Wild Comfort is a new book that sets out to show that the age-old dream of a home in the wilderness needn’t mean compromising on creature comforts. With an introduction by Jim Olson of Olson Kundig (the book includes the practice’s Camp House project), the publication is presented as a compilation of remote but refined architectural design.
Browse the finest remote dwellings in ‘Wild Comfort’
In total, the book includes 30 projects from around the world, all of which are designed to induce some level of envy in the reader. Whether you’re after an island idyll (Peter Braithwaite Studio’s Armstrong Cottage in Ontario), a dwelling in the desert (The Periphery in Boulder, Colorado, by Locus Studio) or a house embedded in the woods (Gonzalo Bardach Arquitectura’s Forest House in Brazil), Wild Comfort has got you covered.
Projects come primarily from the USA, although there’s also a healthy spread from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Latvia and Mexico. Those itching to know more about the process of securing permission to build amidst such stunning surroundings could do with a little more detail – the projects mostly appear as if they have materialised fully formed on their site with little sense of how they got there. A floorplan or site plan or two wouldn’t go amiss, showing how some of these structures literally seem to be threaded through the trees or across rocky shores.
Featured studios include Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, Dekleva Gregorič Architects, Allied8 and Strang, along with excellent photography from the likes of Joe Fletcher and Fernando Guerra. Whether you have a secret valley, private pine forest or your own archipelago in need of a residence or two, Wild Comfort is a mighty fine place to start.
Canyon View Residence, California, Brunner Architecture
Casa Cono, Mexico, by Estudio Atemporal
'Wild Comfort: Contemporary Homes in the Wilderness', Images Publishing, £40, ImagesPublishing.com, @Images_Publishing