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NARRATOR: There are extreme homes all over the world,
and we're taking you inside some of them
for a personal tour.
The word "extreme" means different things
to different people, but to these homeowners,
it means dreaming, daring, and innovating.
From construction to completion,
we'll take a close-up look at these spectacular homes
to find out just what makes each of them so extreme.
This house in Bali is made entirely out of bottles...
while this house is built to keep out the elephants.
This house was inspired
by the home of a character from a fairy tale...
and this one is the perfect secret agent's bachelor pad.
Exciting shapes, exceptional sizes,
and exotic locations.
These are some of the coolest homes around.
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
No lie -- This is the best view in San Diego.
But that just wasn't enough for owners Al and Janet.
They wanted to make the most of their hilltop property,
so they built a house with a 360-degree view.
We were gonna just build a conventional home.
When we got up here and saw the view,
that's when we decided we needed to build something
that would take complete advantage.
NARRATOR: But building a simple deck with a view wasn't enough.
No.
Al had a bigger idea -- Why not rotate the entire house?
So, you can dial in the speed
and see the whole area in just 30 minutes
or take all of 24 hours.
But Al had to convince his new wife, Janet, to give it a whirl.
Janet and I both lost our spouses
about 16, 18 years ago
and found each other on a golf course.
She had a nice house I didn't want to live in,
I had a nice house she didn't want to live in,
so we decided to build our own.
Al designed the new house himself.
He began his career as an architect, but morphed into
a kind of freethinking builder and engineer.
I took a class for one semester in high school,
and the instructor said,
"You're not following instructions."
And I said, "No, I have a hard time coloring inside the lines."
He said, "Well, just keep doing what you're doing,"
and this is kind of the end result.
NARRATOR: Al and Janet did about 75%
of the construction work themselves.
JANET: He built most of it, and I was the helper,
and so I've had my input,
but the big genius behind it is Al.
NARRATOR: So, how does the rotating house actually work?
It was built on a sloping site.
The foundation was set into the hillside,
including a central column
for the elevator, plumbing, and wiring.
Then Al stacked two giant wheels on the central column,
which roll around a circular track
on 40 bearings the size of soccer balls.
It takes only 1½ horsepower to turn the house.
The biggest challenge
was getting all the utilities to rotate
without getting tangled up.
Al's solution was to utilize slip rings.
Every merry-go-round has a slip ring,
and that's what we use for electrical --
just a much more sophisticated one.
We use a mercury switch
for the Internet and high-definition TV.
What the slip rings allow us to do
is to be able to rotate as many times as you want
in either direction.
You never have to unwind.
And it surpasses all 21st-century building codes
anywhere in the world.
NARRATOR: There are also two turntables in the garage,
so they never have to back their cars
up the steep and narrow driveway.
There's a lot of fun in this design,
like the hidden elevator behind the bookcase.
JANET: You come into the living room/dining room.
That's where we do most of our entertaining.
We have the nice open kitchen that I love,
with beautiful cabinetry with the hidden refrigerators,
so that when we're entertaining,
I can be in the kitchen working and still have people here.
NARRATOR: They thought carefully about the outside, too,
and planted succulents up and down the terraced hillside.
They're beautiful in the spring and, since they retain water,
also act as a vital flame retardant during fire season.
And as a tribute to how they met,
Al and Janet have installed their very own putting green
so they can work on their short game
while the world goes 'round.
Now we're off to the island of Bali in Indonesia.
From a distance, this looks like
your everyday, one-of-a-kind modernist house,
but take a closer look,
and there's something about those walls.
Then it hits you.
They're made out of plastic bottles.
And they were all picked from Balinese dumps.
Architect Ridwan Kamil, who's a leading activist
in the Indonesian environmental and recycling movement,
first thought of the idea
when he noticed one of his builders taking a drink.
It was the worker who built the foundation of the house,
and they consumed that energy drink many times
during the construction,
and they threw it away, and when I came in one weekend,
suddenly the sun hits the garbage area,
and it's sparkling.
