Book: New Natural Home

The Hind House in Berkshire, designed by John Pardey, is built on stilts and seems to ’float’ above the river. This not only means it benefits from great views towards to the river, but serves as a barrier to the very real risk of flooding (Image credit: TBC)

A useful research companion for anybody looking to build green, as much as a lovely selection of great new houses all over the globe, the New Natural Home is one of Thames & Hudson’s latest publications, hitting the stores this March.

Written by frequent Wallpaper* contributor Dominic Bradbury and with beautiful imagery courtesy of photographer Richard Powers, this book looks at ways to help us weave ecology in every residential build and eventually, our everyday lives.

Neatly organised in five chapters that take you through the key decisions one needs to make when designing with ecology in mind – from advice for the design and building phases, to lighting issues, material options, the connection to the outdoors and specific sustainable solutions – the publication is a great handbook for combining practical with creative thinking in an environmentally friendly context.

The international selection ranges from hot-weather country houses like BR House in Rio de Janeiro by Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan to new builds in colder environs such as the Rauch House in Austria by a team of Martin Rauch and Roger Boltshauer; the featured Marie Short House by Australian iconic architect Glenn Murcutt is certainly one of our favourites.

Good design should also be eco-friendly and the New Natural Home certainly argues for that approach; not forgetting that there is plenty of space within ‘sensible’, for ‘stylish’.

house built by architect Glenn Murcutt — Although this house was built by architect Glenn Murcutt for client Marie Short, Murcutt fell so in love with the house he later bought it as his own country escape, extending the building to suit his needs and those of his family

holiday by home architect Leo Marmo — With its extreme temperatures the Coachella valley in California may not be everyone’s ideal as a country retreat. However this is where architect Leo Marmol chose to build a holiday home - the first in a sequence of prefabricated Marmol Radziner houses

Interior of Marmol&rsquo;s desert house — The modular formation of Marmol’s desert house includes a series of verandas and decks, with canopies and projecting roofs that shade and protect the interiors.

Rauch House in Vorarlberg, Austria by architect Martin Rauch — For the Rauch House in Vorarlberg, Austria, architect Martin Rauch used earth to creat all the surfaces and finishes, inside and outside

The vertical garden and roof garden at the Bricault House in Los Angeles — The Bricault House in Los Angeles is a house of many gardens. The vertical garden and roof garden form part of the eco-aware strategy that runs throughout the design of the house. Electricity is provided by photovaltaic panels on the roof.

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).