Named the “House on the House,” this construction deviates from the norm by using striking geometric shapes to enclose an extra bedroom and bathroom on its second floor. In a neighborhood of small lots, this home sticks out from the rest. Instead of relying on linear construction, the designers created the second floor unit to rest abstractly upon the first floor, all...
Belgian architecture studio B-ILD converted the half-buried shelter into a tiny and unexpected holiday home in the Netherlands. Commissioned by the Belgian agency Famous, the refurbished bunker features an ascetic interior design that draws inspiration from Le Corbusier’s personal log cabin, Cabanon de Vacances. Created as part of Famous’ advertising campaign, this un...
Aptly named The Mill, the house retains the historic character of the abandoned farm structure and the landscape, while quietly adding a new contemporary aesthetic. The renovated rural building emerges from a steep hillside and overlooks views of the valley in the Scottish Borders. WT Architecture has previous experience with transforming old ruins into stunning new h...
The compact one-bedroom unit was designed by architect Chris Pardo, who clad the elegant structure with Corten steel and generous floor-to-ceiling glazing. The light-filled Element 1 prefab was selected as a modern island retreat for a challenging building site with Puget Sound views on Marrowstone Island, Washington. Method Home’s Element 1 was the perfect fit for Ka...
MM++ Architects designed the residence as an open space with few boundaries between the interior and exterior and a roof made from layered palm leaves. The project references South East Asian stilt houses and acts as a visual counterpoint to the neo-Victorian houses surrounding it. The house is located in a suburb district of Saigon, Vietnam, with a mix of high and mi...
Conveniently entitled “Passage of Landscape,” the house allows its inhabitants to feel connected to nature and take in all the beauty of the surrounding greenery, which includes rice fields, lemon trees and Magnolias. Three gate-shaped frames make up the structure of the house, whose configuration is dominated by two passages: one running from south to north on the fi...
But now, thanks to S-AR Architecture and the nonprofit social housing project Comunidad Vivex, the Galváns have their very own two-level, concrete-block house, which could serve as a model for affordable and sustainable housing in Mexico and beyond. An offshoot of S-AR, Comunidad Vivex aims to combat the shortage of high-quality affordable housing in Mexico by helping...
Japanese firm NAAD has unveiled a project with a much different slant. To create Ephemeral House, the team gutted a 100-year-old home and lined nearly every inch of the interior with unfinished plywood for an intentionally rough look. Instead of a popular sleek, polished look, NAAD’s 20-something-year-old client has a temporary home that was designed to look incomplete. ...
The two structures, collectively named La Cápsula, sit opposite each other, each housing different types of spaces - one the work space and the other the living areas. Local studio Noborders Collective designed and construction firm MIISA built the addition for a client that didn’t want the new structures to obstruct or alter the green space of the garden. The existin...
Partially buried into the earth to respect the natural topography, the roofline of the larch-and-stone-clad building sits almost flush with the grassy landscape, making the home nearly imperceptible from afar. The low-lying two-bedroom home was constructed with natural materials and faced with large glazing on the north and west sides to overlook dramatic seaside views. ...
Located on the coastline of Cape Tainaron, Greece, the Tainaron Blue Retreat is wonderful guesthouse with plenty of history. The architects have restored the monument with dedicated care, preserving its thick stonewalls and adding some extra features that increased its original charm. The Tainaron Blue Retreat rises from a crag overlooking the Greek coastline of Cape ...
Architecture firm Naturehumaine achieved a harmonious balance between architecture and landscape with the Bolton Residence, a minimalist country home that overlooks Quebec’s rugged mountain environment. The house comprises two stacked parts: a concrete-and-wood plinth below a cantilevered steel-clad structure that’s raised in the air to create the illusion of it floating...
Completed by Australian studio Moloney Architects, the single family home is sited on a large sloping site near the city of Ballarat. The modern building is made up of geometric volumes that cantilever into the landscape for dramatic views into Ballarat below. Moloney Architects oriented the Invermay House towards the south to frame the stunning city views. The home i...
Set in the Bretagne countryside in France, the black-stained timber frame houses an oyster farm and a temporary dwelling for an oyster farmer. The green-roofed structure was created with a high attention to detail that belies its simple design. The charming oyster shack is divided into two parts: an oyster hangar and the living spaces comprising the kitchen, dining ro...
Designed by Voorsanger Architects, the Wildcat Ridge Residence is located at an elevation of 9,200 feet and was created with a minimal environmental footprint—an important design consideration given the fragile but challenging surroundings. The house stretches north to south along the longitudinal parallel of the crest of the mountain ridge and is clad in uninterrupted f...
Designed by Polish firm KWK Promes, the Autofamily House is an experimental family home that explores a new entrance typology in suburban residences. The removal of traditional boundaries between living space and garage created an opportunity for this unique multifunctional decorated space designed for both pedestrians and eco-friendly automobiles. Access to the 990-s...
Designed by Coates Design Architecture, the 2,200-square-foot home makes the most of its modest budget with an elegant design that blends natural elements with modern architecture. In keeping with the design studio’s motto of “responsible architecture,” the environmentally sensitive Olympia Residence was built with radiant floor heating, passive ventilation, and natural ...
Designed by Yuusuke Karasawa Architects, the S-House is a glazed, split-level home that appears to offer zero privacy to its inhabitants. Located in Saitama, the 104-square-meter house was built with a complex and layered interior design that evokes M.C. Escher’s work ‘Relativity.’ The generously glazed S-House design is a continuation of architect Yuusuke Karasawa’s ...
