Top 25 houses of 2025, picked by architecture director Ellie Stathaki

We do love a good house; and our top houses of 2025 show just what an excellent year this past one was for the typology. There are modernist architecture classics reborn and new builds with an attitude, as well as some magnificent sustainable architecture among them, too.

Top 25 houses of 2025, picked by Wallpaper’s Ellie Stathaki

The following residences not only stand out for their innovative architectural solutions or eye-catching designs. They also feature among them some of Wallpaper's most-read stories, flagging how far a truly striking home can go. Feast your eyes on the top 25 houses of 2025.

Capsule Retreat, Lebanon

Peeking out of the coniferous forests of Mount Lebanon – in the eponymous Mediterranean country – the round roof of a concrete structure hovers enticingly above the leafy foliage. Its volume is bold, geometric and crisply defined, and carries an intense formal articulation that suggests careful planning; embedded in the region's ancient landscape of sandstone outcrops and alpine villages, it points to its architects’ deep sense of materiality, and offers an intriguing, purposeful 'incompleteness'. Welcome to Capsule Retreat, the newest residential project by dynamic practice East Architecture Studio.

Wexler house, USA

The Wexler house that seminal Palm Springs modernist architecture master Donald Wexler designed in 1954 navigated a certain tension, as both an aspirational design laboratory and a functional family home, which later fell into disrepair. It would take a dedicated owner half a century later to fully realise the architect's creative intention. Since purchasing the property in 2007, Daniel Patrick Giles, a Palm Springs- and Los Angeles-based fashion and beauty industry veteran, who in 2022 launched Perfumehead fragrances and was named to the Wallpaper* USA 400 in 2024, has examined and restored the potential of Wexler's ideals. The architecture can now speak for itself and honour its history.

Stealth House, Japan

This Tokyo home sits mysteriously behind a monolithic concrete façade, designed to hide a secret urban retreat. The new project, designed by Apollo Architects and aptly named ‘Stealth House’. For all the boldness of its brutalist architecture exterior, inside, the house's Japanese minimalism and refined materiality make for a truly elevated, yet discreet private residence.

Essaouira villa, Morocco

This minimalist Moroccan villa was crafted to cater to seemingly opposing needs – the owner's desire for a calm retreat, but also a space that can come alive with dinner parties and vibrant conversation when he’s entertaining creative friends who visit from all over the world. It was a tall order, but one that French-Moroccan architect Othmane Bengebara pulled off. The resulting private house, DDAR, set in the north African country's region of Essaouira, balances ease with poise, and was conceived by Bengebara as an ‘observatory of time and nature’.

Housestead, UK

This experimental UK home was designed as a ‘laboratory for a living prototype’. Housestead, designed by Sanei + Hopkins (and also owned by the couple, who are partners in work and life), was conceived as the personal residence of studio co-founders Amir Sanei and Abigail Hopkins, and their family of seven. The project is idyllically set within the Suffolk Coast & Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), situated within the grounds of a generous, 400-acre estate.

Compact House, Ghana

Black houses are unusual in Ghana. It’s a colour associated with death, melancholy and harshness, so Compact House, located on a sleepy, residential street in the capital city of Accra, naturally stands out. Still, it is a project that its author, architect Alice Asafu-Adjaye, has noticed stops people in their tracks – in a good way. ‘Black buildings, let alone houses, are pretty much unheard of in Ghana,’ she says. ‘People rarely dress all in black, unless in mourning.’ During construction, it became a talking point as workers on the estate would walk up to see the ‘black house’. Where the initial response was tinged with alarm and suspicion, they softened into curiosity and marvelling at how so much (pool, garden, parking) could be done on such a small plot size and still pack a punch in comparison to the larger houses on the estate.’

Casa La Paz, Mexico

For Mexico-based architect Ludwig Godefroy, a seemingly straightforward commission for a ‘house with a garden’, is never just as simple as it might sound. His past works, including sculptural, brutalist residences such as the fortress-like Casa Alferez (W* April 2023) and the cool and open Casa Mérida (W* Dec 2019), often take a dramatic, highly textural, almost theatrical approach. It is a description of his work that he agrees with. ‘I believe architecture has to wake up emotions,’ he says. The latest addition to his expanding portfolio of highly expressive buildings is a private retreat in Mexico’s Baja California, Casa La Paz. Unconventional and eye-catching, it bears all the hallmarks of Godefroy’s idiosyncratic attitude to architecture.

