Lucy the Elephant is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1881 by James V. Lafferty in Margate City, Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, two miles (3.2 km) south of Atlantic City, in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourists.

Urban photographer Roman Robroek spent five years scouring the continent for the grandest examples of forgotten architectural beauty. Here: Watch your step on this Polish spiral staircase. (Photo by Roman Robroek/South West News Service)

A villa privately built on the rooftop of a residential building in downtown Beijing has prompted complaints from neighbours living below. Professor Zhang, the villa owner, has been instructed to tear down the illegal building, according to the property managers. (Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP Photo)

This aerial photo taken on March 2, 2023 shows bulldozers working to build high-standard farmlands in Pucheng County, southeast China's Fujian Province. A new round of high-standard farmlands building is underway in Pucheng County in preparation of spring ploughing. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

Since 2003, photographer Sergey Fomin has been shooting Russia’s most attractive natural, historical, and architectural objects from different aircrafts. Photo: “An Explosive Scene”. The 1,486-meter-high Karymskii Volcano in Kamchatka. (Photo by Sergey Fomin)

Architectural photographer Victor Enrich has shared with ArchDaily a series of 88 images — one for every key in the classical piano — exploring the various formal possibilities of the NH Deutscher Kaiser Hotel in Munich, Germany. “I found it beautiful,” says Enrich, “to connect two distinct artistic disciplines such as photography and computer graphics with the piano.” See further illustrations and read a full description of his thought process following the break.

Commissioned by the Province of Friesland, Oak (Onix and Achterbosch Architecture) has developed a road bridge that connects 2 districts of Sneek on either side of the A7 motorway. The bridge was designed for a municipality that wished to establish a new city marker along the motorway. Framework The Department of Public Works, the user of the bridge, stated that it wished to use more wood in its constructions.