What happens when brutalist and modernist references unite? Coy Yiontis Architects’ Glenblaith house is the answer – a quirky concrete residence in the prestigious Manifold Heights neighbourhood in Victoria, Australia.

Tour Glenblaith, a residence where brutalism and modernism collide

The single-storey residence was designed as a ‘forever home’ for a professional couple. Its façade is smooth, geometric and mysterious, with a timber entry that acts as a moveable screen to slowly unveil its introverted core.

‘The client approached us after following the work of the practice for over ten years,’ explains the firm’s director, George Yiontis. ‘Armed with magazine clippings of our previous projects, there was a clear focus on the courtyard house typology and use of robust, natural materials.

'Concrete and timber were the protagonists in the vision of their new home, integrated with a prominent and lush landscape to satisfy her green thumb and provide a focus in retirement years.'

The home's anchor is the 4.8m oculus, a subtle nod to midcentury design hinting to the fluid curvature of The TWA Flight Center and architect John Lautner’s 1979 Hope Residence. This architectural ode foreshadows the intricate design codes within the rest of the home.

Yiontis notes, ‘The building’s appearance from the street is unassuming but different; the low-lying concrete form is recessed from its fenceless boundary and the lush front yard contrasts the endless stretch of newly volume-built and post-war neighbours with their pitched roofs and fenced, manicured lawns. While conforming to planning guidelines, the house is an anomaly in the streetscape.’

In this context, Glenblaith was conceived to challenge the traditional conventions of suburbia and its landscape. The architecture firm made sure to utilise unorthodox materials and small nooks to keep an element of surprise.

The monolithic concrete columns frame the large atrium-cum-courtyard space, complete with a lily pond, offering a central green utopia with the residence. Beyond this, the house is divided into separate wings; one intimate, one for living and entertaining.

Other unexpected design details include a small alcove in the bedroom, which has been utilised as a desk space, while a window has been artfully barricaded with an intriguing brick pattern, allowing the shadows to dance on the floor below.

Coy Yiontis Architects has redefined suburbia, stepping away from the white-picket-fenced, cookie-cutter mould, and presenting a new benchmark for living: a vibrant garden house that doesn’t shout or demand attention, but is slowly discovered and enjoyed.

coyyiontis.com.au

The aspirational charms of remote living are laid bare in gestalten’s new monograph, Northern Exposure. Although the blurb promises a ‘shift away from rustic clichés toward an architecture of profound ecological responsiveness and sensory clarity,’ we all know that monographs like this exist to soothe the existential angst of everyday life by transporting us to a warm, wood-lined cocoon perched on the edge of a pristine wilderness.

In this respect, the book does not disappoint. Across 32 projects, the reader is treated to sylvan retreats, back-to-basics construction and neo-vernacular experiments. Some will be familiar from our pages, like Bishop McDowell’s Lawrencetown House on the Nova Scotian coast and Quinzhee Architecture’s Chez Léon retreat in Charlevoix, and you’ll certainly recognise many of the featured firms, which include Omar Gandhi, Pierre Thibault and Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple.

When assembled in the context of a monograph, the FOMO is almost overwhelming, with endless sylvan vistas framed by picture windows, kitchen countertops that overlook rocky shores and decks beneath dark skies and wide horizons.

The editors describe the featured projects as representing a ‘shift away from rustic clichés toward an architecture of profound ecological responsiveness and sensory clarity,’ and in practice this comes across as a new form of rural minimalism. It’s not an architecture of white walls and rough concrete, but of natural materials, modest proportions and a desire to be more attuned to the landscape instead of dominating it.

Often the sense of splendid isolation is an exaggerated one, created by careful siting and orientation, bolstered by the photographic framing, be it on the ground or from the air. Nevertheless, these contextual images give a sense of the scale of the Canadian landscape, emphasising how important it is for rural architecture to tread as lightly as possible on the surrounding environment.

Northern Exposure: The New Canadian Cabin, €50 / £45 / $75, Gestalten.com, @Gestalten

Communing with its tropical jungle context, this new patio house in Costa Rica was conceived as an experimentation on its time-honed typology. The project, created by Mexican architect Manuel Cervantes for a private client, is a personal home but also an architectural exploration, seeking to blend the warm comforts of a residence with the leafy landscape of its setting – all, centred on the idyllic waters of a pool set right at the heart of the design.

Tour this sculptural patio house in Costa Rica

True to its patio identity, the house is arranged around a generous central courtyard. This open-air space becomes the heart of the home, connecting physically and visually different parts of the project, from creating a flow between al fresco rooms and circulation areas to bringing them all together around its blue swimming pool.

The ancient Roman impluvium provided ample inspiration, Cervantes explains: 'The courtyard acts as a climatic, spatial, and social condenser, collecting light, air, reflections, and human activity at the centre of the composition.'

The home's internal layout is organised around this central space – each 'wing' housing a distinct family of functions, and each of these contained within an interconnected, yet somewhat independent, 'pavilion.' So, rather than journeying between rooms, the residents are invited to cross thresholds and transition through different internal experiences as they inhabit the residence.

Spanning over 400 sq m in total, the project includes two generous living spaces, housed in two discrete volumes placed opposite each other. The other two 'pavilions' contain private areas – five large bedrooms with an en suite bathroom each. Everything is accommodated on a single ground level, with just an underground garage tucked under one of the volumes.

The structure's tactile textures – Pacific cedar, Nicaraguan brick, and chukum plaster – not only bring an organic feel to this very contemporary house but also connect it to its setting; they are all local materials and building techniques, perfected through centuries of indigenous skills. It is one more way for this private, 21st-century home, to be linked meaningfully to its green, natural island setting.

The architect writes: 'The project seeks to recover certain spatial values deeply rooted in Latin American domestic architecture. The courtyard, the shaded corridor, the thick wall, the intermediate space, and the constant presence of nature are reinterpreted through a contemporary architectural language. The objective is not nostalgia, but continuity; not the reproduction of historical forms, but the preservation of relationships between climate, culture, and habitation.'

And while a swimming pool at its heart might scream 'luxury' in some settings, here, the feature feels organic and entirely of its place. The architect adds: 'The pool is conceived not as an isolated amenity but as an extension of the central court itself, a reflective plane that amplifies light and reinforces the collective character of the house.'

'Emerging from this surface, two inhabitable pyramids introduce a sculptural dimension to the composition. These elements function simultaneously as landscape, architecture, and infrastructure, blurring conventional distinctions between object and building.'

A new waterfront house in Miami Beach exemplifies the region’s sun and sea lifestyle. Designed by KODA (Kean Office for Design and Architecture), a local practice set up by architect Wesley Kean, the Pine Tree Residence enjoys its own private water frontage, creating a sanctuary away from the hustle of downtown and the densely arranged residential context.

Explore this new Miami waterfront house

Kean and his team have divided the 6,350 sq. ft residence into a series of zones, starting with the public/private street frontage, then moving through into an internal garden courtyard before leading out onto the rear deck. This sequence of space not only creates an interior realm for the client but helps cross breezes filter from the water through the entire house.

Arranged on an east-west axis, the house is set across two floors. The ground (first) floor has a processional entrance that rises up from street level and the two-car garage, beneath one of two oversailing bedrooms wings to the main entrance. This living, dining and lounge area is the heart of the house, flanked by glazed walls that open onto the outdoor rear terrace.

A separate family room also has direct access to this terrace, along with an outdoor kitchen and the pool area, beyond which lies the waterfront. Upstairs, the twin bedroom wings wrap around this internal landscape, which is densely planted with tropical specimens to create a rich backdrop.

‘Rather than orienting every space outward to the water, the design balances expansive views with a quiet interior landscape that anchors daily life,’ say the architects, ‘This approach creates a layered living experience where architecture, nature, and family life converge around a shared central garden.’

The ‘west bedroom wing’ contains three ensuite bedrooms as well as a shared balcony, utility room and ‘loft’ seating area (separate staff accommodation is located downstairs adjacent to the garage). A corridor links the two wings, past the staircase, to the principal suite, which incorporates extensive wardrobe space, a private waterfront balcony and direct access to a study/media room (that can also double up as another bedroom).

Downstairs, there is also a separate outdoor courtyard on the west side of the plot, accessible immediately upon entering the house – this adds to the sense of a continuous relationship between architecture and landscape. It also helps orientate the visitor to the house, with views of the water beyond and the sense of the accommodation contained within the upper levels.

‘The courtyard becomes both threshold and destination, an outdoor room that welcomes guests while orienting them within the spatial organization of the home,’ say KODA.

KODAMiami.com, @KODA_Miami

They say dogs look like their owners. But what about houses? When Madeleine Blanchfield Architects was approached to craft a residence for an artist and his family, the studio leaned into sculpture to mould a contemporary Australian house on the outskirts of Sydney. Raw and rooted in its hillside context, the building is cubic and angular, with echoes of brutalist architecture, but softened by locally sourced, earthy-toned Krause ‘Bronte’ bricks and oak, and is devoid of finishes.

Step inside a sculptural house in Australia

Sculptor Aaron Crothers worked with the architect to create the three-storey house that evokes an artwork itself – and is fittingly titled 'Sculpted' – nodding to the owner’s work in ceramic and timber. Collaborating closely with his architect, Crothers even added the personalised finishing touch, carving the house number into a raw brick before it was laid within the wall.

‘The main conceptual principle was to build a home with zero superfluous layers,’ says practice director Madeleine Blanchfield. ‘The project explores materiality in its rawest form while taking on board our core values of solar-passive design, rigorous planning and finessed detailing, while delivering the same joie de vivre we seek in all our work.’

The team was sensitive to the site's context too. The intention was to create a space that drew on its location (the ancestral home of the Cammeraygal People of the Eora Nation) while also acknowledging neighbouring buildings. Blanchfield explains: ‘The home is immersed in the native landscape and [gives the feeling of] living outdoors when opened up. Light floods in from all directions throughout the day.’

The residence is accessed from the ground level. The first floor hosts the kitchen, equipped with a pink ‘Patagonia’ honed quartzite island and bench, as well as the dining and living areas. A second lounge to the south showcases the building's high ceilings and houses a monolithic concrete fireplace at its core. A terrace stretches out from this part, shaded by the canopy of a tree, the sun trickling through the leaves occasionally to cast golden beams across the interiors.

The concrete floor acts as a structural foundation, anchoring the building to the ground, while the brick walls are exposed, bearing the house's 'bones'. ‘It is very unusual for the slab to be the finished floor, and there is no room for error,' says Blanchfield. ‘After the pour, the wind blew gum leaves onto the concrete in the girls’ bedrooms. Nature’s accidental marks became akin to a ceramicist’s intentional stamping process, and are embraced as part of the house’s story.’

The sculptural touches don’t end there. Each interior furnishing is a considered choice – from the Michel Boyer brutalist coffee table to a vintage ‘Le Bambole’ B+B Italia sofa. A Max Lamb lounge chair, an ‘Albireo’ sofa from De La Espada, and a daybed by Skupa finish the living room.

The garage has become home to Crothers’ sculpture studio, a place for him to hone his craft, such as his new ‘Interconnected’ series of stoneware ceramic sculptures. This entire residential design is a thoughtful example of how a house can reflect not only its context or a sole architect's formal experimentation, but also the person who resides there. Sculpted House perfectly echoes the creative, collaborative spirit that birthed it.

madeleineblanchfield.com

The ocean breeze from Tuscany’s Romito Coast cloaks the Castel Sonnino in a mysterious veil. The building’s origins date back to the 16th century when the Medici family built a watchtower to overlook and protect the town of Livorno. After centuries as a military garrison, the castle finally became a residence at the end of the 1800s.

Tour this restored Italian castle

At the time, Baron Sidney Sonnino was looking for a summer home that allowed for secluded intimacy with the sea and its surrounding context. The Italian statesman fell in love with the location and decided the watchtower would be his eponymous home – he now rests here forever, his tomb located in a natural cave overlooking the cliffs.

After Sonnino’s passing, the castle remained closed for years – until now. A recent restoration led by Tono architectural and interior design studio has revived the mysterious coastal property.

The project, which was officially completed in 2025, was spearheaded by the Florence- and Livorno-based studio that wanted to give the windswept walls a new lease of life. His aim? To reimagine the castle through a contemporary lens.

The exterior remains historic. Perched on a hill, the building's façade offers textural details of stone, lime and travertine. However, beneath its regal, period shell, its interior is far from dated. The Italian design studio carefully tiptoed between old and new, restoring the existing Venetian terrazzo and marble flooring, and repairing the bastion, from where guards would once have watched out for enemies.

The sea is visible from every room. Its lapis lazuli shades offer organic inspiration for the internal colour palette, seamlessly blending the interior and exterior. Windows frame the views, while the space is accessorised with carefully selected antiques and custom-made furniture.

The castle’s restoration has reignited its mysterious and whimsical quality, adding energy to its long-overlooked spaces to bring Castel Sonnino into the 21st century.

tono-design.com

This lakeside retreat's authors, Marie-Claude Hamelin and Loukas Yiacouvakis of yh2 architecture, have long experience of building in the Potton region of Québec. The architectural design studio, which was founded in 1994, takes a workshop-led approach, minimising the number of projects it takes on in order to dedicate itself to the holistic scope of each individual building, regardless of scale or programme. The award-winning studio has also worked in India, but its speciality is creating residential works that feel embedded in their surroundings.

Explore a lakeside retreat on the shores of Lake Memphremagog

The Counter-Slope House is a case in point. Set on a sloping site in a prime location on the shores of Lake Memphremagog, the house is embedded in the hillside, with a multi-functional windowless basement (containing stores, a gym and a cinema room) set beneath an expansive ground floor.

Here you’ll find an open-plan living area, with floor-to-ceiling glazing that takes advantage of the sloping site to make the room feel immersed in the forests at the water’s edge. With polished stone floors and exposed timber beams, one half of this floor is given over to living, with the other half occupied by the main bedroom suite. The staircase bisects the two areas, while the lake-facing façade is edged with a generous terrace.

The terrace includes a spa and dining area, with the cantilevered upper floor providing a sheltered courtyard in the heart of the plan. The upper floor is also the entrance level, given the way the site slopes away from the access road, with a bridge reaching across to a glazed entrance hall adjoining the stairwell.

There’s a separate deck up here (the ceiling of the living space below), from where there are uninterrupted views of the lake. A butterfly-roofed structure houses three bedrooms, two of which double up as offices when the house isn’t fully occupied.

According to the designers, ‘the project unfolds as a response to the dramatic nature of the site, an attempt at respectful coexistence with the expressive qualities of the terrain’. Unusually, the house doesn’t reveal itself all at once, with the roof of the main volume serving as what the architects call a ‘belvedere’, a space that is ‘threshold, reception area, and visual vanishing point’. It creates a rare horizontal space in a crowded, steep wooded site, a place to pause and contemplate the landscape.

Internal joinery is finished in white oak, while the exterior is clad in natural cedar, which will weather as the house ages. The combination of unusual vantage points and close integration with nature throughout the living spaces create ‘an architectural meditation on landscape’.

‘[The Counter-Slope House] questions how architecture can inhabit a site not as an object, but as a condition for experiencing place,’ say Hamelin and Yiacouvaki. ‘[It is] an architecture of subtraction that reveals more than it imposes.’

yh2architecture.com

Designed by architect John Lautner in 1962, in the Los Angeles suburb of Beverly Crest, the instantly recognisable Sheats-Goldstein Residence has long played a starring role not only in architecture history books, but also in popular culture (from The Big Lebowski to Helmut Newton photographs). Originally commissioned by the Sheats family, the house and estate were acquired in 1972 by businessman and basketball fan James Goldstein, who, recognising its importance, bequeathed it to LACMA in 2016.

Explore the Sheats-Goldstein Residence by John Lautner

The modernist architecture fabric's longevity and the site's continuous functionality and health owe much to Kristopher Conner and James Perry, of LA firm Conner + Perry, who have overseen works and designed additions there since 2015 (both had worked for Lautner's associate Duncan Nicholson, who continued working at the property following Lautner's death in 1994).

Putting their intimate knowledge of the estate to good use, the pair not only worked on the restoration of the main residence, but also completed the most recent phase of the ongoing entertainment complex project, known as Club James, which is tucked underneath the estate's infinity tennis court on an adjacent site bought by Goldstein.