Dua Villa, India

A short boat ride from Mumbai, Dua Villa, in Alibaug, is the perfect getaway in all seasons, from the monsoon’s torrential rain in July to the scorching high temperatures through May. Built by Architecture Brio, an award-winning firm with offices in Mumbai and Rotterdam, the home was designed as a refuge from the city throughout the year. The house and grounds – five acres of gardens designed by Kunal Maniar & Associates – were conceived as one, with water features and a swimming pool beautifully enmeshed in the spacious home. For the owners, a couple with three teenage children, the villa’s chunky brick walls set up a cosy enclave, sheltering them from the unpredictable weather. ‘Our clients wanted to be able to get away from the city and feel immersed in this landscape, while still feeling cocooned from the elements,’ says architect Shefali Balwani.

House in Côte d’Ivoire

Thirty years ago, Ivorian architect Guillaume Koffi discovered the coastal town of Assinie-Mafia. A land of exceptional natural beauty, with a lush green forest canopy and 18km of sandy shoreline stretching along the Gulf of Guinea, it was a haven of calm around 80km south east of Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city, Abidjan. Drawn by its distinct topography, marked by the languid waters of Aby Lagoon opening into the tropical waves of the Atlantic, Koffi bought 5,000 sq m of land in the 2000s. The architect’s first objective was to establish a ‘foothold’ in Assinie-Mafia, with the longer term aim of developing a weekend retreat there. ‘I didn’t build the house all in one go,’ he says. ‘The construction was spread out in four main steps.’

Haus Anton II, Germany

Walking past this picturesque timber dwelling in Germany, you might not immediately realise its radical nature. Haus Anton II in the countryside outside Augsburg is not only a labour of love by local architect Manfred Lux and Antxon Cánovas of CÁNOVAS ARQUITECTURA but also a striking piece of wood architecture, challenging the norm in its field for its purism and boundary-pushing approach. The home was born out of Lux's explorations with timber building. A passionate proponent of handcraft and architecture that both draws on traditional building techniques and goes against the grain of current trends, he created the home initially as a case study for what can be achieved by building - only - with wood. When approached by his clients, a pair with a particular interest in sustainable architecture and healthy living, the project became a real-life commission. Now set in a quaint orchard in the Bavarian countryside, it is the current owners' dream home.

Pine Heath, UK

‘When a client buys a house, I suggest they try living in it for a while before making any changes, in order to experience the space and get a feel for how they want to live in it,’ says London-based architect Louis Hagen Hall. This was the case for his latest project, Pine Heath, a radical redesign of a modernist architecture townhouse in the north London suburb of Hampstead. What’s dramatic about the project is not its looks, appealing as they may be. The design was neither about making the property look slavishly faithful to its original state nor about producing an ultra-contemporary interior that might feel outlandish in its midcentury shell. The 224 sq m home offers a delicate balance of old and new, but more importantly, it upgrades a poorly performing structure, in terms of energy use, to impressive 21st-century standard.

Bridge House, India

Indian architecture practice Wallmakers is known for setting itself improbable tasks – from creating a subterranean home on a rockface (Chuzhi House), to building a residence using 6,200 discarded toys. So it is no surprise that, when asked to design a home and bridge to connect two parcels of farmland for a client in Karjat, Maharashtra, he should suggest combining the two. The result is Bridge House, an inhabitable 100ft suspension bridge that hovers above a spillway from a dam, its thatch and mud cladding making it disappear into the landscape.

Dreamer / Lil’ Dreamer, USA

Robert Stone aims to create architecture that expands beyond the realm of traditional design ideals. When working on a new house design, he always explores fresh possibilities without limitations, looking for angles that not only challenge the status quo but turn it on its head. His inspiration finds its roots in its locale and Southern California culture, from Chicano to modernist. ‘Dreamer / Lil’ Dreamer’ isn't about a client or the architect, but endeavours to address the current ethos of its territory, while creating connections that might resonate with a wider art and design audience.

Woodstock House, Belgium

When the owners of Woodstock House first approached Brussels studio BC Architects & Studies & Materials, they asked for a sustainable spin on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House – an off-grid home that would hover above a river and blend into its woodland surroundings. While this Belgian vacation home takes cues from the terraces and stone towers of the 1930s Pennsylvania classic, it has a material palette and lightness that merge far more naturally into the landscape than the concrete-heavy original.

Berkeley Hills, USA

A couple bought a midcentury home designed in 1956 by Chinese-American architect Roger Lee for noted biochemist Clinton Ballou and his wife and professional collaborator, Dorothy. The two-level house in San Francisco, with its simple floor plan, warm timber-panelled walls, and stunning views across the bay, was virtually untouched; The Ballou’s cherished the house so much that they lived in it for more than 50 years. For help with the renovation, they called Casper Mork-Ulnes, an award-winning, Norwegian-born architect with offices in both San Francisco and Oslo. Though Mork-Ulnes’s firm was well-versed in historic projects, particularly Victorian conversions, this would be his first time working in the shadow of a modernist. ‘I was immediately a little bit frightened, because it was such a great house,’ the architect admits.