So I can say sometimes inspiration comes unexpected,
and this is the proof.
NARRATOR: Now, it's one thing to have an idea
and another to make it real.
It took six months
to find 30,000 bottles of the exact same drink.
Then they all had to be stripped of the label,
washed, and plugged before they could be glued together
into steel frames like crates.
Ridwan then stacked the crates to create the walls.
The framed bottles make up 60% of the exterior.
They create breezy and dramatic golden walls
that glow inside the house
and cast a pattern across the wooden floors.
The breeze that flows through the gaps is essential.
It keeps the house at a constant 75 degrees,
even when the outside is much hotter.
RIDWAN: The unique things about the bottles,
because it captures the heat of the sunlight
during the hot day,
because there is an empty space inside the bottles,
so it means the heat stays in the bottles,
but the lights coming,
creating a natural light into the house.
NARRATOR: The house has two wings --
one for family, the other for guests,
with an open-plan kitchen and living area in between.
Both wings look out onto an elegant courtyard
with shade trees.
Ridwan fabricated many of the design elements on-site,
like this white kitchen island
made from soft stone mixed into resin.
The light pattern of the countertop
and the dark wood floors make a handsome contrast.
The master suite is at the top of the family wing.
Here, light tropical colors work beautifully
with the golden glow of the bottle walls.
Ridwan's library and office are also on the top floor.
His collection of architectural models
show a worldly appreciation of building and design.
RIDWAN: My house is a dream home
because it's a collection of my memory, my dream,
my travel, my inspiration, my creativity.
It all happens here.
And this is where the love happens every day
with my wife and with my two kids.
NARRATOR: Ridwan wanted his home to become an ubud,
which means "tranquil area" in Balinese.
And with this unique house,
he sends an extraordinary message in a bottle.
Next, a house in Nova Scotia
that appears to be sliding down the hillside.
NARRATOR: We're back with some of the most extreme homes in the world.
In Nova Scotia,
most houses blend easily into the rolling landscape.
But not in the tiny village of Upper Kingsbury.
There's one house -- a large metal box, really --
that's so noticeable,
local lobstermen use it as a navigational landmark.
It's known locally as the sliding house,
because that's what it seems to be doing --
sliding into the gully.
The home was designed by architect Brian Mackay-Lyons.
His radical projects are well-known in the region.
You've got the historic village
with the extended family pattern,
houses and barns, and then, the beach,
with the freshwater lakes in behind it.
and these drumlins.
In this part of Nova Scotia, these green humps,
these glacial hills left from the Ice Age,
make a very sensual kind of landscape,
and the buildings seem to kind of sink into it.
NARRATOR: It was Brian's aim to interpret the tension in the lines
between the horizon and the land with this house.
BRIAN: This project is really an essay on two things.
One is the curvature of these hills, these glacial hills,
and the other is the ocean horizon,
which is the absolute level line in the world.
And the hill, like that.
So the house does this...
and then, the windows do that.
So, the ocean horizon is the big deal.
NARRATOR: In other words,
the single line of windows right across the structure
represents the horizon
cutting a line of light through the building.
It's dramatic on the outside -- and on the inside, too.
Matisse used to make wonderful drawings, you know,
where he would do a figure with just one line
without lifting his pencil off the page --
when he got old enough.
And so, in fact, the windows in this house
are made by one cut, one line.
If you follow around the whole house,
all of the windows are one continuous cut.
NARRATOR: The inside of the house
has a kind of modern log-cabin look.
The wood is mainly poplar,
which grows like a weed in Canada,
but it's starting to gain some respect as a hardwood.
One fact about poplar -- It contracts and expands
through the hot and cold of the seasons.
The owners say they actually like hearing it crack
as it adjusts.
BRIAN: What I like to do
is make the inside of a house a real surprise,
so the inside of this house
is, like, carved out of a block of wood.
It's like one big piece of cheese or a block of butter.
And everything is one material.
Everything, everything, everything in the house
is one color, one material.
NARRATOR: The home has four floors.