It now complements the residential element perfectly, providing users with a fully functioning nightclub, including a VIP room/library, offices for the owner and his assistants, an outdoor terrace with dining and kitchen facilities, and a pool and spa.

Conner and Perry are becoming the go-to architects for Lautner restoration, having recently completed the refresh of another of the modernist's masterpieces from the early 1980s, Lautner's Castle, a private home in California.

‘What Lautner understood, and what working on the Sheats-Goldstein house proves every day, is that great architecture isn't a finished object. It's a living idea,' Perry says. ‘We've been privileged to be part of that conversation and the continuously evolving work.'

conner-perry.com

On the crest of the forested slopes that form the suburbs of Nova Lima, a town in the south-eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, sits Xingu House, the most accomplished private residential project to date from Tetro Arquitetura. For the studio, based in nearby Belo Horizonte, this was a dream commission, starting with a completely blank slate and a client willing to push boundaries to make a bold statement.

Step inside Xingu House, a contemporary home in Minas Gerais

‘The client initially approached us before even owning the site,' says Tetro's Carlos Maia. ‘He asked us to help him find a very special plot with abundant nature in Nova Lima. Together, we visited a number of options and eventually found this site.' The 8,000 sq m plot was occupied by an old, rundown house. The bulk of the original structure was demolished, but some key elements, such as the garden walls that divided the landscape into terraces, were retained, thus ensuring the new house felt embedded in its plot from the outset.

Above all, the new owners sought a house with a dramatic presence. ‘The client wanted something genuinely different and innovative,' says Maia. ‘He has a strong interest in sculpture, and the idea of a house with a sculptural presence was part of the brief from day one.' Given the breadth of this request, there was no immediate programmatic solution; instead, the architects continuously iterated the design. ‘We developed it through a long process of study, especially using physical models,' says Maia. ‘We tested how the building could both sit on the existing terraces and keep a direct relationship to the ground, so that daily life could naturally extend outdoors and one could step straight onto the terrain.'

In part, the form was dictated by the available views. ‘There's an extraordinary panorama from the higher portion of the site, looking out to the mountains and hills of Minas Gerais,' Maia says. ‘We wanted the architecture to preserve and amplify that experience.' The result is a house that pinwheels around a central axis, raised up above ground level, with the living and sleeping areas arranged in three wings.

One of these wings, housing the primary suite, is cantilevered over the slope, while the other two touch the ground lightly at the top of the site. This form is supported by six hefty concrete pillars, whose faceted forms give an angular brutality to the ensemble, while also housing key elements, such as the stairs, bathrooms and an lift. The pillars can clearly be seen through the glass façades of the upper level, their ‘inhabitable thickness' anchoring the house to the terrace and the site.

Concrete was the most appropriate choice for the construction, especially given the relationship between the thick, cast-in-situ pillars and the existing stone terraces. The latter have been repurposed as a generous outdoor living space, complete with sitting and dining areas, a kitchen, two reflecting ponds and a swimming pool. A grotto embedded in the existing walls is now the wine and cheese cellar.

Despite the effortless appearance of the new house above its weathered site, Tetro faced numerous obstacles during construction. ‘The pillars are highly complex, organic geometries, developed through a triangulated “faceting” logic,' says Maia. ‘We had to design and coordinate the pattern triangle by triangle, and the on-site formwork required real precision.' Wherever raw concrete is visible, both outside and in, the finish is meticulous. The large floor and ceiling slabs also had to be poured in place.

With the primary suite occupying the house's most dramatic component, along with a secondary suite, two more bedrooms, an office and a self-contained guest suite are located in the other wing. The hollow concrete columns that puncture the floor slab house bathrooms and staircases, with roof lights bringing daylight into these cavernous forms. Meanwhile, a separate structure houses a spa, sauna and gym.

A linear kitchen occupies the central part of the plan, with an extended concrete counter that becomes the dining table. From here, one heads to the main living wing, which extends to the final tip, with a ribbon of glass offering up views across the site and beyond, culminating in a balcony. Key pieces of art and furniture are interspersed around the generous 1,800 sq m floor area, including a striking balancing sculpture made of steel and glass by Brazilian artist Túlio Pinto.

Acknowledging that the house ‘embodies the client's boldness and desire for innovation', Maia and his co-founders, Débora Mendes and Igor Macedo, along with the rest of the Tetro team, describe it as a demonstration of the practice's search for freedom of approach within every project. ‘Xingu House represents one of our most significant formal investigations to date,' Maia concludes. ‘[The project] brings together our recurring interest in the relationship between architecture and landscape with a new level of structural and sculptural experimentation.'

Rising dramatically above its site, the house is a contemporary take on the geometric exuberance of high Brazilian modernism, sensuous and sculptural yet also implicitly tied to its location.

tetro.com.br

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The central vertical void that runs through this Kuwait home, Faye House, is architect Abdulaziz AlHumaidhi’s favourite architectural element. ‘It is both the architectural and emotional core of the project,’ he explains.

‘Beginning as a focused skylight at roof level, the void descends through the building, gradually opening and expanding in section until it resolves at the ground floor ceiling as a wide, organic form. What might otherwise have been an unbroken horizontal plane of white ceiling becomes, instead, a sculptural moment of vertical depth, drawing light downward and anchoring the ground floor around a single, quietly powerful gesture.’

Step inside this modern Kuwait home

The new-build, contemporary home is located in Kuwait City’s Shamiyah neighbourhood and its form is a response to its corner-plot setting. AlHumaidhi, founder of his namesake firm, was inspired by the idea of creating a smooth and symbiotic relationship between inside and outside, as he tells Wallpaper*, ‘The corner plot offered a generous setback condition that allowed us to place a lush private garden at the heart of the composition, and from there, the entire design logic followed.’

The ground floor is an open-plan space, housing the kitchen, dining and living areas. However, it is the transition to the upper level that brings in that considered approach to the outdoors that AlHumaidhi values – achieved through recessed openings and layered façades. The roof terrace overlooks the garden and the vertical void below. Says the architect, ‘Nature is never absent from the experience of the home.’

However, the project did pose its challenges, some of which influenced its development. 'Two challenges defined the project, and both influenced the design equally,’ shares AlHumaidhi. ‘The first was reconciling transparency with privacy. Exposed on two street edges, we wanted the interiors to feel bright, open, and deeply connected to the landscape – while still offering the residents genuine shelter from the surrounding city.’

The answer, he discovered, emerged in the form of a curved travertine wall. Rather than approaching privacy as a problem to be solved by concealment, the architecture team instead approached it as a design opportunity. ‘The wall became both sculptural and functional – filtering views, casting moving shadows across the interiors, and creating a protective edge that never makes the house feel closed. From within, the vein-matched stone curves around the pool and becomes a luminous backdrop, its surface animated throughout the day by light reflected off the water.’

The second challenge was more programmatic. In Kuwait, multigenerational living is common. AlHumaidhi didn’t want to design a home for a specific moment in time, but rather to create a space that would evolve with its inhabitants’ lives.

This was addressed with the building’s upper floor, which was designed as a family space, accommodating guest suites and play areas. The architect designed this level to be flexible, and, he says, when the time comes, the floor can allow for two fully independent living units. He says: ‘The challenge was making that latent future invisible – so that the house feels entirely complete today, with no trace of what it is quietly waiting to become.’

Faye House is a residence that rewards slowness. Its balance of natural light, soft materials and greenery generates an immediate sense of calm. ‘And beyond all of this, there is meant to be a subtle sense of discovery,’ notes AlHumaidhi. ‘The feeling that the home reveals itself gradually, as the eye begins to move through layers of light and shadow and registers the quiet spatial dialogues between levels.’

alhumaidhiarchitects.com

A new rural house engulfed by peaceful Australian nature sits nestled in the Red Hill area of the Mornington Peninsula, Australia. Set in a part of the world rich with indigenous greenery and distinguished natural beauty, the home, simply titled No 41, was conceived as just that; a contemporary rustic idyll and the home of a family looking to revegetate its 2.5 hectares of landscape, establishing a garden of indigenous species centred on a large natural pond.

Step inside this new, idyllic, rural house in Australia

No 41 was designed by architect Tristan Burfield, who jumped at the opportunity to create a piece of residential architecture within such a layered and serene setting. From wine production (the local Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are renowned) to truffle and berry farms, markets and walking trails, the plot is surrounded by nature - yet a number of Monterey Pines, brought into Australia in the 19th century and since smothering local vegetation, causing environmental concerns in Australia, also thrived on site.

Burlfield and his team removed the invasive species and crafted a new landscape (this was worked on by specialist Sam Cox), while forming a leafy environment offering views of the native garden, lake and Red Hill nature beyond.

Within this context, dominated by foliage, flowers and fruit, the architect designed this rural house in a simple, minimalist style, working with a restrained palette of materials - namely brick, timbers and a bit of steel for the battens. The neutral colours - grey blocks, black shou sugi ban spotted gum cladding and warm brown cypress - make for a fitting choice that lets the organic growth around it take centre stage.

Inside, spaces are composed to favour a generosity of scale - in their comfortable ceiling heights, the luxury of the natural materials used, and the openings that frame the surrounding landscape. A circulation space pierces the rural house's core, with kitchen and living areas flanking it on the main ground level.

The upstairs contains a primary bedroom suite and a study, with terraces offering an elevated view of the wider area. A wing extending off these main areas hosts guest rooms and secondary, breakaway rooms.

'In many ways the design and construction of this home took a backseat to its landscape. The home pushes its occupants outside, literally and figuratively. It goes without saying for all my work, but there is something particularly special about this project in seeing just how well it has grown into being a facilitator of life and living both within and on the greater site beyond,' the architect writes.

tristanburfield.au

Cut Out House's distinct geometry is not random; nor was it an architect's flight of fancy or a purely aesthetic gesture. Set in the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, this home, a family's holiday retreat, posed the challenge of navigating shelter and openness – offering the protective, all-mod-cons cocoon of a comfortable 21st-century residence, and connecting with the site's dramatic natural setting.

Explore Cut Out House in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

As a response to this brief, its author, architect Bryan Young and his New York-based team at the creative collective Young Projects, composed a structure that opens to the landscape but also features a 'cut out' element, forming a curved opening – an embrace, where the home encircles nature while also creating an inviting, protective space away from winds and the wilderness. This concave shape is informed by a large boulder found – and retained – on site, which now signals the entrance to the residence.

The 3,320 sq ft Cut Out House is striking – respectfully rivalling its context, a sweeping, lush natural landscape and the point where the local forest and mountains meet. A butterfly roof becomes another key feature in this project, defining its overall volume as seen across the nearby body of water from a distance.

Internally, the house balances serenity and dynamism, orientated towards its long vistas, which are framed through large openings on the opposite side of the rounded entrance patio. Behind those openings, a main piano nobile spans an open-plan living, kitchen, dining area and a study. One primary suite and three further guest bedrooms are nestled underneath, into the slope.

The material palette was conceived to mirror the home's natural setting, using primarily textured concrete, light wood, and warm stone. Furnishings and colour tones nod to midcentury architecture icons, blended with contemporary pieces from companies such as B&B Italia, Bocci and Bloc Studios.

A fast-emerging and extremely versatile studio, Young Projects has a strong focus on material explorations and work that plays with form, textures and scale to dramatic but also highlight function-driven effect. Past work includes the playful Six Square House in Long Island – while the studio has more underway, including private residential, retail and hospitality work.

young-projects.com

Aficionados of concrete construction will surely recognise the brutalist architecture of Étoiles d’Ivry. This monumental apartment building in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine was designed in 1975 by architects Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie, a sprawling complex of stepped terraces and jaunty angles, with a relentless palette of concrete offset by a vivid planting scheme.

Explore this brutalist duplex for sale

In fact, it’s as a piece of green urbanism that the scheme is usually remembered, rather than as an intimidating example of brutalism at its least human. The complex was under construction from 1971 to 1981, during which time Renaudie died and the late Gailhoustet (who died in 2023) completed the scheme.

Gailhoustet was a rare woman architect in post-war France, but her work has more than stood the test of time. Living in Ivry-sur-Seine until her death, she had worked in the town since 1969, when she was appointed Chief Architect for the renovation of the city centre.

As well as winning the 2022 Architecture Prize from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, specifically for her contribution to social housing in Franc, she was also awarded the French Ministry of Culture’s Lifetime Achievement Award later that year.

This modest 55.6 sq m sits on the top floor of the Marat building, one of 40 interlocking housing units that make up the complex along with office spaces, stores, a school and more. As well as two small sleeping spaces on the upper level (originally designed as a single bedroom), the duplex includes a study area and office on a half-landing, with the main living spaces on the entrance floor, reached via a sculptural staircase.

Here you’ll find a living room, lounge and dining area, as well as a compact kitchen and access to the 20 sq m terrace, complete with mature trees and views across the rest of the apartments. The apartment also comes with its own garage area. Ivry-sur-Seine has direct access to central Paris in 20 minutes thanks to the Line 7 metro and the RER C Line.

Gailhoustet and Renaudie’s vision was for mass housing integrated into the heart of the city centre, not isolated towers with no ground floor facilities. The buildings that make up the Étoiles d’Ivry complex all take a stepped, ziggurat-style approach, with a modular triangular grid system create a sense of consistency across the whole project.

From the balconies and terraces, down to ground floor planters, passageways and public areas, the whole complex remains an intriguing and inviting urban landscape.

This free approach to planning also plays out in the apartments themselves, which revel in unconventional plans and unexpected nooks and crannies.

The duplex is available from Architecture de Collection, priced at €315,000, for more information visit ArchitecturedeCollection.fr, @ArchitecturedeCollection

IM Pei designed only three private houses; the grandest of these, the Westover House in Fort Worth, Texas, is now for sale for the first time.

This seven-bedroom, 13-bathroom 19,333 sq ft house features Pei’s trademark geometries, most notably in its garden room, a sloped atrium reminiscent of volumes found in the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Louvre Pyramid in Paris and many other of the late architect’s most notable buildings.

At a moment when Pei’s Dallas City Hall 30 miles away is at active risk of demolition – topping Preservation Texas’ 2026 list of Texas’s Most Endangered Places – this property is clearly valued quite a lot, with its $22 million price tag.

The house was designed in 1969 for Anne Burnett Tandy, an oil heiress, and her husband Charles Tandy, who built RadioShack into an ubiquitous retail presence. It’s located in Fort Worth’s swank Westover Hills on the same block as Paul Rudolph’s largest residential commission, the Bass House. Pianist Van Cliburn also lived nearby and played the Tandys’ grand.

Pei designed a house suited for sociability and art. He observed in House and Garden in 1970, ‘Mrs. Tandy loves parties and she gives them very often, so she wanted lots of space. She needed a house that would be comfortable for two people — or two or three hundred.’

Pei cited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston as well as Mediterranean and North African houses as inspiration for the home’s enclosed courtyards. The garden room has the largest, featuring a fountain (and for the moment a Frank Stella piece).

A wide art gallery near the center of the house neatly cinches off the private from public areas of the home. The garden room’s sloped windows are echoed at four other points, in the dining room, living room, primary bedroom and guest sitting room. The garden room also features a glass ceiling where light is diffused by a wooden lattice.

There was close attention to surfaces inside and out. Walls are poured concrete with an aggregate of rose-quartz granite. Pei searched for a year to find that mine, he said. Fluting was then hand-hammered.

There are other elegant details; the building has no window frames, Pei explained in House and Garden: ‘It was quite a feat inserting large sheets of glass into concrete and took much time and effort. Simplification always takes more time. But not having the intermediary metal window frames also gives the illusion of transparency, so you feel the rooms are open.’

Pei wished to make the house as ‘maintenance-free as possible’ even for those who could easily afford it, choosing, ‘durable, serviceable materials all as permanent as you can find.’ These include white Portuguese marble and Burmese teak floors inside and granite surfaces outside.

The primary suite features a bedroom, sitting area, bathroom, closets and a library containing a fireplace and wet bar. There are two living rooms, two formal dining rooms, three kitchens, two wine cellars, and much else. Some elements have been modernised but the bones of the house remain strikingly original.

The house, listed by Ashley Mooring, Ralph Randall and Madeline Jobst of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty, sits on nearly four acres containing a greenhouse, putting green, heated pool, garage and carport. It is surrounded by live oaks, which Pei preferred.