Catching Sun House, UK

Set amongst the Victorian housing stock of Walthamstow, East London, the Catching Sun House transforms a backland plot into a secluded green oasis, carefully orientated to bring sunlight into the heart of the living space. Designed for his own use by architect Mark Shaw of Studioshaw, the house occupies the site of an abandoned garage, with several planning permissions in place to transform it into a private house.

Rumah Harumi, Indonesia

A new Bali house peeks through the Indonesian island's rich, tropical foliage, nestled in the woods between open rice fields and Mount Agung. The project, titled Rumah Harumi, is the brainchild of locally based practice Earth Lines Architects, a studio firmly engaged with – and committed to – the region's craft traditions.

Malibu beach house, USA

Interior designer Pamela Shamshiri had two different stars in mind for her recent reimagining of a Malibu beach house: Lina Bo Bardi and James Bond. ‘We wanted it to be Malibu at its most glamorous,’ she says. Luckily, the property itself was not short of cinematic charisma. The narrow, half-acre plot featured three structures, built in the late 1990s, that bookended a garden and a pool. These included a pair of two-storey volumes containing a 5,000 sq ft primary residence and guest suites. From the beach-facing main house, with its broad expanses of windows and low-slung profile, it felt like you could almost touch the Pacific Ocean.

Timbertop, Canada

Across a field of powdery snow lies a minimalist Canadian cabin by Akb Architects; welcome to Timbertop. The four-bedroom home located in Mono, Ontario, was designed for a family that share a love for the outdoors. The structure's single-storey plan was conceived to help with practicality and ease of movement during action-packed getaways. Fittingly, the residence is also equipped with a large mudroom and shoe cubbies, as well as shelves to store seasonal equipment and embrace country life.

My Last Home, Singapore

A Singapore terrace redesign has become the owner's dream 'last home'. The project, titled My Last Home and created by dynamic emerging studio L Architects – a practice featured in our 2024 Wallpaper* Architects Directory – was the complete reimaginging of an existing mid-terrace residence created three decades ago as part of a larger development. Practice founder Lim Shing Hui and her team fully rethought the home into a contemporary interior, brimming with texture, rawness and atmosphere.

Fire Island House, USA

For the clients of this Fire Island house, building it was like coming home. The property stands next to the rustic cottage where the two sisters who commissioned the project spent their childhood summers with their mother. An existing, dilapidated structure on site was slowly decaying and threatened their parent's property; the solution was to acquire it and transform it into their own dream retreat. The pair worked with New York architects Coughlin Scheel on the redesign, headed by Paul Coughlin and Annie Scheel.

Ishahayi Beach House, Nigeria

Ishahayi Beach House offers paradise living on the coast of Nigeria. Located on a barrier island to the south of Lagos, on a stunning strip of its namesake beach, this four-bedroom residence provides uninterrupted views of the Atlantic Ocean. The home was designed by Nigerian architecture firm Studio Contra (which was part of the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2022), and caters for a young client looking to escape the city and enjoy the country's sunny coastline with family and friends. Nestled on its sandy 6,000 sq m plot, the contemporary project was built amid, and is now elegantly framed by, more than 75 mature coconut palms.

Woollahra Village House, Australia

Woollahra Village House’s street façade, featuring traditional sash windows with multiple small panes, is mirrored and updated in the house’s striking new back façade, a grid of four floor-to-ceiling glazed panels that looks like an oversized, archetypal window frame. The architects, Tobias Partners, deliberately raised the garden to allow a magnificent existing Chinese elm to sit undisturbed. This also means that the lush greenery is now at eye level in the main living space, with beautiful oak joinery by Saltwater Joinery providing plenty of storage space in the kitchen and adjoining library.

Donegal House, Ireland

A new house on the Irish Atlantic coast, on Cruit Island in Donegal, takes the bungalow archetype and transforms it into a meticulously laid out retreat that hunkers down in the scrubland on this rocky, dramatic but wind-swept coastline. To the west of the site, a short walk across the headland, is Cruit Island Wild Beach and beyond that is the Atlantic Ocean. More immediately to the east is a sandy beach and a sheltered bay, throughout which can be seen many small rocky islands. The architects are Sosie Pasparakis and Ronan Friel, who set up their studio locally in 2018.

East London house, UK

There is no shortage of work, such as this east London terraced house, for Archmongers, a London practice specialising in residential retrofits: the capital’s streets are lined with Victorian terraces, modern semis and post-war flats crying out for an update, both in looks and in sustainability. This year the studio, founded by Margaret Bursa and Johan Hybschmann in 2013, has completed two drastic renovations: the first, the Scandinavian-inspired Elemental House in Hackney, brought a 1970s split-level house up to contemporary standards; the second, Ray House in nearby Dalston, sees the pair retrofit a Victorian house in a conservation area.