The master bedroom and study are in the loft,
which have windows but no water views.
BRIAN: The windows that you'd find in this room
are much more specific, you know?
You're catching a view of the apple tree
or bringing a certain kind of light in,
but otherwise being a kind of enclosed,
womb-like space to sleep in.
So the wood works very well for that.
NARRATOR: Down a floor,
the main living and kitchen area feel more open to the ocean.
Down one more is another bedroom.
And there's a slice-shaped shed at the very bottom.
So, how can a house with such a tilt not slide down the hill?
It's all in the foundation,
which was dug 8 feet into the ground at the deepest point
and reinforced with freeze-resistant concrete.
The wooden structure
is wrapped in five layers of foam insulation
and sheathed in galvanized aluminum.
Not something you see every day, but it works well in this case.
BRIAN: For most people, it's pretty edgy, this building.
A little bit like Bambi meets Godzilla.
You know, you have these cute little shingle buildings,
and then this very modern steel building.
So I like the contrast, you know?
I'm not sure everyone does.
But I believe that things that are really simple,
super-simple, in a refined kind of way,
look good 100 years later.
NARRATOR: Next, we're headed to England
to visit a home inspired by a mythological bird.
NARRATOR: We've seen a house that rotates 360 degrees...
another that's made out of 30,000 bottles...
...and a home that looks like it could start its own landslide.
Sandbanks in Dorset, England,
may look like a modest seaside resort,
but it harbors some of the most expensive real estate
in the world,
up there with Tokyo, New York, and Hong Kong.
So, what draws people
to this obscure outcrop of sand dunes in England?
Well, it's all about supply and demand.
Demand is high for land
in this traditionally prosperous sailing community,
so if you're lucky enough
to find the room to build your dream home here,
it's cause for celebration.
And on the west side of the harbor,
there's a playboy of a house
just waiting for the party to begin.
This retro glamour pad was modeled
on the wings of a thunderbird, a mythological creature
worshipped as a symbol of strength and power
by Native Americans.
The thunderbird's name comes from the belief
that its mighty wings cause thunder
and stir up the wind.
And the roof of this does look like a bird's wing.
It's made of copper pre-patinated to look like
the turquoise used in Native American art.
Each strip was cut individually
and laid out to look like feathers.
Outside, this could be the home
of an international man of mystery.
Shrouded by a sumptuous garden with a hot tub center stage,
and, of course, a garage for three very fast cars.
There's just something retro and yet shagadelic
about the entire design.
The interiors come from the more hedonistic age of disco,
when stacked heels and white leisure suits were all the rage,
A time when everyone had a mirror over the bed
and black satin sheets were the height of chic.
LED lighting is embedded in nearly every surface,
including the central stairwell.
The individual stairs light up when someone steps up or down.
The downstairs living room space is designed to entertain.
And for those used to dining at the captain's table,
it'll all feel very familiar.
The thunderbird house has one foot in the recent past
and one foot in the near future.
This is a one-house seaside resort all by itself.
Native American bird on the outside,
but party animal on the inside,
the thunderbird house is a seaside resort all by itself.
Our next home is in South Africa.
When Claude and Lydia Huberty
visited the Limpopo region on their honeymoon,
they stayed in a tree house and loved it.
So when they learned that a lodge was up for sale
right next to the Kruger National Park,
they grabbed it
and traded their European lives in Luxembourg
for life among the trees in South Africa.
CLAUDE: I used to work as an accountant
for almost 20 years in an office, yeah.
And the first time we came to South Africa,
I immediately fell in love
with the wildlife and the landscape,
and all of a sudden, yeah,
it was time for me to change my life,
And we decided to move to South Africa
and try to realize our dream.
Every morning when I wake up and I take a shower outside,
I walk onto my balcony
and I see the giraffes walking by.
It's so beautiful, and the sunset is amazing.
NARRATOR: Claude the accountant retrained as a carpenter
and pursued a lifelong love affair with wood.