Covered with corrugated Corten steel, this cluster of small angular buildings was designed by Imbue Design to evoke the desert’s dusty and rugged character. The minimalist dwellings keep the attention on the landscape: large glazed openings frame unparalleled panoramic views of some of the most impressive rock formations in the world. The Capitol Reef Dwellings compri...
As part of a big data experiment, Hemnet analyzed over 200 million clicks on the most popular houses on their site. After crunching the numbers and boiling down trends, Hemnet tasked architecture firm Tham & Videgård to transform that data into the Hemnet House, Sweden’s statistically “most sought after home.” The Hemnet House is an innovative example of data-driven d...
Portuguese design studio PROD Arquitectura designed this development as a "house with four houses" with almost invisible borders between the structures. The house, with volumes organized around a core, was built for a family of four in the north of Portugal. Four individual structures enter into a dialogue that create a cohesive whole in which space flows smoothly acr...
The new structure, designed by Aslak Haanshuus Arkitekter, connects the three volumes into an airy, daylit retreat and creates a rustic living space worthy of a modern day Viking. The owner wanted to preserve parts of the three existing cabins and incorporate them into a much bigger space made up of two old volumes and a new addition. In order to create a consistent s...
Designed by Seattle architecture firm Balance Associates, the two-story holiday home is primarily built of timber and concrete and topped with a metal shed roof. The house is set into a hillside and is designed to optimize solar orientation and panoramic views of the Cascade Mountains in Washington. Built along an east-west axis, the Nahahum Cabin partially submerges ...
The tiny building is elevated from the ground, sitting on wooden columns, and was conceived and built by Nozomi Nakabayashi, who recently graduated from the AA's Hooke Park architecture school in Dorset, in in South West England. The home was built using a mix of materials such cork, locally-sourced Western Red Cedar timber for cladding and reclaimed materials for the...
The architects tore down the entire partitioned interior of the house and established an open-plan living space nestled behind plywood screens to create a comfortable space for modern day living. The 87-square-meter house was originally built as a traditional Japanese home, with numerous partitions that made it incompatible with the modern-day lifestyle. The architect...
Its dark exterior walls and absence of large windows contrast the stylistically chaotic surroundings. The architects designed it as a volume that favors "proportion instead of decorative features and urban planning instead of a building form." The building’s exterior walls are sprayed with a polyurethan layer that gives it a stealth-like quality that, because of the d...
Located in the coastal city of Mar de Ajó, the RM House is award-winning architects Alric Galindez latest design. Its long, glazed structure is the result of prioritizing the surrounding views, which overlook the Atlantic Ocean and the grassy Pampa's landscape. Because the home is floating above the ground, it has minimal impact on the landscape. The stunning RM House...
Dubbed 'Cabana Floripa', it was built by a Uruguayan visual artist called Jaime, who created his recycled mansion out of demolished houses in the area. The resourceful Latino said he started building it by intuition and to give a new life to old wood, glass bottles, ceramic tiles, broken mirrors and other 'garbage' he found. The Floripa cabin is located on the north o...
Designed in a linear scheme, the open and airy home is nestled between two extending brick walls, which create a private yard space for the family to enjoy. Capped with glass walls, the Esse House blurs the lines between outdoors and indoors, giving the family a private usage of the Italian countryside. The director of the adjacent winery, his wife, two sons and elder...
Built to bolster the area’s thriving water sports activities, the timber-clad structure brings a host of multi-use areas under a grass-covered roof. The leisure facility brings changing rooms, storage and classrooms for the busy waterfront area. The boathouse sits on a grassy knoll that overlooks the lake, giving visitors an option to enjoy outdoor activities as well ...
This particular space, brought to us by visualizers at BIM Group, goes above and beyond in proving just that. Of special note in this home is the preference for a variety of natural materials that, while of course shaped and molded for use, are largely allowed to shine through in their basic state. From wood to marble to actual plants, the natural highlights in this home...
Sustainable residential developers Dwell NW commissioned the architects to design an ultra green home for an up-and-coming pedestrian-friendly neighborhood across the water from Seattle. To achieve 5-star Built Green certification, a voluntary green building code for master builders of King and Snohomish counties in Washington state, Medici incorporated a range of energy...
Located in the Dutch village after the project was named, this extraordinary home was designed around a long, floor-to-ceiling window that blurs the boundaries between the inside and the outside. This wall not only floods the home with tons of natural light but it provides a constantly changing view into the pristine rural landscape. Barend Koolhaas worked for OMA and...
Built in the bucolic landscape of Radovljica, Slovenia, the Simple House was designed by scapelab as a modern take on the archetypal Slovenian farmhouse. The home was constructed with a prefab timber frame and topped with solar panels to lower its environmental footprint and maintenance costs. Scapelab clad the Simple House’s basic pitched-roof volume with a contempor...
So an architect hired Chevalier Architectes to work within the existing framework to create a bespoke new luxury home with a killer view. Hit the jump for the finer details and get inspired to renovate your own mountain mansion. Achieving a finely tuned balance between a contemporary and rustic aesthetic, not to mention material sustainability, Chevalier Architectes u...
The Philadelphia-based firm transformed a former pickle factory in the city’s Fishtown neighborhood into a contemporary and near net-zero energy live-work space. The adaptive reuse project includes many energy-saving elements, from solar panels to low-flow plumbing fixtures. The 1880s warehouse was converted into a modern live-work studio for fine arts photographer Ja...