Still, Pei thought that only time would allow the home to reach its ideal: ‘We shall have to wait for nature…to make it perfect!’

Clearly, the moment has arrived.

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague is currently home to a special exhibition shining a light on an overlooked but brilliantly quirky corner of the architecture world: the modernist cottage. ‘The Modern Cottage: An Architectural Phenomenon’ documents a little-known yet radical chapter in the history of modern design.

Curated by architectural historian and Wallpaper* writer Adam Štěch, alongside co-curator and architect Jan Bureš, the exhibition turns its attention to cottages and weekend houses as overlooked bastions of modernism – a category of building long neglected in serious architectural discourse, yet one that tells us as much about the 20th century as any grand civic monument.

As European cities recovered during the interwar years and workers gained more leisure time, a new relationship with the countryside emerged. The concept of the seasonal retreat gained momentum, with city dwellers beginning to build holiday homes on the edges of towns, gathering in loosely formed colonies of like-minded nature lovers. This exhibition honours that specific moment in place and time.

Yet ‘The Modern Cottage’ does not succumb to overblown nostalgia. The modernist cottage is not framed as a peculiarly Czech sociological phenomenon, as it so often is in national sentiment – loaded with romantic association. Štěch and Bureš sidestep that framing, choosing instead to examine wide-ranging designs, typologies and architectural ideas by both celebrated and lesser-known architects.

The result connects Czechoslovak examples to wider European design: Alpine cottages reinterpreted through a modernist lens, Scandinavian dwellings, beach houses in the south of France. Across these contexts, the exhibition traces how avant-garde thinking and shifting social structures shaped even the smallest and most informal of buildings.

The material on display is varied. Štěch's own photographs – taken during visits to cottages across the Czech Republic and abroad – form the visual backbone of the show, supplemented by archival publications, period images and architectural plans and sketches. Original furniture from several cottages is also on display, alongside remains of a cottage designed by the artist Zdeněk Pešánek. The exhibition design, created by Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss, is inspired by a rural landscape.

‘The Modern Cottage’ makes a compelling case that the weekend house was never a footnote to modern architecture – it was where the blueprints of modern life were being drawn.

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague is currently home to a special exhibition shining a light on an overlooked but brilliantly quirky corner of the architecture world: the modernist cottage. ‘The Modern Cottage: An Architectural Phenomenon’ documents a little-known yet radical chapter in the history of modern design.

Curated by architectural historian and Wallpaper* writer Adam Štěch, alongside co-curator and architect Jan Bureš, the exhibition turns its attention to cottages and weekend houses as overlooked bastions of modernism – a category of building long neglected in serious architectural discourse, yet one that tells us as much about the 20th century as any grand civic monument.

As European cities recovered during the interwar years and workers gained more leisure time, a new relationship with the countryside emerged. The concept of the seasonal retreat gained momentum, with city dwellers beginning to build holiday homes on the edges of towns, gathering in loosely formed colonies of like-minded nature lovers. This exhibition honours that specific moment in place and time.

Yet ‘The Modern Cottage’ does not succumb to overblown nostalgia. The modernist cottage is not framed as a peculiarly Czech sociological phenomenon, as it so often is in national sentiment – loaded with romantic association. Štěch and Bureš sidestep that framing, choosing instead to examine wide-ranging designs, typologies and architectural ideas by both celebrated and lesser-known architects.

The result connects Czechoslovak examples to wider European design: Alpine cottages reinterpreted through a modernist lens, Scandinavian dwellings, beach houses in the south of France. Across these contexts, the exhibition traces how avant-garde thinking and shifting social structures shaped even the smallest and most informal of buildings.

The material on display is varied. Štěch's own photographs – taken during visits to cottages across the Czech Republic and abroad – form the visual backbone of the show, supplemented by archival publications, period images and architectural plans and sketches. Original furniture from several cottages is also on display, alongside remains of a cottage designed by the artist Zdeněk Pešánek. The exhibition design, created by Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss, is inspired by a rural landscape.

‘The Modern Cottage’ makes a compelling case that the weekend house was never a footnote to modern architecture – it was where the blueprints of modern life were being drawn.

Green Lodge sits in the London suburb of Roehampton on the edge of Putney Heath. Once a small village, the contemporary streetscape includes detached houses, some Georgian, many Edwardian, traditional terraces and large modernist council estates. Into this varied mix, Stylus Architects have found a slot of land behind a detached Victorian house on which to create a new build family home.

Step inside Green Lodge, a new-build home in South London

The new structure replaces outbuildings and wasteland and was built for a contractor with a long working relationship with Stylus. Aside from the programme, their only requirement was that Stylus, led by Matthew Withers, could ‘do whatever you want, but it has to be quick.’ Partly to maximise the environmental performance but also to help the project through planning, Stylus dug down and set much of the accommodation below street level, allowing the façade to remain single-storey.

As a result, the new house inverts the conventional layout and places the living room, dining area and kitchen on the ground floor, with three bedrooms on the lower ground floor. From the street, an angular, wood clad façade hints at something very interesting behind, with its seamless, faceted roof and flush roof-lights, but all is not revealed until you step through the gate.

While the living areas are flooded with light, the lower ground floor is illuminated by twin south-facing sunken courtyards that lead directly into the surrounding garden via external staircases, as well as a roof-light directly above the staircase.

The lightwells are cleverly placed to bring daylight into all three bedrooms, one of which is ensuite. The other two share a bathroom containing a free-standing tub from Lusso Stone, who also supplied the sinks and toilets. Illuminated roof panels are set above a wooden lattice ceiling, which neatly obscures the absence of daylight.

All bedrooms feature integral joinery and storage that has been carefully designed to abut the house’s exposed concrete structure. The result is a feeling of consistency and precision that maximises the available dimensions in every direction and creates a unified aesthetic throughout the house. In the children’s bedrooms, the wardrobes contain integral workspaces, while upstairs there’s a storage wall that includes a fireplace.

This clever use of single materials to expand the sense of space is especially obvious on the ground floor, where the ceiling heights rise into the pitch of the roof, with single pane roof-lights appearing to float above the openings in the slope.

Engineered wood floors pair with the cabinetry, with a bespoke oak and steel staircase, complete with angle balustrades, adding a clearly defined pathway to the lower floor. The exterior is clad completely in larch, maintaining a sense of unity and solidity.

At 175 sqm, the house is relatively modest in scale. A combination of photovoltaic panels and air source heat pump – complete with bespoke cooling grille design by Withers – make this a very low energy house indeed, thanks in part to the inherent thermal stability of the underground bedrooms.

According to the architects, ‘Green Lodge reads as a singular sculptural form that will weather and soften over time, embedding itself further into the wooded landscape of the heath. The result is a restrained and confident piece of architecture that is both highly resolved and deeply connected to its place.’

StylusArchitects.co.uk

At Wallpaper*, we love spotlighting incredible homes from every corner of the globe that span the spectrum of modern design.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we present our monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will feature our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, design excellence.

This month, we head to Mexico, North London and Norway, to name but a few, to visit several homes that are doing things differently.

Join us on our world tour as we highlight the best houses of May 2026.

An urban retreat in Mexico

Architect Taller Segovia Molina designed this family home in Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico, as a pocket of calm in an urban environment. Its street-facing facade is almost hermetic, giving nothing away, while the interior opens onto a rear courtyard garden. Inside spaces flow across levels connected visually and acoustically, with a barrel-vaulted staircase leading to private upper floors. Natural light, seasonal change and views of greenery anchor residents to nature despite the dense surrounding neighbourhood.

A reimagined care home

Formwork Architects transformed a dilapidated Edwardian care home in north London back into a generous family residence. Substantial basement excavations created a new kitchen-diner opening onto a sunken courtyard, topped by a bespoke open-tread metal staircase leading to a sitting room above. Original features – namely the stained glass and impressive main staircase – were carefully restored, while a double-height rear extension and new rooflights flood the interior with light.

A Viking-inspired cabin

This coastal cabin in Norway draws on Viking boat-building traditions, using whole tree trunks and roots as structural columns that simultaneously serve as shelves, benches, stairs and room dividers. Helen & Hard designed the undulating roof to mirror the surrounding topography, while panoramic glazing frames the ocean and locally-sourced stone forms the base. The result is a sensory space where timber scent, sea sounds and shifting daylight become central to the experience.

Brutalism in Milan

This brutalist family home in Cusano Milanino, designed in the 1970s by Francesco Castiglioni, stands apart from its Art Nouveau suburban neighbours through its raw concrete construction and sculptural massing. A monumental double-height living room dominates, with a sloping ceiling, dramatic internal ramp and double-sided fireplace. Glazed walls connect to expansive gardens, covered loggias wrap the exterior, and a 20-metre basement pool sits below. Owned by the original family, it is now listed for sale.

An Albuquerque desert home

Antoine Predock's final residential project – nicknamed the ‘dinodactyl’ – is a low-slung concrete home perched on a New Mexico desert ridge with extraordinary eastward views across the badlands. Five bedroom suites radiate from a central ‘amphitheatre’ living space, each functioning as a self-contained casita with its own terrace and fire pit. The building's orientation and form were carefully calibrated against extreme temperature swings, high winds and intense sunlight, while steel roof shingles will patinate naturally into the landscape over time.

A renovated painter’s house

Atelier Vens Vanbelle renovated this former home and studio of Belgian painter Antoon De Clerck, situated between Bruges and Ghent, into a vibrant residence befitting its artistic provenance. Drawing on De Clerck's De Stijl-rooted palette of primary colours and clean geometry, the architects layered Bauhaus and midcentury aesthetics with contemporary touches, including metallic roof detailing and a white brick fireplace. Each room carries its own distinct character within a cohesive whole.

Tetris-like Oaxaca apartments

S-AR's three-storey apartment building in Puerto Escondido treats its concrete, wood and steel grid structure as an inhabitable spatial system. Each of the three 180-square-metre apartments occupies one floor, with translucent wooden boxes providing bedroom privacy within an otherwise open framework. Each unit includes two bedrooms, social areas and a private plunge pool, with geometric detailing punctuating stairs, kitchens and storage, and few external walls interrupting the connection to the surrounding jungle canopy.

An off-grid, on-the-market home 

This off-grid prefab home in California's Eastern Sierra, designed by Linda Taalman and built over eight years by its owners, embodies the architect's desert modernism ethos, comprising open glass-and-steel forms, modular construction and minimal site disturbance. Set between Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada, the house frames sweeping vistas of surrounding peaks, including Lone Pine Peak and the Alabama Hills. Its sustainable design, wildfire preparedness and connection to the landscape reflect both the Taalman's principles and the clients' family ties to the region.

A forgotten Portuguese ruin

Pablo Pita Arquitectos rebuilt a derelict olive press in the Douro wine region into a pared-back country retreat, preserving the original footprint while dividing the plan into four quadrants – living, terrace, pool and courtyard. The house steps down the hillside, with raw concrete interiors paired with stone schist walls and timber cladding – it is deliberately minimal, material-led and rooted in the ruin's memory. Four bedrooms occupy the lowest level, while the uppermost floor offers views across the Douro River.

A robust coastal home

Hollaway Studio reimagined an existing cottage on Kent's otherworldly shingle headland, retaining its original silhouette while completely rethinking its interior orientation. Charred timber with white coating echoes the previous building, complemented by corrugated metal and Corten steel, while a salt-and-pepper concrete floor extends the shingle landscape indoors. The robust facade is built to withstand the coastal exposure of one of England's most distinctive – and challenging – landscapes.

With SE House, this Indonesian home's clients had a clear reference point. A family of five, they had studied and lived in Australia, and what they wanted to bring back to Surabaya wasn't a style so much as a quality of space: the ease of large openings and covered terraces, alongside spaces that spill between inside and out. As it turned out, local architect Giovanni Gunawan of KantorGG, who came recommended through a past client, had worked with that vocabulary before. The fit was immediate.

Step inside this new Indonesian home, in Surabaya

The site is a 1,261 sq m corner plot in a dense residential neighbourhood, rectangular and nearly square, making it well-suited, as it turns out, for a courtyard configuration. Two road frontages meant two exposures, and privacy became the project's first problem to solve. Gunawan's answer was to turn the house inward with a breathable skin of synthetic woven rattan wrapping the south-facing street façade to admit air and light while blocking sight-lines and the strong afternoon sun.

From the kerb, the house gives little away – four storeys and approximately 2,528 sq m of built area – before pulling you in through a concealed entrance. Inside, a water curtain suspended between two glass walls marks the threshold, plants flanking either side, before a gallery-like passage opens onto the central courtyard. This is the house's true centre: a U-shaped massing around a void of light, greenery, and moving air, with the street noise effectively blotted out.

The scale of the open-plan living spaces is generous. The ground floor holds the main gathering areas, kitchen, and dining. Connected by a cantilevered bronze staircase, the second floor opens into bedrooms, the principal suite finished in timber-stamped concrete that telegraphs warmth without relying on natural timber. The rooftop unfurls an office, tea room, and prayer room.

The basement is essentially an adult playpen – karaoke, billiards, bar, cigar lounge, golf simulator, and gaming at one end; indoor pool, gym, sauna, and a moss corridor inspired by Japanese dry gardens, or karesansui, at the other.

Gunawan was careful to keep these zones firmly distinct. 'The basement works precisely because the contrast between quiet and active is clear,' he says. Sound control, smoke separation, and careful partitioning do the work, while shared views toward the garden hold the level together.

The material choices cleave to a tactile logic. 'Australian residential design often carries a certain honesty, where materials are valued for their own character rather than made to imitate something else,' Gunawan says. In SE House, that translated into travertine, green marble, wood-stamp concrete, and rattan – an earthy palette smartly adapted to Surabaya's heat and humidity.

The Melbourne-trained architect’s favourite moment in the house is the waiting room behind the rattan screen at the entrance. Neither fully inside nor out, with breeze and the sound of water coming through, this space is where the house's central tension between openness and privacy is most plainly felt, and most cleanly resolved.

These are busy times for KantorGG with projects underway in Jakarta, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Phuket, and Dubai, including two houses under construction in Singapore and a villa with valley, mountain, and golf-course views in Indonesia. In Perth, a house facing a body of water is in the works – calmness and openness, once again, the brief.

kantorgg.com

How to build a Mexican home on an in-between space, where the urban sprawl of San Luis Potosí meets the arid landscape of the Altiplano? To create Casa Eco, a private residence making the most of its unique setting, local firm Sensacional Dinámica Mexicana (SDM) decided to bring down an existing wall on site that once separated the city and the plateau.

Step inside this desert Mexican home

Set between the edge of the Sierra de San Miguelito and a residential area, the plot was dotted with large existing rock formations. Rather than the old wall, it is this stunning geology that now forms a natural boundary for the new structure, with which the architects aimed to celebrate the terrain and natural environment rather than erase or ‘colonise’ it.

The replacement of the traditional signs of human-made enclosure with ‘a natural threshold founded on respect, ecological integrity and coexistence’ challenged the local construction regulations, and adjacent common land, say the architects, led by SDM founder Sergio Padilla. ‘The rocks now operate as the project’s perceptual structure: they delimit, orient, contain, and establish a direct relationship between the house and the mineral memory of the site.’

One rock also supports one of the new house’s concrete walls, which rises to form a frame for the surrounding landscape. It is part of a series of exposed concrete volumes that echo the site’s geology: ‘The volumes are organised, stacked, and counterbalanced; masses held in equilibrium that evoke the logic of the surrounding rock formations,’ say the architects.

These stacked volumes embrace the sloping site to create a garage and cellar topped by a large ground floor with a study and spacious living space and kitchen. The latter comes with a long counter integrating a large rock. It continues outside to form an outdoor kitchen worktop supported by a boulder. The floor-to-ceiling windows open onto a courtyard with a small pool, the rock formations composing a stunning natural backdrop.

Upstairs are two further floors housing three bedrooms, two bathrooms (with concrete walls rather than tiles), a TV lounge and a dressing room. Solid oak details and handmade pieces of furniture and joinery add warmth to the minimalist interiors throughout, while light flows into the space through carefully positioned openings.

‘The interior unfolds as a sequence of sheltered spaces opened toward the landscape, generating a system of chiaroscuro that continuously transforms the perception of space,’ write the architects. ‘In the private areas, openings are strategic, facing east and south in a cave-like condition with limited apertures that temper the harsh sunlight of the plateau.’

