This strange elephant house outside Moscow resulted out of a tea can and a daring experiment.
This four-floor building in the shape of an elephant can be seen in the village of Ostrovtsy, Moscow Region (exact location for the curious among you). It appeared in 2009, taking just 8 months to complete - all to prove that styrofoam could be used for anything, including buildings. It was given a 300 year guarantee and put up for sale.
Architect and designer Sergey Kozhuro was commissioned for the project by one Alexey Sorokin, who had a polystyrene-producing plant in the 1990s. A china statuette that housed some Indian tea was taken as a prototype. The resulting house is just a bigger version of that tea container (the original idea was to have a sturgeon).
They still can’t find a buyer for the house, but it sure does stand out in good old Ostrovtsy - although, not everyone is a fan of seeing a weird polystyrene elephant interfering with everyone’s feeling of country zen.
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