Visitors to Huainan, China, might be expecting to see typical scenes of Chinese urbanism—mega subdivisions, skyscrapers, shopping malls, and the like—but the city has a surprise in store: a very weird house shaped like a violin leaning against a grand piano.
The violin, made completely out of glass, serves as the entry to the house, linking the elevated piano to the ground. The piano portion of the house stands on three concrete legs and features a roof terrace beneath a canopy shaped like the piano’s open top.
The structure was designed by Hefei University of Technology architectural students in 2007 as a way to draw interest to the city.
It has become a spectacle in Anhui province (located inland from Shanghai). Of course, meant to simulate instruments, the house itself probably wouldn’t make very pleasing sounds: windows cut into the body of the piano would render the reverberating chamber useless, while the vibrations from the violin’s strings might shatter the glass it’s made of.