The light also reveals the different textures of the concrete construction, created by the imprint of three types of timber. There are vertical pine planks sandblasted to highlight their natural grain; smooth horizontal formwork; and diagonal sections designed to evoke the region’s local órganos cactus.

A row of actual cacti forms a natural boundary on one side of the residence’s courtyard, while other local plants such as mesquite trees and desert palms are incorporated naturally throughout the space, symbolically extending the Sierra into the design. To the east, another organic border is provided by a seasonal stream that carries runoff from the surrounding hills during the rainy season.

‘The landscape operates as an active boundary and an extension of the interior space, integrating into the everyday experience of inhabitation,’ says the SDM team. ‘The site itself becomes an inhabitant of the house rather than an external backdrop. To inhabit the house is to inhabit the territory – a fundamental principle within the studio’s architectural practice.’

Sober and rigorous, the design lets the surrounding environment take the lead. ‘The result is an architecture that, through its silence, does not impose order upon the landscape,’ hope its architects.

sensacionaldinamica.mx

One side of California architect Wallace Neff's practice was designing mansions for Hollywood A-listers like Groucho Marx and Judy Garland. Another was was designing wildly innovative houses. One such home is for sale right now in Pasadena, California for $1.95 million, the last of eight 'Airform' houses. Neff designed this two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in 1946 for his brother Andrew.

As a sideline to his tony mansion-crafting work Neff (1895-1982) conducted a number of experiments starting in 1932 with what were known as 'balloon' houses. What is that? Well, in this case, industrial-strength neoprene nylon was inflated to a desired dimension and then topped with Gunite, a type of concrete sprayed from a hose. Add a layer of insulation and another layer of concrete and you’d have an Airform house. They could be completed in as few as 48 hours.

Gunite enables easier curves than casting or pouring concrete does and is most commonly used in swimming pools. A number of architects made use of it, from Richard Neutra to Jacques Couëlle and John Covert Watson. In the case of Neff's Pasadena house, city officials were unsure it would hold up; Neff found a Caltech professor to vouch for its stability, and it stands as a futuristic presence still today.

The dome makes for a dazzling interior, 12 feet high at its apex with partitions for the two bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. Neff observed in Architectural Forum in 1946, 'The absolute absence of girders, columns and jigsaw trusses startles the imagination.' The rooms are about half of the slices of this circle, rotating around a remarkable cantilevered chimney.

The owners, Priya Girishankar, a media executive, and Damon Cleckler, a Carvana product executive, were well familiar with the 1,204 sq ft house from two decades of visiting a friend there who died in 2023. Cleckler tells Wallpaper*, 'The moment you walked into the home, you knew how incredible and special it was. It blew our minds.'

They suffered another loss of their own when their Gregory Ain house was destroyed in the 2025 Eaton fires. Girishankar notes that this work was 'our path forward after losing the Ain house. The decision to buy and restore the Neff bubble was a labour of love. It allowed us to bring back the house to a place that we hope and believe Neff envisioned when he built it.'

The house required a little work, with electrical, heating, air, and plumbing updates, as well as concrete repairs. Their most consequential restorative act was healing a decades-old dent from an HVAC unit. With technological advances it was now possible to remove these and utilize a ducted mini-split. Cleckler says, 'This would allow for the shell to return to it's original glory as a standalone unit, unencumbered by the steampunk-like barnacles of big aluminum tubes, conduit and metal boxes.'

The property sits on a 9,000 sq ft lot and also contains a 1,000 sq ft detached studio space with its own living area, bathroom and bedroom. Fifteen feet beneath that is another atomic era surprise: an Airform bomb shelter.

Cleckler explains, 'It's not showy. It's not a statement. It's a type of solution that came with affordances not typically found in a rectilinear box. It's more organic than organic architecture, and therefore it has a kind of unusual purity to it.'

Set within a post-war residential building, this Milanese apartment was in need of a refresh when Paolo Frello and his team were called upon to orchestrate a complete redesign. The project, set in the north Italian city's Arena neighbourhood, allowed the local architect and his namesake firm to play with surfaces and colour in a way that transformed its interior completely – bringing a joyful tone and spatial diversity to the generous, 160 sq m home.

Step inside this colourful Milanese apartment

The reworked apartment sits within a mid-20th-century building designed by Asnago Vender. Architecture duo Mario Asnago and Claudio Vender played a key role in the city's modernist residential development and helped define the look of its central district's housing stock – the typical, large-scale apartment buildings many of us know and love in the Lombard capital.

In its contemporary iteration of the modernist interior, Paolo Frello & Partners worked with colour 'not as a finish but an architectural device', the architects explain. The original 1950s layout had been changed beyond its primary intention during a previous refurbishment, so the space required a sharp redefinition to amend its flow and address a fragmented internal arrangement.

Blending surface treatments, textures and colours, Frello sought to create a 21st-century interior that caters to the new owner's lifestyle and love for entertaining. References to 1970s nightclub imagery and modernist design abound – yet they are playful and seen in a fresh light. The aim here was for any historical nods to be 'not nostalgic, but interpretative', the architects explain.

Openness underlines the new interior, which feels unified by continuous dark oak herringbone flooring. Architectural elements in the form of curves and block-colour built-in features – from storage to the monolithic stainless steel kitchen – help divide the space and provide much-needed functionality throughout.

Bespoke details further elevate the home. Soft, patterned or colourful upholstery provides background texture or bold accents as needed. The architects conclude: 'The result is an interior where material and colour converge to create a dense and deeply contemporary living experience.'

frello.com

On this newly completed Brazilian house, Lucas Padovani, founder of his eponymous architecture firm, says: ‘The main challenge was to implant the residence on a sloped site in a natural and integrated way.' He is reflecting on the development of Alameda House, a residence nestled in Bragança Paulista, a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

Step inside a new Brazilian house by Padovani Arquitetos

The project's solution was centred on its orthogonal footprint – a concrete slab designed to contain a balance of both solid forms and voids, resulting in a fluid, organic-feeling interior. Padovani continues: ‘In addition, it was essential to reconcile the privacy of the intimate areas with the openness of the social spaces, articulating a more rational logic with moments of softness to create a continuous experience where light, shadow, and architecture are in balanced dialogue.’

The softness within the project is expressed through curved details and a flowing, flexible circulation. The new house is positioned slightly above street level. The main social areas unfold as visitors climb up a few steps, while a secondary access is located along the side façade. The living room, lounge and dining areas are found on this first level, along with the kitchen and a home theatre, as well as the primary bedroom.

On the top level are five bedrooms, accessed via a generous two-level ramp, perhaps one of the most striking architectural features within the project. Padovani explains: ‘It’s more than a functional element, it guides the gaze and gradually reveals the architecture, as natural light continuously transforms the perception of space through framed views, cast shadows, and variations in luminosity.’

The intention was to establish a clear and quiet relationship between the home and its surroundings – where architecture and landscape complement one another. Padovani was clear that he wanted topography, vegetation, and solar exposure to shift from mere constraints to active elements, shaping the spatial experience.

‘The primary inspiration was the pursuit of a sensitive balance between permanence and lightness, expressed not only in form but also in the way natural light moves through and reveals the architecture,’ says the architect. ‘The house was conceived to articulate both the experience of movement – marked by subtle transitions of light and shadow – and that of permanence, accommodating moments of gathering and family life, especially on weekends.’

The materiality is honest and bears a contemporary feel. Stone walls and tresuno wood add warmth and texture, nodding to the playful juxtaposition between hard and soft elements in the architectural design.

Padovani hopes that when stepping in, visitors will feel immersed in a welcoming and serene atmosphere, defined by the organic connection between interior and exterior. He says: ‘Ultimately, the aim is for the house to convey a sense of balance – between solidity and lightness, architecture and nature – within a continuous and harmonious spatial experience.’

padovaniarquitetos.com

This urban refuge set in a dense residential neighbourhood of Santiago de Querétaro, in central Mexico, is a home conceived to provide shelter and relaxation. The project, by architecture practice Taller Segovia Molina, is located in a populated suburb of the state capital – yet within the home, you would never guess its busy context, for its design was masterfully crafted to envelope its residents in an atmosphere that feels a lot more secluded than its geography might imply.

Tour this Mexican home designed as an urban refuge

The clever design prepares the visitor to leave the outside world behind as they enter the home's inner world. 'From the street, the house appears as a contained, almost hermetic, volume that shelters its interior and creates an atmosphere of calm from the very first moment,' the architects explain.

The home of a family, this 250 sq m refuge unfolds as an open, flowing living space on the ground level, leading out to an open-air courtyard at the rear of the plot. The open space serves as an urban garden, and views are oriented away from the street and towards this serene green patch, lit from above, the sunlight changing throughout the day.

A staircase, smoothly enclosed within a barrel vault structure, leads up to the bedrooms and family bathrooms. Meanwhile, the primary bedroom suite occupies the entire topmost floor. All spaces here were designed to be intimate but open up towards the courtyard's green views, offering both opportunities for contemplation and the chance to follow the sun's path, supporting the residents' natural circadian rhythm and life.

This balance with nature within the urban environment of the home was an important element in the design development, the architects highlight: 'Casa Refugio embodies a philosophy of living in harmony with the passage of time. It is a dwelling that evolves and adapts to life's moments, whether it's the time of day or the season of the year. This sensitivity also extends to the relationship with the landscape, which is present throughout the home via courtyards, contained gardens, and voids that bring nature closer.

'The house is designed so that the levels remain connected visually, acoustically, and through daily presence. This allows domestic life to remain present between one space and another, ensuring that the levels do not become separate worlds.'

tallersegoviamolina.com

Formwork Architects has completed a radical overhaul of a house in north London. The Edwardian building, in Crouch End, served as a care home for many decades, and the transformation back into a family house involved substantial excavations and internal reorganisation. Potential roadblocks included the location – a local conservation area – and the dilapidated condition of the property, as well as the lingering memory of a contentious earlier proposal to over-develop the site.

The planning process, therefore, involved careful and diplomatic negotiations with the authorities and the neighbours, but ultimately enabled the expansive extension as well as carte blanche to rework the internal space. This included adding a new bespoke metal staircase and a double-height rear extension that makes full use of the expanded lower-ground level.

Creating space and light at Crouch End House

The clients wanted a house that could accommodate the shifting spatial demands of family life, with separation between formal and informal spaces. In total, there are five bedrooms, three of which are ensuite. The new lower-ground floor also includes a kitchen/diner opening onto the garden courtyard, with the new staircase leading to a sitting room above it.

Despite an overall lack of original features, surviving bits and pieces were retained wherever possible – such as in the original entrance hallway, with its restored stained glass. Here, the space was opened up to create a double-height space, with a long vista past the main staircase – also original and fully restored – to a private living area and through to the rear of the house.

The new lower ground floor expanded the original basement in both directions, including a storage and utility space beneath the front drive. At the rear, the double-height extension measures 8.2m, looking out onto a deep lightwell that steps up into the rear garden, flanked by a walkway at ground level. Sliding glass doors on both levels bring the outside in, along with new roof-lights.

Formwork has ordered the extension around the bespoke freestanding metal staircase, with open treads to allow light down into the space, and an elegant curved that flows through the space. Timber treads use the same wood as the flooring, while bespoke joinery throughout the project creates a warm unifying feel to the space.

The completed project is a generous 465 sq m, thanks to the expansion of the original deep plan, with the careful preservation of available natural light ensuring it doesn’t feel dark or compromised.

‘The clients wanted a house that responded to the rhythms of their busy lives, with spaces where the family can enjoy together that retain a strong connection to the garden,’ says Nick Learoyd, director of Formwork Architects. ‘The material palette was carefully selected to be tactile yet durable and enforce the belief that the house should be enjoyed, not just admired.’

FormworkArchitects.co.uk, @FormworkArchitects

This new riverside home's leafy patch in Shropshire was a defining element in its creation. The scheme – young architecture studio House of Em’s very first completion – is set by the River Teme, engulfed in foliage and crafted using earthy materials, such as timber and brick. The result is a serene home that feels at once warmly minimalist and in touch with nature, which takes centre stage through views, planting and considered materiality.

Discover this riverside home and its lovely setting

The elegant riverside home was commissioned as a family base for a private client. Founded by former Michaelis Boyd directors Emma Bodie and Matthew Sanders, House of Em is well versed in striking a fine balance between spatial generosity, pared-down elegance and cocooning warmth – a skill the architects employed amply in this project.

‘Skylark allowed us to explore how architecture can be both ambitious and intimately connected to place. Working closely with the clients enabled us to deliver a home that is bold, considered, and deeply rooted in context,' says Sanders.

Drawing on modernist architecture and design and the plot's leafy context, the team articulated the building's volume in the landscape, negotiating the terrain in an F-shaped floorplan. A 'sequence designed for a grand arrival', the architects explain, leads into a flowing social ground floor. A guestroom suite forms a connected-but-separate block beyond. This level also includes a range of amenities, such as utility areas, a home office and a gym.

The bedrooms and more private spaces are located upstairs, in a formation that allows independence between parents and children but keep everyone close. The total of four bedrooms is supported here by a variety of spaces 'designed to support flexible family-oriented living', the architects add.

The home's sustainability credentials include thermal balance through material and ventilation choices as well as energy efficiency features, such as air source heat pumps and MVHR systems. Additionally, nodding to the natural context, the architects worked on implementing extensive planting throughout, including 2,000 bulbs, new trees, and pollinator-friendly species – both around the house and on its green roof. This has the added benefit of ensuring better insulation and stormwater management throughout.

The architects' close collaboration with their clients, James and Sam Charters and their young family, was central to the design development too. Bodie says: 'Collaborating with James and Sam made the process seamless. The result is a home that feels modern, distinctive, and entirely in harmony with its surroundings.'

houseofem.co.uk

This Norwegian cabin nods to the country's strong tradition of craftsmanship, as well as its wider history – and in particular, its Viking roots. The woodworking and boat-making skills of those seafaring warriors were ahead of their time, their pioneering longboats a true testament to grit and ingenuity. This felt like a natural starting point for architect Reinhard Kropf, co-founder of architecture studio Helen & Hard, as he worked on Cabin Sande, a new home set within the wild, shifting Norwegian landscape.

Tour this Norwegian cabin, a coastal refuge

He explains, ‘A point of inspiration came from the Norwegian boat-building tradition dating back to the Viking era. Traditional timber boats often used the natural connection between tree trunks and roots to strengthen structural frames in their boats. In our project, we applied the same principle by using whole tree trunks together with their roots to reinforce the column-beam connection and structure. This approach creates an organic interior atmosphere as well as the undulating shape of the roof.’

Cabin Sande is deeply connected to the rocky landscape in Randaberg, southern Norway, a site of outstanding natural beauty. With the ocean extending across the horizon, panoramic windows frame the vista of sea and sky, while the roof reflects the shape of the surrounding natural topography. Meanwhile, the home's base is made from locally sourced stone.

The 112 sq m cabin was designed to echo the feeling of being immersed in the shelter of a canopy of trees. The space is divided across two aisles, as Kropf tells Wallpaper*: ‘On each side of this funnel-like central space are two aisles: one containing the kitchen and the other two working rooms. One of the workspaces is positioned half a level above the living room, with the bathroom located underneath. This arrangement allows visitors to experience the cabin as a continuous whole while simultaneously creating spatial depth, variation, and a rich sequence of experiences.’

The architects’ trunk-to-root use of whole trees goes beyond the purely structural, and it’s one of Kropf’s favourite elements of the project. ‘These structural elements do much more than support the building – they also integrate furniture and architectural functions such as shelves, sofas, benches, the kitchen, the fireplace, stairs, room dividers, windows, and doors.

‘As a result, the structure invites people to interact with it, explore it, and engage physically with the space. It creates the feeling that every element of the cabin is interconnected and woven together into one holistic architectural experience.’

The façade's glazing wraps around the cabin. This allows the daylight to funnel through its bones and into the living spaces, creating different light and shadow compositions across the changing seasons. Other sensory elements, such as the rich scent and tactility of the timber, and the sounds of the sea and the wind beyond its cocooning confines, become an active part of the architectural experience. Just like its location, Cabin Sande is ever-changing.

helenhard.no

Ray Phoenix rises, its gently green-tinted glazing wrapping elegantly around a crisp modernist architecture-nodding volume. The project is the third to be completed by Ray, the lifestyle and residential brand founded by Dasha Zhukova Niarchos (whose chic NY headquarters in the Seagram Building we visited in 2024), following Ray Philly and Ray Harlem. This time, the scheme was co-developed with Vela.