They've added a few new tree houses to the property
over the years,
but this was the first one they built themselves.
They call it The Dream.
Claude climbed dozens of trees
to find the one with the finest view,
and this was the best.
CLAUDE: When I climbed up the tree, just that moment,
a whole tower of giraffes were passing by,
and I thought to myself, "Yes. Amazing view.
That's the place."
NARRATOR: So they decided to build around Claude's big marula tree.
However, they made sure it didn't have to support
the entire weight of the house.
CLAUDE: The tree house is about 4.9 meters from the ground,
and, as you can see,
we did not build the construction on top of the tree.
We didn't want to put nails in the tree,
and we didn't want to cut branches.
So we built the tree house around the tree
and around the branches.
NARRATOR: The main house sits in a small forest of eucalyptus tree poles.
They were sunk in holes half-filled with sand
to prevent rot and then topped off with concrete.
The marula tree has real presence in the house,
crawling through walls,
poking through floors and ceilings.
You could say Claude's been promoted to "branch manager."
CLAUDE: Well, the reason why we have all the ropes around the branches
is because the tree is still growing,
and we left enough gap to allow the tree to grow naturally.
NARRATOR: Living up in the branches of such a lovely and useful tree
feels special, and so does the house itself.
It's a simple floor plan of living room, bedroom,
luxurious bathroom, and an outside shower.
You'll find local lati wood here and there,
and in between the layers,
plastic netting to keep out the mosquitos.
But if you do want to sleep out in the bushveld,
you can roll the bed onto the balcony.
I stayed once at a place
where we could sleep under the stars, as well,
and I thought, "Yes, that would be a unique feature for me
"to be able to roll the bed out
"every moment I wish to sleep outside
under the canopy of stars."
NARRATOR: The antelope and zebra
often come to the watering hole Claude dug to attract them.
But the big cats and larger animals
usually stay outside the compound.
However, elephants are very fond of the fruit of the marula tree.
But Claude was smart.
He built this home around the male marulas,
which don't bear fruit.
Fortunately, the hungry elephants have stayed away.
Now we're headed to Seattle, where one house has been built
to withstand the fiercest of storms.
NARRATOR: We're back.
This time, we're in Seattle, Washington,
where one couple hasn't let Mother Nature
ruin their dream of living on the water.
When the Army Corps of Engineers declared Camano Island
a high-velocity wind zone and vulnerable to tsunamis,
they could have moved away.
Instead, they decided to build a house
that could stand up to high winds and tidal waves.
Enter architect Dan Nelson,
who spent six years inventing this tsunami-proof home.
Because we're sitting on sand, we're on a beach,
we had to tie the columns into a real thick concrete pad,
and then, the structure of the floor is tied to these columns,
and everything stays rigid.
So if there's a tsunami or if there's an earthquake,
this whole structure will move as a solid mass, as a body.
It won't hinge, it won't fall apart.
So everything stays almost literally floating in the sand.
NARRATOR: Dan designed the building
to withstand a large, powerful tidal wave.
The walls of the ground floor are supposed to wash away
and leave just the support columns.
Everything about this lower level
has to be able to break away.
If we have a 200-mile-an-hour wave and it hits the house,
these walls have to literally be able to be blown out
and all the water will just rush through here.
NARRATOR: The walls are really doors.
When open, they give the owners and their guests
a sense of being right on the beach.
Close them up, and they still let in light,
but also make the house more private
and close it off from the beach.
DAN: We don't want to lift up the overhead doors.
We designed this waterproof door.
This door is unique because it was designed
specifically to hold up against the weather.
It's an anodized-aluminum door.
It's a flush-panel door.
It's oversized.
It's 4 feet by 8 tall, so that the clients
can bring their beach furniture in this way.
It's a nice, big door in order to bring out even their kayak.
NARRATOR: The ground floor decor is sparse, functional,
and -- surprise, surprise -- completely waterproof.
Even the electrical outlets have been raised
to keep them above the water.
A simple staircase leads to the upper floor.
