In a small rebellion against having to look at all the same stuff all over again to rewrite my research paper, this post celebrates strange and wonderful architecture that's not by Frank Gehry.

the Casa Batllo designed by Antonio Gaudi.

The Dragon Gate at Parc Guell, Barcelona, also by Gaudi

.Le Palais Ideal in France, designed and built by Ferdinand Cheval

Another shot of Le Palais Ideal

The Rotating Tower in Dubai, designed by Dr. David Fisher, scheduled to be completed this year.

Mind House in Barcelona (can't find out who designed)

Conch Shell House, Mexico, by Octavio Ocampo

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/

I love these things. Another fun source of weird vintage images and technical drawings is Google patents.

Favorite Artist

My favorite artist is Ursula Vernon. You can't really categorize her art except to say that it usually involves animals, often very obscure species, and that it is awesome. She does everything from webcomics to children's books to icons of invented animal saints to.... oh, just look, I posted some of her art below.
Every picture she does has a story behind it. And those stories are weird, quirky, slightly disturbing, and/or absolutely hilarious. She creates these strangely resonant, mythical worlds.
Her Deviantart Gallery
Her Website
Her Blog

Fractal Art

Something I used to be really into playing with a few years ago is fractal artwork. Fractals are graphics generated by mathematical formulas using fractal art programs. (You don't have to actually know or understand the math to create them. I sure don't.) You can do some really beautiful things with them- fractal equations are behind a lot of forms in the natural world and in the weather.






Here are some examples of really gorgeous computer generated fractal art from Deviantart.com.

And finally, some free fractal software you can download if you want to try making them yourself. Apophysis is the easiest to start with, I think, but there's also Fractal Explorer, Chaoscope, and more.