Explore the newly completed Ray Phoenix

The smart-looking building, made of green metal and glass and internally expanding its palette to concrete, green tile and more, was designed by Johnston Marklee and Associates (a Wallpaper* USA 400 firm) in partnership with Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Parts and Labor Design as the interior design partner. It spans 401 apartment units and 26 floors, and, true to the Ray brand – which champions a healthy blend of indoor and outdoor, art and architecture, private and public – it also features generous ground-floor retail spaces and amenities. Importantly, it was conceived as a building 'designed for all', its authors flag.

Part of Ray's concept includes a mission to craft buildings interweaving design and art, where the creative features can be seen and enjoyed by as many people as possible. Ray Phoenix contains pieces by artists such as Alex Israel, Francesco Vezzoli, Carlisle Burch and Rocki Swiderski – placed across the building and often accessible to residents and the public alike. These all constitute commissions woven into the building fabric seamlessly, and developed alongside the architecture – as opposed to implemented post-building completion.

'Ray Phoenix is rooted in an elemental design approach that draws from the desert landscape, weaving different textures and subtle contrasts into a building that feels both grounded and distinct to the city’s skyline,' said Sharon Johnston, FAIA, founding partner of Johnston Marklee & Associates.

'The building’s design is democratic by nature, with a consistent grid uniting the living units in the tower with the communal spaces, garden deck, and amenity floors at the base. Working in partnership with Ray, Lamar Johnson Collaborative, and Grace Fuller Design, each decision was made with intention, in consideration of Phoenix’s environment and climate, and guided by an egalitarian spirit that supports a community centred around wellness and creativity at every level. The result is a building we are proud to unveil, honoring the city and people of Phoenix.'

The building draws on its Arizona setting in its common areas especially – in particular, the ground floor, which is most permeable and visible as well as accessible from the street level. Nods to local nature, monumental art and desert modernism abound, drawing on references from the work of masters such as Luis Barragán and Donald Judd. Landscape designer Grace Fuller Marroquín curated the lush planting throughout, inside and out, such as the sunken planters in the lobby lounge.

'Phoenix’s creative landscape made it a compelling place for Ray,' said Zhukova Niarchos. 'There’s a unique energy here shaped by the desert, by light, and by a city that is still defining its cultural identity, which creates real opportunity to build something meaningful together with the communities here. We were especially drawn to Roosevelt Row Arts District as a growing hub for artists and experimentation.'

rayphoenix.place

johnstonmarklee.com

Rudolph Schindler designed houses 'as if there had never been houses before,' famed architecture critic and writer Reyner Banham once said. Bold and exciting, it's a statement that captures the Austrian-born, California architect's oeuvre and attitude. Schindler's modernist architecture is found in great numbers in the City of Angels, a known treasure trove of modernist houses. He crafted homes big and small, designing some 100 residential projects, many radical and thought-provoking, as he sought to challenge the era's norms through his Los Angeles houses.

Who was Rudolph Schindler?

Rudolph Michael Schindler (1887-1953) was born in Vienna into an artistic family with a deep appreciation for craft. He studied at TU Wien (the city's well-regarded University of Technology) before attending the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1911. In 1914, he moved to the USA, where he started working for Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work he discovered while still in Austria via the Wasmuth Portfolio, a folio containing 100 of Wright's lithographs, published in 1910.

Schindler worked on the Hollyhock House project in Los Angeles, among others, during his time at Wright‘s studio. Soon after, he left and completed his personal home on Kings Road in Hollywood. It marked the beginning of Schindler's mission to develop his own, distinctive iteration of modernist residential architecture.

Rudolph Schindler's architecture style

Known for his characterful residential projects, organic spaces and built-in living scenarios, Schindler stood outside the modernist mainstream of the time, which was largely represented by his fellow architect and friend from Vienna, Richard Neutra.

Schindler‘s projects broke away from the austerity of functionalism and focused primarily on the emotional aspect of architecture and the spatial character of a living environment. Influenced by Wright, his mentor, Schindler created homes that draw on the principles of organic architecture, and the influences of 20th-century Austrian architect Adolf Loos; in particular, his idea of a more vertical hierarchy of spaces, known as 'Raumplan'.

Schindler's career and portfolio

The lack of standardisation in Schindler's work and his moves away from modernism's functionalist roots led to his work not being included in the seminal exhibition International Style at MoMA in 1932. Still, until his death, Schindler built around 100 residential projects.

Schindler homes vary in style and materials, representing the architect's explorations and his architectural evolution over time. His work went through different stages, mostly defined by the materials he used – from his early 1920s concrete houses, he progressed to plaster-covered designs in the 1930s, and through to wood and stone organic creations towards the end of his career, in the 1940s and 1950s.

16 Rudolph Schindler homes in Los Angeles

Curator, architecture historian and writer Adam Štěch toured Los Angeles in search of Rudolph Schindler homes. Here, he captures for us 16 of his most exciting creations.

Kings Road House (Schindler House)

When? 1922

Kings Road House was one of Schindler‘s first independent projects. It reveals the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright, but Schindler transforms that into a distinctive style of his own. Initially, the building functioned as a home and studio for the architect, his wife, Pauline, and another couple, Clyde and Marian Chace. The living space is arranged as two L-shaped pavilions around a large garden, with floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed wood structural details. With its openness and Japanese sensibility, the house is a remarkable emblem of the modernist movement. It was restored in 2003 by architecture studio Marmol Radziner. Today, it is owned by Friends of the Schindler House, with support from the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (MAK).

How House

When? 1925

Located in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, where Schindler built many of his projects, the How House was completed in 1925 for railroad heir James Eads. It is made of redwood beams, poured concrete and stucco. Interconnected cubes contain variable spaces differing in height and atmosphere. The spaces feature overlaying forms and lines, seen more clearly in the geometric beam work of the large living room, with its iconic corner window in a subtle wood frame. Designer Taska Cleveland recently restored the house for a new owner, respecting its original soul.

Herman Sachs Apartments (Manola Court)

When? 1926

Commissioned in 1926, The Herman Sachs Apartments were built for German painter Herman Sachs. Composed of rectangles on the steep site, the complex was expanded between 1934 and 1940 to a total of sixteen cityview residences.

William E. and Stephanie Oliver House

When? 1934

Oliver House represents one of Schindler‘s career highlights. The house, built on a steep plot in the Silver Lake area, is set back on the plot and is reached by a set of steps lined by elegant tubular metal handrails. Inside, the architect created an open, flexible space with multifunctional furniture units, such as the living room seating corner with built-in tables and shelves.

Walker House

When? 1936

Walker House shows Schindler’s ability to build on awkward, even downright tricky, sites. The residence faces the Silver Lake reservoir and is elevated over the steep hill on pillars. Its geometric facade, with a variety of offset rectangular windows, faces the water, while the entrance is located on the top floor on the other side. The lower level contains bedrooms furnished with Schindler’s signature built-in furniture. Walker House was bought by journalist and modernist design aficionado Andrew Romano a decade ago, who has been working on its restoration since.

McAlmon Duplex

When? 1936

The McAlmon Duplex includes two private homes on one lot. Originally built in 1923, the structures were remodelled by Schindler in 1936. Large overhangs and a powerful use of geometry place this house as one of Schindler‘s best interpretations of International Style. It was also influenced by the Dutch movement De Stijl.

Bubeshko Apartments

When? 1938–1941

With its decorative concrete caps on the garage walls, crafted by sculptor Gordon Newell, this project evokes the precast concrete blocks of Frank Lloyd Wright's Mayan Revival architecture. The Bubeshko Apartments were commissioned by Anastasia Bubeshko and her daughter Luby.

The Samuel T. and Pauline Falk Apartments

When? 1938

Commissioned in 1938 by Samuel T. and Pauline Falk, the Falk Apartments are composed of rectangular volumes that perfectly fit into the steep hill of their Silver Lake area plot. Inside, four different living units unfold.

Guy C. Wilson House

When? 1939

Another Schindler‘s residential gem in Silver Lake, Guy C. Wilson House is a definitive example of modernist composition, with its recessed and stepped facade composed of rectangular volumes, large window openings and an unusual, overhanging roof. Inside, one can find a multi-level white space with built-in wooden furniture.

Pearl Mackey Apartments

When? 1939

Owned by the Austrian Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), the Pearl Mackey Apartments are currently used to host artists' residencies. A crisp, white, International Style facade with large windows conceals duplex apartments behind it, featuring ingenious built-in furniture elements.

Droste House

When? 1940

Built for the Droste family in Silver Lake, this house contains one of the most authentically preserved interiors by Schindler. The green composition of overlaid and protruding rectangular volumes, typical of Schindler’s late 1930s style, stands out for its large window in the middle of the street-facing facade, which gives the house a panoramic view over the Silver Lake reservoir.

Kallis House

When? 1946

Located in Studio City, Kallis House and its art studio were commissioned by production artist Maurice 'Mischa' Kallis. One of the most organic and playful Schindler houses, it features angled walls and fittingly bespoke-designed interior furnishings. In 1993, Schindler's associate Josef Van der Kar cleverly converted the house's open patio between the living quarters and the art studio into an entertainment and family room.

Roxy Roth House

When? 1946

Commissioned in 1945 by screenwriter and actor Roxy Roth House and located in Studio City, this is another feast of late-career Schindler work, full of surprising forms and organic-inspired spaces. The composition includes a curved car shed converted into a studio. It has recently been restored by architect Barbara Bestor, following a past restoration, in 1998-1999, by architect and contractor Jeff Fink. The house is currently for sale, listed by Crosby Doe.

The Laurelwood Apartments

When? 1948

Located in Studio City, The Laurelwood Apartments comprise two terraced blocks containing two-bedroom flats divided by a central patio. The project's total of twenty units was constructed using modular techniques to address post-war material shortages.

Adolph Tischler House

When? 1950

Designed for craftsman, designer and inventor Adolph Tischler, this house is one of Schindler’s last projects in which he experimented not only with space and construction but also with colour and light. Schindler covered the main living room at the top of the structure with blue translucent corrugated fibreglass panels - this caused the light to take on a deep blue hue inside. Tischler also designed some elements for the house, including a metal fireplace.

Phillip and Phyllis Schlessinger House

When? 1954

The very last project of Rudolph Schindler can be found in Los Feliz and was completed one year after his death. The house is defined by a cascading facade, which internally helps create a cosy, organic living room area.

In a small Milanese suburb, lies a quiet masterpiece of Italian brutalism - the work of architect Francesco Castiglioni. Built as a substantial family home in the 1970s in the Cusano Milanino area, the 650 square metre residence is a generous, sculptural house that wears its concrete structure on its sleeve.

Tour this example of Italian brutalism

The surrounding residential area is given over to large villas around a public park, with Art Nouveau being the favoured architectural style. Castiglioni’s brutalist architecture stood out, then as now, not just for the raw concrete but for the way the four-bedroom house devotes the majority of its floor area to the living areas, including a monumental double-height sitting room.

The exterior follows the more castellated, romantic vision of brutalism, with chimneys and cantilevers replacing ramparts and towers. The integral garage is reached via a driveway that goes through the house, terminating at a curved parking area away from the street.

The living area is the focal point, with a sloping ceiling and dramatic ramp that leads to the upper floors with a galleried landing overlooking the space. A double-sided fireplace divides the space in two, while shifts in level to accommodate the topography of the site creates dynamics views across the living room.

Glazed walls bring the verdant gardens into the living area, while the roof oversails the edges of the house to create a covered walkway and terraces leading down into the 3,800 square metre garden. In the basement, there’s a substantial 20m heated swimming pool as well as utility spaces and storage. In addition to the four modest bedrooms, the villa comes with its own 70 square metre caretaker’s cottage.

Castiglioni was based in Como. His work on the house also extended to some of the furniture and fittings, as well as landscaping the garden. Owned by the same family that commissioned it, the house has recently been refurbished and updated ready for a new generation of architecture-loving ownership.

Villa by Francesco Castiglioni, Cusano Milanino, €3,000,000, Italy-SothebysRealty.com

For titans of industry in Silicon Valley, there is only a handful of enclaves where you might seek some R&R: Sun Valley, Lake Tahoe, Aspen – ‘the places bougie people go', one San Francisco-based entrepreneur in search of a family retreat says. ‘I didn't want that.' What he wanted was a place that was completely removed from civilisation, yet no more than a two-hour direct flight from the Bay Area. His quest led him to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he encountered an untouched parcel of land set in the arid high desert. From a ridge on the site, he took in the view: rolling badlands, the silhouette of Placer Mountain and not a human in sight. ‘It's wild,' he says.

Discover an Albuquerque house in a mind-blowing setting

He had the land, now he needed an architect, one who could build him a contemporary interpretation of southwestern architecture – not a sterile modernist-inspired box. The work of Albuquerque-based architect Antoine Predock particularly stood out.

Predock, who established his eponymous practice in 1967, is considered a leading proponent of 'portable' south-west regionalism. When the entrepreneur called in late 2020, the architect (who died in March 2024 at the age of 87) said he wasn't taking on private residential work, but, intrigued, he hopped on his motorcycle to check out the desert property. ‘Antoine FaceTimed me from the site and was like, “We're going to build a house here,”’ says the client. ‘I'm like, this dude's crazy’ – and the perfect architect for the job.

The practice's projects start with an exploration of the site's physical and invisible properties. ‘Our work is largely about ephemera and poetry,' says principal Veree Simons. ‘Antoine always talked about a narrative thread that needs to continue through the physical form. We glean that magic by talking to the clients and doing a deep dive into the place's cultural and geologic history.'

With its otherworldly terrain, blazing sunsets, wild mustangs and equally untamed vistas, the site offered plenty of poetry. The house, therefore, would capitalise on the ‘Big View' eastward, as well as maximise space for family (the client and his wife have two young children) and visitors. The client had just one final ask: that the house be finished in time for his 40th birthday.

The project took the form of a concrete ‘spine' set along the site's ridge, from which five bedroom suites would radiate. At its heart would be the ‘amphitheatre' – a soaring living and dining space that would be a social hub. ‘It embraces the view,' says managing principal Paul Fehlau. ‘Antoine called it the “dinodactyl” because it looks like a dinosaur's back.'

The dinodactyl design also addressed the region's harsh climate. Temperatures here can fluctuate from below freezing to 37°C. There were also whipping 60mph winds and strong sunlight to consider. ‘The building's orientation to the east is important. You get a ton of heat and glare, and it can be very painful to have the main view facing west,' says Simons. Another challenge was the delicate nature of the land itself: the rocky terrain scars easily, meaning excavation for the building needed to be as light as possible, and some materials required transporting to the construction site with a wheelbarrow.

The resulting low-slung, single-storey dwelling feels simultaneously distinct from and part of the desert landscape. From a dirt road, it comes into view at the top of the ridge, its roof clad in steel shingles that will patinate over time to further blend in with the elements. The entry sequence, says Fehlau, was choreographed to create an element of surprise for visitors: ‘It gives you a little tiny preview of the view at the door, and then you walk in and your mind's blown.'

That jaw-dropping moment, which takes place in the amphitheatre, was achieved using an arced concrete ridge beam. And it's in this central room where family and friends congregate – for dinner, movie nights and meandering discussions by the fireplace. Glazed doors open on to an outdoor dining room and pool terrace. As the sun sets behind them, those watching are privy to a spectacular natural light show. ‘These are some of the most significant sunsets in New Mexico,' says Simons. ‘The clouds get lit up and turn super orangey and red and purple.'

And when it's time for bed, everyone can retreat to their own suites. It was important that each function as a standalone ‘casita', with its own bathroom, terrace and fire pit, to allow guests to feel like they've stolen off to their own secluded escape. The interiors are unpretentious – with concrete floors, dyed to match the property's bedrock, and modern furnishings from Carl Hansen & Søn, B&B Italia and BassamFellows – but still feel grand and generous, thanks to the soaring ceilings and pristine vistas. They also accommodate the client's growing art collection, which includes works by Judy Chicago (a friend), Constance DeJong (Predock's wife), Anna Park, Fritz Scholder and Rashid Johnson.

