walls to defend against outside dangers, have served the Hakka people since 11th century, when their ancestors settled down at the south west of Fujian province to escape from rule of Jin ethnic. In 2008, 46 Fujian Tulou were written into the list of World Heritage by United Nations educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for not only its outstanding historical and cultural value but also its excellence in size and building techniques.
5. Girls play on a trampoline near a home blasted from a rock wall at the Rockland Ranch community outside Moab, Utah, November 2, 2012. The "Rock" as it is referred to by the approximately 100 people living there in about 15 families, was founded about 35 years ago on a sandstone formation near Canyonlands National Park. Polygamy was a part of the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was brought to Utah by faithful Mormons in the late 1840s. The mainstream Mormon church abandoned the practice in 1890, but an estimated 37,000 Mormon fundamentalists continue the practice today and believe plural marriage brings exaltation in heaven
6. People wait in line to visit an upside-down house built at the Centre of Education and Promotion of the Region in the village of Szymbark, northern Poland July 31, 2007. The upside-down house created by Daniel Czapiewski is supposed to describe the times of the former communist era and the present times in which we live.
7. Benito Hernandez stands outside his home near San Jose de Las Piedras in Mexico's northern state of Coahuila January 16, 2013. For over 30 years, Hernandez, his wife Santa Martha de la Cruz Villarreal and their family have lived in an odd sun-dried brick home with a huge 40 metre (131 feet) diameter rock used as a roof. The dwelling is found close to the town of San Jose de Piedras, a remote community located in the arid desert of Coahuila, some 80 km (49 miles) from the border with Texas.
8. Brazilian artists Tiago Primo (top) and his brother Gabriel hang out at a wall in Rio de Janeiro July 8, 2009. The bizarre vertical "house" built on a climbing wall by Brazilian artists has been drawing the attention of thousands who walk by the installation in Rio de Janeiro's downtown neighbourhood.
9. A woman stands inside the bathroom of a house, which was built upside down by Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozhanski, in the western Austrian village of Terfens May 5, 2012. The project is meant to serve as a new tourist attraction in the area, and is now open for public viewing.
10. Hong Kong architect Gary Chang rests in a hammock inside his 32-square-metre apartment in Hong Kong January 28, 2010. After three decades in the same boxy dwelling Chang grew up in, he has come up with an innovative answer to the increasingly cramped lives of many urban dwellers -- the science fiction-like "domestic transformer".
11. Bohumil Lhota, a 73-year-old builder, stands in front of the house which he built in Velke Hamry, near the town of Jablonec nad Nisou, 100km (62 miles) north-east from Prague, August 7, 2012. Lhota conceptualized the idea to create the unique house and started to build it in 1981, building it close to nature to benefit from the cooler ground temperature. Lhota's house, which is built in 2002, is able to move up and down and rotate on its sides, which allows him to adjust to his preferred window view.
12. Bohumil Lhota, a 73-year-old builder, turns the house he built in Velke Hamry, near the town of Jablonec nad Nisou, 100km (62 miles) north-east from Prague, August 7, 2012. Lhota conceptualized the idea to create the unique house and started to build it in 1981, building it close to nature to benefit from the cooler ground temperature. Lhota's house, which is built in 2002, is able to move up and down and rotate on its sides, which allows him to adjust to his preferred window view.
13. A man takes a picture of the one of the world's narrowest buildings, built as an artistic installation wedged between two existing buildings, in Warsaw October 23, 2012. A building just 92 cm (36 inches) wide as its narrowest point was opened in Warsaw on October 20 as an artistic installation that will be a home from home for Israeli writer Edgar Keret. Keret, who told news channel TVN24 he would live there when he visits Warsaw twice a year, said he conceived the project as a kind of memorial to his parents' family who died in the World War Two Holocaust.
14. Tourists pose with an upside-down house in Tamparuli in Malaysia's state of Sabah on Borneo island September 17, 2012. Built for tourist attraction, the traditional Sabah village house was built with everyday households items like computer, refrigerator, sofa sets, dining table and beds - but all items are upside down.
15. Residents climb into their houses atop gravestones inside a cemetery in Manila October 21, 2008. Many poor urban dwellers make their homes in public cemeteries, converting abandoned tombs and mausoleums into houses. The local government plan to move out the hundreds of people who live in the cemeteries around the city before the upcoming All Souls' Day, a day of remembrance for the dead when Catholics visit the graves of their relatives.
