This year, our 'houses of the year' share an important characteristic. Striking and inspirational they may undoubtedly be - but they are also pushing the design envelope in a, possibly, unexpected way.
Our three 'Houses of the Year' are all built using earth construction
Our annual Wallpaper* Design Awards celebrate one of the many ways in which we can sustainably diversify building design and construction: working with earth. Once dismissed as ‘backwards’ and unfashionable, building with earth is making a strong comeback. Readily accessible, endlessly adaptable, and honed through generational wisdom, this construction method has many iterations across the world. Polished or textured, geometric or organic, today’s earth buildings look as aspirational as the finest, conventionally built 21st-century villas.
Sombra de Santa Fe by DUST Architects
On the surface, rural New Mexico isn’t the most prepossessing place to build a house. Not only are there extremes of temperature, but the protected environment needs to be carefully managed. This new house, Sombra de Santa Fe, by Tucson-based Dust Architects embraces these challenges, using the environment as a creative springboard from which to launch a refined and sensitive response to a client brief.
Bin Nouh's Courtyard House by Shahira Fahmy
While working on the Dar Tantora hotel in AlUla, Egyptian architect Shahira Fahmy received a call from a long-term client, whose family is known for their large-scale projects across the Middle East, and who wanted to turn a ruin in the old town into a home. ‘He told me, you won’t understand anything unless you visit,’ she says. ‘No drawings can explain what is there.’ The site – a void formed from the remnants of two former houses – was known locally as Beit Bin Nouh, named after the family that had used the space as an open courtyard for gatherings.
Rammed Earth House by Tuckey Design Studio
Tuckey Design Studio’s Rammed Earth House, in rural Wiltshire, was commissioned back in 2019 as a residence that would draw on the owners’ love of British farmhouses and the countryside. The site, a disused former brickworks, offered a ripe opportunity to experiment with ancient earth building methods to bring them into the modern age.