Shortly before his death, Predock went mountain biking with the client and was able to see the project reach completion. ‘He was hardcore all the way until the very end,' the client says with a laugh. Unlike Predock, the client is considerably less intense when he's at the house with his family, smoking a cigar and watching the sun go down. ‘My whole demeanour shifts meaningfully when I'm here,' he says. ‘I throw on a cowboy hat and change into a much chiller version of myself.'

predock.com

Formerly an artist's home, located between Bruges and Ghent, this recently refreshed project is a rich play of colour and composition. Previously the private residence and studio of the late painter Antoon De Clerck, it now belongs to new owners. Aptly named Painter's House, the property has recently been redesigned in a way that not only brings out the building's inherent modernist architecture identity but also pays homage to its original artist-owner.

Step inside a renovated modernist artist's home in Belgium

The Aalter-based residence was renovated by the Ghent architecture firm Atelier Vens Vanbelle. For their architectural response, studio founders Maarten Vanbelle and Dries Vens looked to De Clerck’s artistic style, which was rooted in primary colours, abstraction, and midcentury style, for inspiration.

The original house, which the painter designed himself, drew on the De Stijl movement in terms of its composition – using simple, clean surfaces and lines to form its visual identity. The architects kept the home's lines and planes in primary colours, nodding also to Bauhaus style and embracing a midcentury design aesthetic. To make sure the project still feels current, they mixed these historical styles with contemporary touches, such as the metallic detailing wrapping around the building's roof and the white brick fireplace.

As a result, the former artist's home is now defined by a fun, retro-cool look. The architects employed classic, and instantly recognisable, modernist-inspired details throughout, but in a way which feels conscious and playful – not clichéd.

This conceptual element was matched by gestures that address everyday, 21st-century needs. For instance, the carpark is fully functional, but designed with a sense of fun, designed as a composition of colours, geometries and materials, with blue-glazed brick walls.

The ground floor of the main building was completely reimagined. Alongside an additional bedroom and bathroom, more new spaces were incorporated, including a dressing room, laundry hall and office. All the areas feature a strong individual character and distinct colour schemes. Yet the overall intention and aesthetic keep the project cohesive.

The 258 sq m house contains five bedrooms and two bathrooms. Taking inspiration from the work of Richard Neutra's Kaufman Desert House in Palm Springs, Slim Aarons' 'Poolside Gossip' photograph, and David Hockney's artpiece 'A Bigger Splash', photographer Tim Van de Velde and the architects captured the project's essence in a series of images that tell the story of its concept – an artist's home that is vibrant and creative but also warm and relaxed.

vensvanbelle.be

This Formentera house takes its name from its dreamy location – Ses Clotades, a piece of land that connects La Mola peninsula with the rest of the Spanish island. Rolling hills with low Mediterranean vegetation and small sand dunes form the landscape on a site that sits between a pine forest and agricultural land. It was these formations that the home's architect, the locally based Marià Castelló, drew on when designing the project – which references its context's 'addition and subtraction, ascent and descent, solidity and permeability, light and shadow'.

Step inside this new Formentera house

As a result, the residence was designed as a cluster of volumes, dotted with terraces and outdoor circulation areas. The tallest elements are surrounded by existing, mature trees that allow their crisp white forms to remain discreet within the landscape. The largest of the volumes feels more porous and permeable. The smallest feels opaque in comparison.

This fragmentation of the residential plan into sections also allows the home to adapt to different numbers of inhabitants. When more visitors are hosted here, the entire complex comes alive. When a smaller number stays at Ses Clotades, only the largest volume is occupied, as it is designed to function as an independent unit - becoming a much smaller Formentera house in its own right.

A connecting, multifunctional element between these two acts as both the entrance hall and a flexible space for inhabitation. Voids and courtyards offer different iterations of outdoor living. Their presence also ensures plenty of natural light travels to the lower ground level below, where a library and screening room, a gym and the service areas are located. A large-capacity cistern that harvests rainwater is also accommodated on this level, allowing the home to go off-grid with its water supply.

Indeed the volumetric arrangement and careful planning of openings and shading work hard at ensuring the home can be environmentally responsible too. Air circulation, temperature control and natural ventilation and cooling through open air patios and water features are some of this Formentera house's sustainable architecture features.

Meanwhile, the interiors tell a story through objects and artworks composed by artist Elena Vinyàrskaya, who acted as the curator of the home. The architect explains: 'Through a meticulous selection of her own artworks, signature furniture pieces, and storied objects, the interior ceases to be a mere container, becoming a tableau of textures and meanings. The chosen textiles, ceramics, and styling elements seek a balance between the formal purity of the house and the warmth required for habitation, ensuring that every corner narrates a unique story of well-being and refuge.'

m-ar.net

With their grid-like structure spanning across three storeys, these Oaxaca apartments are defined by their open social areas. The building, titled Casa Eva, is divided into three residential units, one per level, made of concrete, wood and steel, balancing a range of hard and soft materiality. Nestled on a sloping plot in the surf town of Puerto Escondido on Mexico's west coast, the apartment building, designed by Mexican architecture firm S-AR, establishes a definitive relationship with its context of mountains, tree canopies and the sea in the distance.

Tour these grid-like Oaxaca apartments

‘For us, the site is a large part of the project,’ explains studio founders, César Guerrero and Ana Cecilia Garza. ‘In this case, the coastal climate, the existing lush vegetation and the topography of the land were the initial conditions that informed the project. Then, the idea was to create a seemingly compact piece of architecture, but one that would actually be a system where the structure defines open spaces, which would then be "inhabited" by volumes that, in turn, define dimensions, circulation, and public and private areas. It's like a game of filling a spatial grid.’

The transparency of this grid leaves the homes open to their surroundings, with few walls limiting space and views on the outer layer of the structure. This creates a seamless transition between interior and exterior, ultimately achieving a sense of boundlessness for its generous residential spaces.

The foundation and framework behind this thinking is rooted in a system of cast-in-place reinforced concrete columns, beams and slabs. To create divisions between spaces, the firm used railings and translucent lattice 'wooden boxes' that provide privacy for the bedrooms. It is this relationship between open and enclosed areas, forms and geometric features that helps carve discrete spaces – and it was one of the team's main aims.

‘It allows us to consider that architecture can be other things and provokes people to think. That is to say, although there are hundreds of buildings with similar programs and palapa roofs in the region, we believe that this one is simply not like the others, but rather something that can spark new dialogues and interpretations both of the architectural object itself and of its potential relationship with the environment.'

Each apartment spans 180 square metres and includes two bedrooms, service areas, and social spaces, each complemented by a private plunge pool for cooling off. Geometric elements are scattered throughout the design, providing visual accents and appearing on stairs, pools, kitchens and storage spaces.

For the architects, the most important element of the design was to create freedom and connection with the environment. They conclude: ‘Each apartment relates differently to its immediate natural surroundings, and although each offers a unique experience, the common thread is freedom and connection. Next, we expect attention to detail and the textures of the materials. These are simple yet refined and sophisticated elements, enhanced by light and shadow, by time.’

s-ar.mx

For those feeling the pull of the open expanses of the American West Coast, a Linda Taalman house would be the perfect place to set up camp – and such a home might indeed be within reach, as a lone, off-grid structure nestled among the wilderness of Lone Pine, CA has just come on the market.

Explore this Linda Taalman house for sale in Lone Pine, CA

The project was designed by Taalman on a piece of land between Eastern Sierra and Death Valley, and gifted to one half of a client duo, Karen Rathburn, by her father. Karen and Gary Rathburn built the home as a true labour of love over eight years (four of them literally building it by hand). Surrounded by magnificent views, this architecturally precious home was worth the wait – offering a cinematic experience as well as a wildfire-prepared shelter with minimal footprint and a strong sustainable ethos.

Taalman is known for her brand of desert modernism, which combines deceptively simple and open forms, often in utilitarian glass and steel, with sustainable architecture principles – including prefabrication and modular design to avoid waste and site disturbance in a way that adapts to the arid landscapes she often works with.

The clients have strong family roots in the area, so cared about creating a home that is respectful to its site, while allowing them to take it in and celebrate its unique nature. Large windows and open terraces work towards that, blending inside and outside seamlessly.

The result is not only striking to live in, but also deeply embedded in its context. Vistas of the region's peaks are on offer, including Eastern Sierra, Lone Pine Peak, Mount Langley, Owens Lake, Inyo Mountains and Alabama Hills. The last is a stone's throw away and the legendary filming site of some 400 movies (many classic American Westerns among them), TV shows and commercials – adding a precious layer of popular culture to this property too.

Agents: Jeremy Howe Steenblik and Nate Cole with moderncaliforniahouse.com

Price: $1650000 USD

Address: 3800 Granite View Dr, Lone Pine, CA

Set within a historic industrial building in downtown Toronto, this new loft apartment from architectural practice Susa Space blends contemporary forms and materials with a playful nod to the space’s heritage. The Candy Factory Lofts started life as a textile mill, built at the turn of the last century.

Ultimately, the building became a confectionery factory, amongst other uses, before becoming one of the first large-scale reuse projects in the city on the crest of the initial wave of loft conversions back in the 1990s.

The conversion retains more than just a memory of these former uses, with intentional layers of reference to the past. Most notably, this includes a series of prominent curved features, directly inspired by the conveyor belts that once carried an array of sweets and chocolates through the manufacturing process.

As the architects note, the site itself has a history that predates the era of manufacturing and labour. ‘Beneath this industrial narrative lies an older geography: the Carrying Place, an Indigenous trade route used by the Wendat, Seneca, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, whose presence continues to inform the land,’ they write.

The new apartment blends dynamic contemporary elements with restored and retained features, most notably the timber columns, metal detailing and stonework. Many of these are heritage listed, so the curving divisions that form the layout and programme of the loft are threaded through them without impacting on their position or completely subdividing it into conventional rooms.

This was also a response to the client’s request for flowing open space, alongside a requirement for plenty of storage. To cater for this, large bespoke cupboard units, finished in light timber, are set alongside the original beams. ‘The design responds through a strategy of careful revelation rather than replacement,’ say the architects.

The flowing curved ‘armature’ structure that references the production line is a multi-functional element, serving not as a conventional wall, but as a ‘piece of domestic infrastructure.’

Described by the architects as a sculptural spine, the component integrates the key functionality of the apartment, including the kitchen, laundry, and pantry, as well as a fold-out bed and storage areas. ‘By consolidating utility into one element, the remainder of the loft is freed for light, movement, and flexible use,’ they say.

Other materials were chosen to make a deliberate contrast with the raw and worn industrial character of the original building. They include Travertine marble for the stone-wrapped bathroom and white oak for the flooring and cupboards.

Where one material meets another, the thresholds have been carefully delineated to define each individual space. In addition, the client’s collection of artworks has been given precise and exacting locations to further refine the sense of a journey through the space.

SUSA Space was established by Sara and Suzan Ibrahim, Swedish-Canadian-Iraqi architects who work between Toronto, Paris, and Malmö. This project brings together the studio’s interest in reinvention, cultural memory and historic context, finding serenity in detail and place.

SUSAspace.com, @SUSAspace

A Kendrick Bangs Kellogg house nestled in a 40-acre Valley Center parcel in California, and boasting 360-degree views, the Old Castle Road house is on the market for the first time for a cool $2.7m. The two-storey home was completed in 1991 and nods to the San Diego architect’s organic style, as seen in distinctive projects such as the Lotus House, Wingsweep, the High Desert house, and the Onion House.

Tour a Kendrick Bangs Kellogg house for sale

The plot was purchased by a family in 1972. Keen to return to their farming roots, they planted over 900 avocado trees on site, shaping the views across the land. Amid the avocado grove, Kellogg was asked to design a residence in 1984, sourcing rock for the walls from around the property; it took six years to build. The interior is an example of Kellogg’s distinct vision, one that blurs the boundaries between architecture and sculpture.

This contemporary home unites landscape with architecture; the rocky terrain is reflected in the timber-framed design through stone walls and visible through expansive floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

Inside, the living area, which stretches over 4,133 sq ft, showcases custom woodwork that adds a softness to the space. Its curvatures and glossy finish add a smooth feel to the contemporary space, and offer a playful juxtaposition against the grey stone.

Curved shapes are a theme throughout the home. Examples include the kitchen units, which echo the 1980s hosting style, the shared family-style dining, bespoke tables, arched timber beams, and joinery detailing. The five bedrooms have a similar approach, with winding passageways that carve routes through the home. The three bathrooms are a centrepiece themselves, boasting aquamarine tiling, a double sink and a central mirror that anchors the space.

This home’s detailing captures some of Kellogg’s most inspired work, blurring the line between nature and home, an expressive marvel neatly packaged under a curved roof design on the hillside.

Kendrick Bangs Kellogg's 10650 Old Castle Road, Valley Center, California, is listed at $2,695,000 via Agents of Architecture

This new house in the woods of Brazil brings a beloved typology to the 21st century. Casa Pinhal, in the heart of the country's Mantiqueira Mountains, is the newest residential offering from Brazilian studio Cornetta Arquitetura. Responding to the client's brief for a holiday home to relax and host extended family, the architects worked hard to craft not only a contemporary dwelling, comfortable and fitting for its climate and context, but also one that engages with the stunning surrounding natural environment.

Tour Casa Pinhal, a house in the woods

The team designed the home for a couple and their guests, almost as a viewing platform – open and transparent so that its users can take in the leafy surrounds at every turn and have the impression of walking among trees. This meant planning the nearly-700 sq m home upwards, raising it on stilts and using stacked, vertical sections, instead of having the residence sprawl across the land.

The building is arranged in two large wings, united like a bridge. Three main floors bring together private and social areas. The lower floor contains a garage, a TV room and a guest suite. The piano nobile middle level features the living spaces, including a home gym and the primary bedroom suite. Meanwhile, the top level contains more bedrooms and a home office.

The architects employed sustainable architecture strategies to ensure as light a footprint as possible, prioritising the preservation of the forested site. The construction frame is engineered timber, while passive thermal comfort strategies place the accent on working with the local climate, rather than against it.

The material selection, inside and out, reflects this approach too, centred on wood and local moledo stone. Meanwhile, some concrete elements add a modern touch.

One of the scheme's highlights is its large, 'belvedere' terrace, which allows the residents to lounge and look out to the green scenery unfolding beyond.

cornettaarquitetura.com.br

Kamakura sits on the Sagami Bay coastline, barely 50 kilometres southwest of Tokyo. It’s close enough for a day trip, yet Lulla House seems to exist in a different world altogether. The three-storey building sits directly on the beachfront, its sand-coloured plaster facade and rope-strung balustrades facing the bay, with Mount Fuji a whispery silhouette on the horizon on clear days. Recently completed, it is the work of Tokyo studio I IN, and unlike anything else in their portfolio.

Tour this minimalist Kamakura house by I IN

Founded in 2018 by partners Yohei Terui and Hiromu Yuyama – both alumni of the influential Tokyo studio Curiosity, where they worked under Gwenael Nicolas (who recently spoke to us about the future of retail architecture) – I IN has built its reputation on high-spec commercial interiors: the Japanese headquarters of Cartier, Tiffany's Tokyo office, Blue Bottle café, a Pokémon Centre. Lulla House represents a different kind of commission: a private residence for fashion and lifestyle designer Azusa Yamato, whose brand Lulla – which sells the furniture designed for this house alongside homeware and objects for daily life – uses the space as both home and showroom.

Yamato approached I IN after seeing their previous projects. What followed was a design process rooted in character rather than typology. 'They asked for something relaxed and personal, but also expressive and memorable. Like stepping into a world with its own character,’ says Yuyama who led the project. ‘Our first conversations focused more on lifestyle than architecture, how the family wanted to live, work, host people. The spatial concept developed naturally from there.’

The building is organised across three floors, each with a distinct identity. The ground floor, a palimpsest from the building's previous incarnation as a windsurfing school, still houses boards. The second floor opens dramatically to the bay: an uninterrupted living and dining space connected to a terrace via a sliding titanium volume that functions as both wall and entrance. When closed, it punctuates the rhythm of the sea-facing elevation; open, it dissolves the boundary between inside and out entirely.