The treads are actually a bent metal panel,
and so you can see the wave of the stair,
and I think, as you see,
throughout the theme of the house,
we use the waves of the bay, of the water, as a theme.
NARRATOR: Disaster-ready downstairs,
but upstairs, a vision of clean, elegant design.
DAN: What you feel is just a real airiness.
It's open, it's light.
We kept the volume high
in order to bring north light into the space.
We have clerestory windows.
And this really has a feel of a loft.
It's almost like it's a loft sitting on concrete columns.
NARRATOR: What catches your eye are the huge windows.
Ocean light floods the room,
and the view of Skagit Bay and Mt. Baker is gorgeous.
There's a sliding element at the top of the windows
that opens to let in the sea breeze.
In the kitchen,
translucent doors are part of the ocean theme.
So is the dining table, a slab of rough-hewn maple,
sort of like a large piece of driftwood
washed up onto the beach.
Everyone hopes that Dan's design is never tested,
but if that big wave ever comes calling,
the house will let it in
and then show it out the back door.
Sometimes a landscape can inspire a building.
In this case, it was a famous story
that led to the creation of this stone cottage
in the Pennsylvania woods.
The home is so well-hidden, few people even know it's here.
It represents the painstaking work of a reclusive millionaire
who spent a lifetime collecting memorabilia
of the well-known English author J.R.R. Tolkien.
All these things were all over the house in boxes,
filling entire rooms.
He said, "I want to create a structure
"where I can keep all these things,
"where I can be one with them in solitude and joy,
catalog, read, and just be with them."
NARRATOR: The 54-inch-diameter Spanish cedar door
would be just right for a small creature with furry feet
and opens with an authentic *** in the center.
PETER: We talked about it, and we designed --
created and image of the shape that we wanted
and actually went to an ironworker in Maryland
who said, "I think I can do this."
NARRATOR: Peter set out to create a handmade, livable structure
sitting harmoniously in the landscape.
The owner didn't want to display his collection of memorabilia,
so much as to live amongst it in a domestic setting.
We just wanted to do something very of-the-earth, of-the-land,
very timeless in its nature.
You wouldn't know if it was built in 2006 or 1906
or 1506.
NARRATOR: The building hearkens back
to the history of the English cottage.
The architect worked with a team of masons
to get the stonework just right.
PETER: There was a stone wall --
an old farm stone wall, I think, from the 1800s
that ran right through the center of the property
and ran down into the woods
and separated kind of the high part of the yard
from the low part,
and I thought, "Well, this would be a wonderful place
to site this structure -- into the hillside."
NARRATOR: The roof is covered with clay tiles
imported from France.
All the metalwork around the house
got special attention, too.
Following on the idea of detail,
right down to the smallest degree.
Here's a wonderful example
of taking a required electric outlet
and then creating a little tin box,
which it -- hidden.
NARRATOR: Every fixture fitting an ornament,
from the curved wooden architraves
to details in the fireplace,
was either selected or custom-made
to resemble features from the storybook.
PETER: The stucco --
we had them put that on with a very rough finish,
actually integrating pieces of the roof tile into it.
Just, you know, you feel like,
with the history of buildings through the years,
how they were built up, fell down,
were knocked down through wars, whatever,
and then patched together again --
that's what we wanted to give this --
sort of the new/old house kind of feeling.
NARRATOR: All of the exposed beams in the house
are Douglas fir from the Pacific Northwest.
PETER: One of the real highlights is this arch piece of timber.
Traditionally, to do something like that, in the old days,
you would have had to find a limb
and cut that curve out of that.
In modern techniques,
we actually took the straight piece
and cut it into about 1/2-inch slices,
bent it, and then glued it back together.
And if you actually look at it very closely,
you can just faintly see those lines,
but it creates this wonderful result of a curve.
And there are actually three arches
coming through this space here.
NARRATOR: The ceilings are quite high for a cottage --
12 feet at the tallest point of the arch.
The wooden beams were finished with a light stain and sealer.
The floors are a local yellow pine,
and the window frames are mahogany.
