By HKURBEX.
Perched in the rural northern coast of Taiwan are several dozen oval-shaped “UFO homes.”
Originally designed in Finland in the 1960s, the futuristic pods were adopted in an age of new trends and lifestyles following the Second World War.
They featured an ellipsoid fibre-glass and reinforced plastic shells, with oval-shaped windows, door handles, light fittings and even elliptic-shaped power sockets.
The oil crisis of the 1970s immensely raised the price of plastic used for constructing the pods, and Europe gave up on the designs shortly afterwards.
Taiwanese developers adopted the designs in the 1970s and 1980s, building UFO homes on the northern coastline outside the cities of Taipei and Keelung.
The most famous of the UFO homes were part of a lavish holiday resort in Sanzhi District, built beginning in 1981.
But the resort project failed spectacularly due to financial problems. A series of car crashes on nearby highways also fuelled rumours of the pods being haunted.
The abandoned Sanzhi holiday homes were demolished by the Taiwanese government in 2008.
UFO homes in nearby Wanli Township remain standing, and have since become a cult tourist attraction.
Taiwanese bloggers say that a few residents still live in some of them.
Trespassing is against the law and we do not encourage others to do so.