Kitchen and closet doors are rattan – light, woven, and breathable, and chosen because I IN approached materials here the way a fashion designer approaches textiles. 'We treated the relationship between tiles and grout in the bathroom like fabric and thread,' says Yuyama. Those tiles – custom-made from sand sourced in Japan, in a dusty pink that is Yamato's signature colour, grouted in acid yellow – are the house's most exuberantly fashionable gesture: simultaneously playful and precise.

A newly installed spiral staircase in white plaster set against warm brushed timber anchors all three floors at the building's centre, drawing the eye upward through the full height of the house. The third floor closes around it intimately: an open wardrobe at the building's core, a bathroom occupying nearly half the floor plan, a bathtub oriented directly to Sagami Bay and Mount Fuji.

The exterior plaster was chosen to echo the colour of beach sand, so that the house, Yuyama says, feels as though it had simply risen from the sand. Yamato agrees. Her favourite spot is the living room, where the ocean fills the full width of the west-facing windows and light moves across the water in a way that makes time feel slower. 'Simply being here brings me back into balance,' she says, adding that Lulla House is ‘a place where I can quietly feel my core values of gentleness, grace, and inner strength’.

Which, it turns out, is also a fairly precise description of the house itself.

i-in.jp

In the hills of northern Portugal, where the vineyards of the Douro wine region ripple across the contours, sits this new house by Porto’s Pablo Pita Arquitectos. The hillside site is bounded by traditional stone wall which disappears off into the surrounding landscape, but not before forming the anchoring plinth of the Loivos House.

One of the instigating structures on the site was a traditional olive press, an old outbuilding that served as the shape and form of the new house, effectively breaking the floorplan up into four distinct quadrants. Pita describes the shallow structure as ‘stretched out like a cat in the sun,’ wrapped around the edge of the topography.

The new house has to exactly match the footprint of the old press. The house is configured to step down the landscape, with an entrance courtyard with a sculptural olive tree leading leads to both the upper floor sitting area and steps down to the courtyard on the middle level, complete with deep, industrial-looking plunge pool.

The use of stone and timber has preserved the character of the original ruin, whilst the stepped arrangement and centrally located terrace provides spacious accommodation on the lowermost floor. Here there are four modest bedrooms, all with views down the valley, alongside two bathrooms, a storage space and the all-important wine cellar.

Each of the quadrants has been allocated a role – living space, terrace, pool and courtyard, with the lowest cut into the hillside. From street level, the scale and scope of the house is hidden, and the stone schist walls that anchor the house add another layer of mystery and solidity.

The house is intended for occasional occupation and is therefore pared back to the absolute minimum, inside and out. The stark simplicity of the pool, with the reflection of a pine tree, is set against the stone and wooden cladding. The large expanses of glass mostly face south down the valley, away from passing eyes.

The top floor houses a reflective living space with views over the Douro River, with a large kitchen immediately below, with large sliding doors that open onto the pool terrace. Raw concrete finishes inside the main spaces are paired with wooden cabinetry and staircases.

‘The morphology of the ruin is maintained - stabilised, restructured and rebuilt,’ say the architects. A ruin reborn as a retreat, the Loivos House is a reflective space that maintains a strong connection to the past.

The archetypal British landscape is often imagined as rolling green hills, patchworked with fields and persistently damp. Describing any part of the UK as a 'desert' would seem inconceivable. Yet, a shingle beach on the Kent headland of Dungenessis regularly declared just that – the UK’s only desert. The Special Protection Area has an eerie, apocalyptic feel. It’s a location the architects of Hollaway Studio have often worked with and a perfect setting for their latest project, Westview, a new Dungeness house.

Tour a coastal Dungeness house

Nestled in this architecturally distinctive landscape, which is peppered with abandoned fishermen’s shacks, lighthouses, and Second World War sound mirrors (large concrete structures conceived to detect aircraft), the new house – a reimagining of an existing cottage – was composed to be in tune with its setting, shaped by isolation.

Hollaway Studio is a deft hand at working in the area. Past completions here include Pobble House, which has gradually matured into the landscape. Westview is the practice's newest completion, and will soon be joined by Windwhistle, the conversion of a historic railway carriage into a dwelling. Through such case studies, the firm has developed a style that responds specifically to the local surroundings.

Westview is located on the edge of the Dungeness Estate. From here, visitors can enjoy uninterrupted views that unfold across the western horizon. Looking at the building’s original framework, the architects decided to keep its existing bones and instead improve the interior orientation and space. Surrounding outbuildings were woven into the design, which features a humble, sturdy façade primed to withstand the coastal elements.

Materiality reflects the building’s context. Charred and treated timber, finished with a white coating, nods to the appearance of the previous cottage. This chalky-coloured exterior is paired with corrugated metal and Corten steel elements, which are functional while also providing a contemporary touch. The flooring, which extends across the living spaces, is a salt-and-pepper concrete floor and acts as a continuation of the shingle beach itself.

While its location can offer artistic inspiration through its raw and rugged nature, Dungeness can be a hit-or-miss location that challenges the visitor. Still, Westview brings a considered, contemporary interpretation to its distinctive environment, bridging history and geography, and showcasing how developing a deep understanding of a place can yield impressive results.

‘With Westview, we retained the silhouette and footprint of the original building but completely rethought how it engages with the landscape,’ says Guy Hollaway, founder of his namesake studio. ‘The result is a house that feels both protective and open. It is grounded in the vernacular, but unmistakably contemporary.’

hollawaystudio.co.uk

If there’s one thing that Wallpaper* does well, it’s houses – spotlighting architecturally arresting gems from around the globe and spanning the spectrum of modern design. Our inboxes are overflowing with news of the world’s most boundary-pushing architectural projects, and we strive to bring you the very best.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we’ve launched a monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will highlight our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, aesthetic excellence. Here are the best new houses of April 2026.

A coastal Florida home

Architect Jennifer Bonner designed this Florida home for her mother, working within strict Homeowners Association rules that demanded a traditional material palette and symmetrical façade. To get around this, Bonner redirected her creativity to the roofline, introducing daring curvilinear eaves with soft pink undersides, while two false-front porches satisfy the symmetry requirement and corrugated metal is cheekily repurposed on the façade. Interiors by Carol Mockbee carry the theme through, with custom furnishings, terrazzo floors and ombré walls mirroring the exterior's curves.

Read about it here.

A pyramid-shaped house

Built in 1981 as part of Milton Keynes' Homeworld exhibition, the Pyramid House was a bold experiment in future residential design. London studio Khan Bonshek recently overhauled its confused layout, installing a spectacular new birch ply staircase as the home's centrepiece. Light cascades from the glazed apex, animating every room. Eaves were repurposed as sleeping pods, a sauna and workspace, while ground source heat pumps replaced the original inefficient ventilation. The result is eccentric, energy-efficient and far more liveable.

Read about it here.

A curved concrete villa 

Belgian architect Magalie Munters designed this concrete villa in Oostduinkerke, which is shaped by dunes, wind and light rather than conventional façade logic. Bedrooms are half-buried in the dunes while the living space rises toward the horizon. Striated concrete recalls sand at low tide, and interiors feature lime-washed walls, built-in concrete elements and sandblasted oak furniture – creating rooms that feel carved from a single continuous material body.

Read about it here.

Modernism in West Yorkshire

Designed in 1954 as a wedding gift for his brother, Peter Womersley's Farnley Hey is one of Britain's most celebrated modernist homes, and it’s now on the market for £1.05 million. Drawing on Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, Womersley created something strikingly un-English – at the time, the flat roofs, floor-to-ceiling glazing and open-plan interiors were more akin to California than the Pennines. Camphorwood floors, York stone and lemon-yellow Formica panels add warmth, while a double-height reception room – known as ‘the dance floor’ – comprises the heart of the home.

Read about it here.

An Ontario home in the trees

Perched on a forested bluff above Lake Huron, Cedar's Kin is a sprawling 5,000 sq ft residence by Omar Gandhi Architects. Three interconnected pavilions, a guest cabin and a beach hut are threaded through the treeline, each rotated to align with gaps in the canopy and maximise lake views. To further harmonise the building with its wooded surroundings, careful planning preserved existing trees and minimised erosion, while eastern white cedar clads the exterior and white oak joinery warms the interiors.

Read about it here.

A Japanese home in London

Hagen Hall transformed this Grade II-listed Islington terrace house for a couple with ties to Japan – this connection is felt in a singular material palette of oak joinery and wall panelling and a genkan entryway, shoji-inspired glass shelving and a tokonoma-style display niche. A sunken garden dining room and moody snug complete a home that balances late-Georgian heritage with rigorous contemporary minimalism.

Read about it here.

An abandoned home revived

No Architects revived an abandoned structure in the Czech Ore Mountains – a region emptied after post-war expulsions – and transformed it into robust holiday accommodation. The studio stripped back decades of additions, burying what didn't fit and connecting the restored original farmhouse to an overhauled structure via a single-storey link. Ground source heating, a new well and remote-controlled systems ensure resilience against the brutal Czech winters, while white-painted walls, timber, terrazzo and steel roofing create a gleaming, hardwearing retreat.

Read about it here.

A Mexican brutalist villa

Casa Macahuite, a brutalist villa in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, by Studio Font, sits between ocean and mountains, accessible only by bridge over a lagoon. Designed to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, the 300 sq m off-grid home features five structural planes and a 14-metre cantilevered pergola that shades, frames views and ventilates. Softened by parota wood, textiles and native planting, the residence blurs indoor and outdoor living – it even overlooks a protected turtle nesting beach.

Read about it here.

A boulder-supported guesthouse 

This serene guesthouse in Columbia County, perched atop glacial boulders sourced from within a 35-mile radius, is the work of Brooklyn studio Of Possible. Guests enter the sub-1,000 sq ft, timber-clad structure from beneath, ascending a staircase as the building wraps around them. Inside, two snug bedrooms, a serpentine marble kitchen island and carefully chosen vintage furniture create a warm, Scandinavian-inflected atmosphere.

Read about it here.

A serene Indian home

On the edge of Theni city in Tamil Nadu, oriented toward a nearby valley and lake, STO.M.P designed this calm, linear home. Three horizontal bands of varying texture and openness correspond to the home's functions: communal spaces at ground level, bedrooms above and a gym and suite at the top. Warm timber surfaces blend with brass detailing and bold colour accents, creating a layered journey which blurs the boundaries between interior and landscape.

Read about it here.

Eyrie Residence is full of Australian brutalist drama. Perched on a hill, it seems to emerge from its plot, surrounded by cascading valleys and a view of the Victorian Alps. This contemporary abode, designed by Schmölzer Architecture, is nestled on the outskirts of Beechworth, Victoria.

Tour this residential piece of Australian brutalism

Architect and firm founder Jeremy Schmölzer took inspiration from the expansive views and abundance of wildlife surrounding the site. ‘The starting point was to minimise the impact of the house on the hillside, allowing it to sit quietly within the escarpment rather than assert itself upon it,’ explains Schmölzer.

‘This led to a refined material approach, where a restrained palette of pre-cast concrete panels and muted tones dissolves into the landscape. The project naturally evolved into a courtyard typology, creating a protected internal landscaped courtyard that maintains a strong connection outward.’

The home's concrete façade provides the groundwork for the design's brutalist expression, contrasting with the surrounding scenery, which becomes a giant landscape painting of a backdrop, while openings create snapshots of the distant Mount Buffalo plateau. In turn, the natural setting serves to soften the property’s bold concrete forms.

The courtyard-style plan allows for a zoned approach to the design. The primary bedroom is located within a more secluded wing, and the guest rooms are along another wing, both offering valley views. The communal living area is open plan and accessible via both of these sections.

The most intriguing element of the project is the outdoor pool, which seemingly extends away from its hillside plot like an immersive portal into the valley. Schmölzer agrees, telling Wallpaper*, ‘The horizon pool is the most lasting impression of the project, where architecture is reduced to its most precise edge condition – a calibrated threshold between built form and distant landscape.

'It is conceived as an extension of the house, where the geometry resolves into a continuous plane that engages directly with the escarpment and distant Victorian Alps. Rather than framing or receding, the architecture operates as a deliberate instrument for intensifying the perception of the horizon. It is here that the relationship between structure and landscape is most fully articulated.’

The material palette softens the house's cast concrete silhouette. Natural honed stone in the kitchen, matched with grey linen sheers, an external metal curtain, and internal concrete flooring, creates harmony between interior and exterior.

Says Schmölzer, ‘From the entry sequence, there is a deliberate sense of transition and reveal, with framed views towards Mount Buffalo setting the tone for the experience. Inside, the landscape remains dominant, with interiors designed to feel as though they are hovering above the terrain. The eagle-watching and stargazing platform extends this condition outward, creating a heightened sense of suspension within the landscape.’

Eyrie Residence is a soothing retreat connected to nature. A place to unwind, relax and focus on the raw beauty of its expansive context.

schmolzer.com

The Sirmai-Peterson house, which Frank Gehry and his then partner Greg Walsh created in the mid 1980s, is hidden away on a leafy estate in Thousand Oaks, a 1960s planned community north-west of Los Angeles. It’s one of the most ambitious, though little-known, of the houses that the firm designed close to home, using simple forms and materials to brilliant effect, before the commissions for the Bilbao Guggenheim and Walt Disney Concert Hall marked a radical shift of scale and expression.

Tour Sirmai-Peterson house, an early Frank Gehry design

Forty years ago, Frank was beginning to win attention from high-profile clients, but most of his commissions were still small-scale and frugal, and his practice was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Like Robert Rauschenberg and other artists he admired, Frank created assemblages of humble materials, transforming simple forms into sculptural masses and magical labyrinths. The Sirmai-Peterson house, designed for a couple from Minneapolis, is a cluster of cubes with a towering lantern that plays off the softly rolling terrain and is reflected in a tranquil pond. The material palette is basic: concrete blocks, stucco and Douglas fir, with accents of galvanised aluminium.

Flagstones lead to the understated, slate-paved entry hall, which flows into a dining area, kitchen and one of two primary suites in a linked pavilion. The house is set on a gentle slope, and steps lead down to a spacious living room, from where one descends to a second bedroom pavilion. Expansive windows frame a landscape of oaks and olive trees resembling that of Tuscany, and light filters in from above. The geometry of the plan turns the house into a cinematic experience of shifting perspectives.

A jutting balcony overlooks the pond, which is fed from a waterfall and a stream. It’s home to frogs, migrating birds and even bass that have strayed in from a neighbouring pond. An elevated walkway leads to a guest house, set on a rise, that doubles as an office. This impassive block of fair-faced concrete with huge square windows was designed by Brian Murphy, an inventive local architect, to serve as a foil to Gehry’s cubic composition.

This house and the Schnabel house in West LA that followed represent the culmination of Gehry’s early residential work. Little noticed when new, they have been overshadowed by the later masterpieces. That’s a pity, because they were radical departures from convention at the time and their power to surprise and delight is undiminished.

Brian Linder and Rick Grahn of The Value of Architecture, who handled the recent sale of the house, came with low expectations but were blown away by its complexity and the way that each room feels like a little house in itself. They didn’t have far to look for a buyer who would respect the integrity of the original design. A medical professor and his wife, who had lived thirty years in a ranch house a short walk away, were tipped off by their window washer, fell in love with the house at first sight, and snapped it up.

It represents a radical departure from their previous home and its picturesque neighbours, and there’s the challenge of fixing a leaky roof and integral gutters, but the house can now enjoy an extended life as part of the rich legacy of modernism in southern California.

thevalueofarchitecture.com

A thirty-six-acre Wyoming ranch doesn’t make a dent in the State's vast landscapes, but it’s more than enough space to create an impressive private sanctuary around this contemporary house, the Wapiti Retreat. On the market through Sotheby’s International Realty, the house was designed by Carney Logan Burke Architects and covers a built area of 7,587 square feet.

Tour this expansive, modern Wyoming ranch

The property is part of Wyoming’s Bar B Bar Ranch, a high-end subdivision on the edge of Grand Teton National Park, just ten minutes from Jackson Hole. From the wide river valley there are views of the Massive Teton and Gros Ventre Range, a favourite skiing destination in the Central Rocky Mountains.

Location is therefore catered for. The property itself is set on the edge of a pool formed from a tributary of the Snake River, with a historic homestead on the edge of the site. The main house is joined by a horse barn and a three-car garage, with the added benefit of a underground snowmelt system to avoid the need for winter snow clearance. There’s also a self-contained 830 square foot guest cottage.