The cottage seems to be
everything the fairy-tale fan could ever want.
And this is the ultimate reading room,
in honor of the literary genius who inspired it.
Now we travel to Australia,
where there's a house inspired by a Roman aqueduct.
NARRATOR: Welcome back to "Extreme Homes."
Tucked away in the back streets of Melbourne, Australia,
is an architectural tribute to Ancient Rome.
It's the creation of architect Simon Thornton.
His clients were professional engineers,
so when they presented him with a very narrow lot
and said, "Design something," he thought immediately
of that engineering marvel the Roman aqueduct.
SIMON: The big challenge was
that it was a very, very skinny block of land,
and we actually found it was even a meter less wide
than we thought.
And rather than play down the fact,
I thought, Why not play it up
by choosing a form which is very long itself --
and that is, in this case, an aqueduct form --
hollow it out and use it as a spine
and then hang the rooms off that.
NARRATOR: This kind of design is called narrative architecture
because it tries to interpret the ancient world
through modern structures.
The Roman aqueducts
are classic examples of form serving function,
and the beauty of their design still stands today.
Simon adapted the form of the aqueduct
and ran it diagonally across the lot
to form the spine of the new house.
To add a splash of color,
Simon added some medieval-style tent-like structures
cut from waterproof particleboard
and trimmed with metal.
They might seem like a random idea to an outsider,
but to Simon, they have strong aesthetic logic.
SIMON: The thing that attracted me to these tents
was the stripes, the colors, the fringes,
all these trappings of medieval tents,
and I've tried to retain some of that joy and playfulness,
and this house is all about that sort of spirit.
NARRATOR: The variety of shapes and sizes has created
some elaborate nooks and crannies along the roof line.
It does take a little work
to keep the leaves from building up,
but the architect claims
that the low-maintenance materials he used
will prevent high replacement costs in the years to come.
The siding on the aqueduct part
is unfinished, untreated eucalyptus.
In time, the wood will weather to a stone gray.
Inside, the Roman arches give you the feeling
you're part of the water course itself,
as it flows overhead.
If you squint a little, it sort of works.
Upstairs, in the guest bedroom,
frosted glass on the doors and walls
suggest a water line,
adding to the illusion of flowing water.
The clients are more than thrilled
with the interior elegance of the aqueduct house,
from the sliver of a study off the main hallway
to the kitchen with its solid-marble counters.
The pattern of fireplace tiles
is taken from a 14th-century Russian icon...
...and repeated in the homeowners' lap pool,
which was carved out of the narrowest of spaces
in the backyard.
One of the most important things for her was the pool.
She loves to get up in the morning and swim every day.
And the block being very narrow, it was quite a challenge,
but we managed to fit the pool in.
NARRATOR: The house is proof that you can take ancient concepts
and turn them into a practical, modern dwelling.
And who knows?
Maybe medieval knights did pitch their tents
beneath a Roman aqueduct somewhere.
With history and architecture, anything is possible.
SIMON: Well, we've had a lot of nice comments
from neighbors and people walking past
who have just said
that they really enjoy the tent-like appearance of it,
and I think they're a little confused,
and they are not so sure about the aqueduct part,
but after a while,
they get used to that and the combination of the two.
NARRATOR: Next, we're heading to Argentina,
where an ancient tree dictated the design of a new home.
NARRATOR: We're back with more extreme homes.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina,
the architect of this home had one obstacle --
a 100-year-old tree.
In the end, he let nature rule, built a home around the tree,
and turned the rest of the house
into a self-sufficient water world.
The tree stands tall in the middle of the structure,
while a series of ponds and waterfalls
recycle rainwater through the house.
When you enter Casa Acasusso,
the sound of flowing water sets the mood.
[ Water trickling ]
ANDRES: [ Speaking Spanish ]
INTERPRETER: Here, we're in the entrance to the house,
and you can hear the sound of water,
which is important for us,
as it gives a sense of tranquility.
We have this small pond, which generates the sound,
along with the waterfall.
