Bizarre and Unique Roofs

Brazilian Leaf Roof
Outside of Rio de Janeiro, on a beautiful little beach with amazing blue water, sits a little house with a flowering roof that shades and protects like a big tropical banana leaf. Designed by Mareines + Patalano, the open air abode is meant to encourage interaction and connection between man and nature. With verandas and open spaces in between rooms and no corridors, the tropical beach house is an ideal place for social gatherings and parties. The open layout also takes advantage of trade winds that blow in from the sea, providing natural ventilation and passive cooling.



60-foot penis painted on roof
An 18-year-old secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents' £1million mansion in Berkshire. It was there for a year before his parents found out. They say he'll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling.



Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit"). Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life.



Casa Batlló Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain




Roof of the Core at the Eden Project, in Cornwall.



Up sided roof, at Seixal, Madeira




La Pedrera's roof
Meet Gaudi’s Casa Milà, more affectionately known as la Pedrera in Barcelona. The roofs of most buildings are stale and industrial, flat and square, dotted with aluminium vents and plain brick chimneys. Gaudi turned his vents and chimneys into sentinels who, through the narrow slits in their helmets, would keep permanent watch over the building’s residents. The undulating roof is tiled and dotted not only by the helmeted warriors, but also by several bulbous sculptures covered in a mosaic of white tiles.



Rocky roof, at San Clemente Piers



This proposed village for Heden, a sleepy cityblock in Sweden’s Gothenburg, has more than a touch of Hobbiton about it.


California’s Academy of Sciences (SF) is covered in rolling hills - the perfect place for students to grab their lunch in the sun.


Bizarre and Unique Roofs