The principal house is built on a grand scale. CLB Architects have offices in both Jackson and Bozeman, Montana, making them well placed to execute a post-rustic modernism that takes the lightness of the Case Study style and splices it with a rural materiality and authenticity.

A unified mix of frameless glass, timber floor and ceiling cladding and rusticated stonework is found throughout. The studio specified ultra-insulated glazing from German and Polish manufacturers to preserve the house’s insulation levels in the winter months, with a full deployment of contemporary fixtures and fittings.

The house, which was built by local firm Peak Builders, also has geothermal heating and cooling, adding to a sense of self-sufficiency in the heart of the wilderness (albeit an image that’s at odds with the palatial scale of this three-bed property). Ultimately, you’re not just paying for the undeniably impressive views, but for the whole Jackson lifestyle.

Wapiti Retreat, Bar B Ranch, Jackson, Wyoming, $37.5m, Listing Agent: Joshua Hardman, Real Estate Professional at Lew Geffen Sotheby's International Realty, SothebysRealty.com

Carney Logan Burke Architects, CLBArchitects.com

Set in a serene, leafy site, it is hard to believe that Western Valley House is a stone's throw from the bustling streets of the city of Theni in Tamil Nadu, India. The project, a private home designed by Madurai architects STO.M.P (one of our ten emerging Indian architecture studios to look out for), is centred on three key elements – the idea of home, the area's surrounding valley, and a nearby lake that sits adjacent to the site.

Explore Western Valley House in India

The design composition is straightforward: three horizontal bands, each representing a level, combined in different textures and levels of openness, reflecting the functions inside. This relatively low volume and its linear form help guide the eye across the structure, mixing textures and materials, and landing on the water feature's calming waters.

The home features a fairly typical internal arrangement. The ground level is dedicated to the social, communal areas. A flowing living space and large openings link indoors and outdoors. The first floor contains bedrooms and a family room. The top level contains a home gym and a bedroom suite.

The architects explain: 'The design is elegantly simple, featuring three linear bays offset vertically, with corridors connecting individual spaces oriented towards the west, extending gracefully towards the lawn. These spaces embody a liminal quality, blurring the boundary between inside and out, drawing in the captivating essence of the surrounding valley and the lake overlooking west.'

The material selection blends rustic and modern, drawing in the surrounding nature through warm wood surfaces – while sleek brass detailing and bright colours create contemporary accents.

The founders and principals of STO.M.P (short for Studio for Modernism & Practical Aesthetics), approach each project with a distinct cinematographic attitude and this is evident here too, as the journey through the home combines textures and moods, creating a dynamic envelope for everyday life.

stomparchitects.com

Around 20,000 years ago, the state of New York was blanketed in an ice sheet that, at its thickest, measured two miles deep. As it melted, the glacier revealed a wild, new terrain, defined by landforms such as the Hudson River Valley, Long Island and Niagara Falls. But architect Vincent Appel, founder of Brooklyn-based studio Of Possible, was taken by humbler Ice Age relics: rocks – specifically, the fieldstone and glacially deposited boulders that dotted the site of his most recent project in upstate New York.

Tour a upstate New York retreat that embraces its site

Appel had been tapped by a Manhattan couple to design a small guesthouse, on their property in rural Columbia County, that could serve as a studio and host visiting family. The couple had built a weekend residence on the site about a decade ago – a glass-and-steel house that cantilevered boldly over a pond – but the experience had been a challenging one. The brief to Of Possible was to create a guesthouse that could be regenerative and healing. Appel says, ‘That begged the question, could it also be an alter ego to the original?'

During a walkthrough of the site, the architect discovered a historic stone wall, likely built by farmers in the late 18th century from the rocky glacial soil. ‘We thought, if the original house floats over the pond, maybe the guesthouse could float over that wall,' says Appel. To do that, the architect devised a novel idea in the spirit of a fieldstone wall to perch the building atop large Ice Age-era boulders known in geology speak as glacial erratics.

The architect and his team further clarified their design, using the existing house as an aesthetic counterpoint. Unlike that building, the guesthouse would have a small, efficient footprint of just under 1,000 sq ft. Instead of steel and glass, it would be made from timber and rock, materials that deferred to the site. The interiors, meanwhile, were to remain minimal and warm, not unlike a hotel that the couple enjoyed visiting in Norway. ‘This was going to be a small house, but we still wanted it to feel capacious, warm and beautiful,' they say.

To build it, the team left no stone unturned – literally – in search of boulders that would serve as the structure's ‘legs' while also having the ‘right stance and right presence'. ‘We looked at every glacial erratic within a 35-mile radius,' says Appel, who eventually found two perfectly sized boulders formed from a combination of granite and gneiss on the acreage. Two heftier, 12ft-tall stones, meanwhile, were selected from a nearby quarry. ‘It's like Noguchi trying to find the right surface to carve,' he jokes. Once the stones were selected, and their tops and bottoms were trimmed off, they were craned onto the site, lowered onto concrete footings and secured with stainless steel pins. The minimal gabled guesthouse was then framed out and built on top.

Unlike most houses, you enter this one from beneath, scaling a discreet stainless steel staircase to the front door (look closely and you'll spy the same hardware used at Le Corbusier's La Tourette monastery, near Lyon, France). ‘It is metaphorically an embrace,' Appel explains. ‘When you ascend, the building is hugging and wrapping around you.'

Like the exterior, which is covered in an open rainscreen made of local tamarack (a type of larch), the interiors are entirely clad in timber, lending it a comforting, Scandinavian-inspired aesthetic. In lieu of operable windows, the team opted to install large expanses of glass into the framing itself, a move that would help with energy performance and keep the overall project budget in check.

There are two snug bedrooms, each equipped with custom-built beds and storage; a bathroom; and a spacious open-plan living room and kitchen, which is anchored by a custom-designed island carved from a single block of serpentine marble (the same stone that Mies van der Rohe used in his design for the Seagram Building in New York). The furniture is equally architectural and considered – pieces include some cork stools from Herzog & de Meuron's 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion; vintage pieces by Finn Juhl and Hans Wegner; and a sculptural white coffee table by young New York designer Mike Ruiz-Serra.

Appel has called the guesthouse The Findling, German for both ‘orphan' and ‘glacial erratic'. But one of the clients has another name for it – Heaven. ‘There is a kind of sealed-off character,' he explains, recalling an afternoon of quiet study spent in the new retreat. ‘It's so tight, so perfectly boxed, that you feel you're inside a kind of impenetrable, safe rectangle where nothing bad can happen.'

ofpossible.com

Imagine a brutalist Mexican villa accessible only by a quaint bridge over a turquoise lagoon, across from a beach which is home to nesting turtles and small hatchlings. Who could ask for a better neighbour? Welcome to Casa Macahuite, a new house nestled in an isolated territory and named after the protected turtle beach.

Tour Casa Macahuite, a tropical brutalist Mexican villa

Located in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, the residence designed by Studio Font sounds like a whimsical abode, one equipped for ocean lovers. However, the environment is harsh. The ocean is rough, the climate is hot, and the area is susceptible to earthquakes, hurricanes, and daily storms during the rainy season. This informed the material and site of the project.

‘The landscape was a central reference from the beginning,’ says Raquel Font, founder of the architecture studio. 'The project is located between the ocean and the mountains, and the intention was to ensure that every space maintains a direct relationship with both, allowing it to be experienced continuously.’

The 300 sq m home is positioned alongside a ring of existing vegetation, which makes a natural courtyard. With its expansive views, Font made sure the residence remained open in all directions. In this context, the architecture works more as a framework than an enclosure.

Composed of five main planes – four vertical walls, and a floating pergola– the residence allows for shade, natural ventilation and unobstructed views. Font notes that the central pergola is probably the most significant element in the project. It spans fourteen metres without intermediate supports and connects the two main volumes, becoming both the entrance and the main living space.

She says: ‘It is where the structural logic of the house is most evident: it provides shade, frames views, and allows air to circulate freely. By relying on the foundations of the walls to support the span, the solution is condensed into a single gesture, reducing the building’s footprint while integrating structure, climate and daily use.’

The fully off-grid home is a softer example of Mexican brutalism. Its solid grey concrete walls are warmed through the use of wood and textiles. Furniture in parota wood, and Phenolic wall finishes provide an unexpected gentleness to the space. Accessorised with hanging plants and an abundance of native vegetation, the building fuses with its context.

Font concludes: ’The intention was to create a sense of being both isolated and protected – a place where you feel privileged by the views, but also comfortable enough to inhabit throughout the day. Rather than a conventional interior, the project proposes a more open spatial experience, where visitors become aware of shade, wind and time as part of the space, allowing inhabitation to remain continuously connected to the outdoors.’

studio.font

A new community project from No Architects, located in the heart of the Czech Republic’s Ore Mountains, creates residential holiday accommodation from an overlooked and abandoned structure.

Once home to a substantially German-speaking population, these mountains in the north-west of the country became sparse and empty after post-1945 expulsions. This is the former Sudetenland, once a flashpoint in 20th-century history, now finding a fresh identity as part of the Czech Republic.

This project breathes new life into a formerly abandoned structure, one of many thousands in the hundreds of abandoned villages in the region. After the war, the structure had enjoyed life as family mountain accommodation, part of what was then Czechoslovakia’s network of summer camps. The building had housed a ski club, with add-ons and accretions gradually overwriting the original character and features.

No Architects – Jakub Filip Novák, Daniela Baráčková, Klára Rašková, Lenka Juračková, and Jana Kutáček Sedlická – set out to bring the structure back to life, emphasising the heroic qualities of the architecture whilst also matching demanding modern standards of energy use.

‘We decided to definitively abandon the line of melancholic nostalgia and the superficial mountain romanticism for self-indulgent tourists,’ say the architects. ‘We therefore wanted to break away from the myth of an eternally abandoned and decaying region.’

Consolidating the additions that had sprung up across the meadows over the decades, No Architects pared the visible building back to the restored original house connected to a radically overhauled structure to by a single-storey link structure. ‘What didn't fit, we mercilessly buried in the slope so that only a single farmstead remained on the slope from the pile of houses,’ the architects say.

The images are elegant but deceptive, for summers are short here and winters can be long and brutal. It snows around 100 days of the year and average annual temperatures are around 4°C. Then there’s the rain – which falls at more than twice the average rate for the country. The landscape is swathed in fog for around a third of the year, so a house must be a robust refuge against the environment, whilst also guarding against the temptation of prolific energy consumption.

Heat is collected from a ground source pump buried in the meadow surrounding the house, with underfloor heating throughout. Water is drawn from a new well, and a newly restored pond also re-shapes the landscape and drainage.

The whole complex is designed to be operated remotely. ‘Everything in the house, from cameras to lights and locks to window blinds, can be controlled remotely under a complex integrated system controlled via a satellite connection to civilization,’ say the architects.

Inside, the use of timber, terrazzo, and ceramic tiles add colour and texture to the white painted walls and ceilings, paired with hard-wearing wooden furniture and staircases. As a vacation space, the apartments have simple sleeping areas consisting of ladder-accessed lofts and bunkbeds, and the durable aesthetic is also carried over into the caretaker's house.

The choice of white for walls and new steel roofs was radical, extending even to the colour of the gravel for the access roads, mixed with local Ora Mountain stone. The new finishes are described as a ‘gleaming white steel suit,’ bolstering the performance and stability of the structure.

Although the Midsommar vibes are strong in these atmospheric images, which capture the building at the height of summer awash with the traces of past and future occupancy, the end project is designed to be robust, warm and for a life of hard and loving use.

According to the architects, ‘[the project is for] even the most demanding visitors – boisterous children who happily run around wildly, their hair covered in smoke, their fingers sticky with resin, and occasionally holding some beautiful natural object in their hands.’

NoArchitects.cz, @NoArchitectscz

A new residential project in Hackney, London, epitomises the benefits of an architect-led self-build in the capital’s ever-hectic housing scene. Greenview House is a two-bed house with a spacious character that belies the numbers (it has a floor area of just 77 sq m). Designed by architect James Davies as a place to live with his partner and whippet, the project replaces a former garage in one of the capital’s many backstreet mews.

Once the site had been identified, Davies set about exploring ways to maximise its potential. The plot itself was just 40 sq m, an area reduced even further once the insulated structural walls were taken into account. ‘I have an iterative approach to working and enjoy problem solving,’ Davies explains. ‘The defining feature here was the plot size… In small spaces, every aspect of the design has to work hard and either do one thing really well, or multiple things at the same time to justify its inclusion.’

Arranged across three levels, including a new basement floor, the house makes careful use of interconnected double-height spaces to maximise the sense of space, connection between each floor and the amount of daylight that reaches down into the lower levels.

Lightwells at the front and rear ensure the basement never feels cut off. On the upper floor, a small roof terrace provides space for planting off the main living area, while the ground floor level, which houses the kitchen and dining room, has a 3m-wide living green wall in the slender rear courtyard.

The architect describes the project as ‘more treehouse than townhouse’, with elements like a blackened timber façade and large frameless windows minimising the sense of scale whilst elevating the craft required. Both bedrooms are at basement level, each with its own lightwell, with a shared shower room between them.

Inside, extensive use has been made of oak carpentry, along with polished concrete floors and galvanised steel details. ‘Concrete is a very tactile, dependable material,’ Davies explains. ‘In the basement, it forms a continuous floor-finish throughout the two bedrooms and shower room. Using one material like this makes the space feel bigger but also creates a very physical connection to the house when you enter.’

Much of the structure was formed from CLT (cross-laminated timber) panels, which made sense given the tight, restricted site. Heavily insulated against sound and weather, the CLT component hastened the construction of the finished envelope, further cutting costs. Environmental performance is handled via extensive insulation and a thorough approach to making the house airtight.

As a result, the triple glazing, air source heat pump and mechanical heat recovery system all combine to give the Greenview House impressive efficiency levels. ‘During the summer, the house averages approximately two days per week of “free” electricity,’ says Davies. ‘Windows can remain closed and the space still enjoys a constant supply of fresh air thanks to the MVHR.’

The London-based studio specialises in residential work, especially where refurbishment and clever planning can boost a project’s performance, liveability or even its financial viability. Greenview House brings all these elements together in a cohesive whole, finding a fresh outlook on an overlooked part of the urban fabric.

PaperHouseProject.co.uk, @PaperHouseProject

In a London terrace house in Islington, Studio Hagen Hall has orchestrated a masterful exercise in restraint. Heion House is not a typical 'light and airy' renovation, but a sophisticated dialogue between Late-Georgian heritage and the rigorous aesthetics of Japanese details and modernism, complete with a moody snug.

The couple, who previously lived and worked in Japan, rejected the standard impulse to extend, opting instead to build less and build better within the original Grade-II listed footprint. The result is a home defined by a singular, immersive material palette of oak, with bespoke joinery and wall panelling. A delicate balance between darkness and light eschews the common white-walled look in favour of atmospheric interiors.

'Heion House is guided by a belief that heritage and modernity can coexist without compromise,' says studio director Louis Hagen-Hall. 'By carefully repairing the Late-Georgian fabric and introducing new joinery interventions, we've created a home that communicates a contemporary language of craft.'

The studio peeled back layers of neglect to address structural issues and upgrade thermal performance with insulation and breathable plasters. The reconfiguration includes a primary bedroom moved to the upper ground floor, complete with a walk-in closet and a detached bath, thus allowing the middle floor to become a south-facing 'snug' that spans the front width of the home, furnished with David Horan armchairs and antique Japanese pieces.

Throughout the home, traditional Japanese elements are reimagined through a modernist lens. A Genkan (entryway) defines the arrival, while a grid of glass shelving, inspired by Shōji screens, filters light between a family area and the kitchen. On the lower ground floor is the snug with built-in leather single-bed-sized sofas on two sides, integrated storage for bedding and blankets, a concealed TV, and a grid of shelves that offers space for the clients’ Japanese ceramics collection, like a Tokonoma 床の間 (a niche for displaying flower arrangements and art).

In the garden, a former utility room has been transformed into a sunken dining room featuring a custom oval oak table by the studio. By lowering the external paving to create level access to the kitchen, the studio has blurred the boundary between the garden and interiors.

Heion House is a masterclass in fusing existing history with new details. It is a home that values the weight of shadows and the character of timber.

studiohagenhall.com