The idea of the house
is to recuperate the rainwater via the roofs,
then to filter this water, which is then recycled
to wash the cars, use on the garden,
and for showering.
NARRATOR: Andres' idea was to connect
the separate sections of the house with flowing water.
INTERPRETER: We are on the bridge
that connects the hall with the living room.
In one section, we have the waterfall and the mini lake,
and in the other section, we have the bamboo area,
and if we keep walking,
we find ourselves with the living room to one side
and the dining room to the other,
and the living room
is positioned above the garden area.
NARRATOR: This home has its own ecosystem
and a roof terrace
that's going to become a vegetable garden very soon.
At night, as the owners lie in the master bed,
they can watch for shooting stars overhead.
The house is built on three levels in a "V" shape.
There's a basement
with a playroom, spa, and wine cellar.
Open living and dining areas and the kitchen
are all on the first floor.
And the bedrooms are all upstairs.
The "V" shape of the house
shows up in smaller, interesting ways in the atrium.
And this is a smart house, electronically.
ANDRES: [ Speaking Spanish ]
INTERPRETER: What we're looking at here is the control of the house.
It's like the brain of the house,
which we can use
to control light, sound, the doors, the windows.
And all of this is connected to an Internet system,
so it can be controlled remotely.
NARRATOR: Even with all the high-tech,
this house is primarily about flowing water and a tree
and being a part of nature, not apart from it.
The streets of London are lined with houses
that all look about the same.
But the Blue House in Hackney is an exception to this rule.
This home is like a cartoon version
of the urban landscape around it.
We were trying to fit into a very, very tight site,
something very unusual,
something that would be different from the surroundings,
and we were trying to get something
that had a kind of pop-art, almost childlike quality.
NARRATOR: The house-like outline on the street
sits in front of a sort of office-building facade,
compressing the perspective.
The siding is a sturdy fiber-filled cement
that fends off weather and insect infestations alike.
It's textured to look like wood,
but even this obvious artwork feels a little cartoony.
And look at these two windows on the side of the house...
or are they?
Turns out they're not windows at all,
but panels of colored sequins, which ripple in the wind.
It's all a deliberate attempt to draw attention
and, in true iconoclastic style, get a reaction.
It has a certain quirky quality,
and that includes things like
a strange cloud-like form on the fence,
a chimney, which is also in negative on the facade,
and the reason for that
is that we're trying to accentuate
its billboard advertising, hoarding-like quality,
which is something that is breaking all the rules
of what you're supposedly allowed to do in architecture.
NARRATOR: You might say it's a cheeky building.
The overriding blueness pokes fun at English weather,
and there's an interior courtyard
set higher than ground level
to deliberately disorient visitors.
The blue theme continues
in the coloring of the architraves and skirtings
and in the little details on the balustrade over here.
Again, we have a sort of cartoon-like quality
because of the heart-shaped cutouts.
NARRATOR: And the fireplace is set unusually low
to give it that "down the rabbit hole" feel
of a distorted entryway.
The main room is more conventional and open,
but the passageways leading off are more puzzling.
SEAN: There's a slight ambiguity about this house.
You know, spaces and rooms -- Is it a space or a room?
Is it a wall or is it a column?
And that's the kind of game that the house plays
all the way through.
NARRATOR: Upstairs, the rooms are dressed in childlike colors,
like the pink in the master bedroom.
It's all vaguely dreamlike,
and there's a sense that nothing is quite as it seems.
Then there are the tiny windows at the top,
all out of proportion with the scale of the room,
but fun...
like this child's bed,
tucked away up a ladder, kind of secret and hidden.
And the doors don't look quite right.
Some are fitted way off center,
for more of that "Alice in Wonderland" effect.
There's a lot of detail in this house.
For example, the doors,
the sizes of architraves around openings,
which are a little bit too big,
the layering of the space
and the creation of different levels,
which make it almost normal, but a little bit off,
and the intention is to slightly disquiet people
who might visit.
