Tzvi Harel's "House on the Boardwalk," Take #1 – Retsif Herbert Samuel at Trumpledor Street, Tel Aviv, Israel

Tel Aviv University Prof. Tzvi Harel, the good-natured architect who designed this post-modernist gravity-defying seaside apartment house, says that he is "proud of being insulted about it. I believe humor and criticism in architecture is very important." The four-story building was never meant to be more than imaginary. Harel sketched it for a 1980s newspaper column on the renaissance of Tel Aviv culture and art. Local entrepreneur Avraham Piltz loved the oddball design and brought it to life, though he died before the house was completed in the mid-1990s. "The idea was that since it was on the shore of Tel Aviv, which in those days was quite neglected, you could be an exhibitionist and expose yourself playfully in front of the sea," Harel says, pointing out that every room in each of the seven apartments has a sea view.