NARRATOR: Sean always intended to completely reinvent
the traditional urban semidetached home.
And today, The Blue House
is one of London's most celebrated milestones
in pop-art architecture.
Next, we're touring a French château --
only, this one lives on the water in North Carolina.
NARRATOR: We're back, and this is "Extreme Homes."
Our next home is in North Carolina,
but you might just think you're in Southern France,
because this house has all the majesty and grandeur
of a home fit for French aristocrats.
The house is less than 10 years old,
but it's had its ups and downs already.
The couple who built it had to sell their labor of love
on short notice during the recession.
Along came costume manufacturer Scott Morris,
who snapped it up at a fraction of the original cost.
Welcome to Chateau Lyon.
Isn't it gorgeous?
The beautiful thing about when we bought the home
is the home was fully furnished.
Not just a few fixtures -- It was fully furnished,
from the point of having plants, tables, candelabras,
the china that's in the china cabinet.
The whole house was totally furnished.
In fact, all we did
was basically move in with an overnight bag.
NARRATOR: And so the Morris family acquired an extraordinary home.
Most of it, from the foundations to the interiors,
were imported from France, so it's the real thing.
Parisian flea markets were emptied,
and a tour of the rest of the country helped to provide
the vast collection of artifacts and antiques
that fill up the interiors.
The windows and doors at Chateau Lyon
were all imported from France from the 1700s, 1800s.
On the front of the house,
there is a railing in the middle,
just above the entrance doors,
and that is from the early 1800s.
All the railings throughout the house
are a replica of that one railing.
NARRATOR: It was only when Scott, his wife,
and their two teenagers began to use the kitchen
that they realized just what they'd bought.
SCOTT: It starts with seven different refrigerators,
four different dishwashers, an ice maker,
two convection ovens,
and a La Cornue copper stove from France.
The stove is so large
that they had to put an industrial hood into the room.
The hood itself was $48,000.
Also in the kitchen is a rotisserie and a pizza oven.
The beautiful thing was, we moved in the home
after it had been built
and nothing in the kitchen had been used whatsoever.
NARRATOR: And if the kitchen isn't grand enough,
there's always the aristocratic splendor
of the dining room on pizza night.
Much of the decor was modeled
after Marie Antoinette's summer quarters in Versailles.
SCOTT: The dining rooms are absolutely gorgeous,
from the chandeliers to the table to the walls.
The chandelier is wrought iron and wood from the early 1900s.
The funny thing was, when we purchased the home,
in our other home,
we did not have a dining room table for 20 years.
And we were looking around the home,
and my wife whispered in my ear,
she says, "You know, if we don't buy the home,
maybe we can just buy the dining room table."
[ Laughs ]
NARRATOR: The architects wanted to replicate the openness
of the French lifestyle of that period,
when bathrooms were barely screened off from living spaces
and mirrors or clear glass gave residents the chance
to observe what was happening from room to room.
Scott and his family have installed frosted glass
for more privacy.
But there are some modern things in the Chateau Lyon.
Every room is temperature-controlled.
Limestone floors were cold in Old France.
In the Chateau Lyon, they're heated.
There are 13 air conditioners,
and music is piped into every room,
so there's no need for a chamber ensemble.
And, of course, there is a secret safe room.
But for Scott,
none of these things really captured his heart.
The most beautiful feature is the view --
360-degree view of the water.
Just absolutely gorgeous.
See 10 miles down-channel
and there's 500 feet of shoreline.
From whatever room you're in, you're looking at water.
NARRATOR: To make the most of the view,
Scott likes to mow the lawn himself
and marvel at how sweet it is to be the new lord of the manor.
We've seen homes of all shapes and sizes
in locations around the world.
From a house that rotates to capture every inch of the view
to another that perches in a marula tree
to get the best vantage point,
a house that wants to resemble a cartoon,
another that's been built to withstand a tsunami,
and a house that's modeled on a mythological bird.
All of these houses have something in common.
To their owners, they're simply home sweet home.
Thanks for watching "Extreme Homes."