Results of the year 2021: the most unusual residential buildings from around the world Architecture 13.02.2022 In recent years, the house has really been perceived as a fortress where you can hide from problems, pandemics, the noise of the city. In this collection we have collected the most unusual houses from around the world that architects built in 2021. A house embedded in a hill on the island of Serifos Mold Architects Studio was tasked with designing a house in a small secluded rocky bay on the island of Serifos. This place is constantly blown by strong northern winds, so instead of building at ground level, the architects decided to drill a slope and create a protected space right inside it. View the project Photo: Yiorgis Yerolymbos, Panagiotis Voumvakis Photo: Yiorgis Yerolymbos, Panagiotis Voumvakis Residential building in the building of an old water tower in the Netherlands In 2013, two siblings bought a 1915 water tower and decided to convert it into a living space on their own. The project took about 10 years. During this time, they improved the site, rebuilt the internal structure of the building together with the RV Architecture studio, and also got families. Therefore, now several generations live in an unusual house. View the project Photo: René de Wit Tree House in Japan The owners of the plot did not want to cut down the trees, so they asked the architects to build a house carefully skirting the trunks. Studio Florian Busch Architects designed a structure with many rooms that are connected by a long corridor. These parts resemble branches radiating from the trunk of a tree. The end of each one is left open — there is a floor-to-ceiling window that makes the forest landscape part of the interior. View the project Photo: Florian Busch Architects Photo: Florian Busch Architects Hurricane-resistant house on the coast of Puerto Rico In 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by a strong hurricane Maria, from which the coastal zone of the Caribbean Sea was particularly badly affected. The architects of Fuster + Architects had to build a house at this dangerous point. The studio chose the simplest possible shape — a rectangle with a flat roof. But I added eight “chimneys” to it, which provide natural ventilation and lighting. And to protect the building from a hurricane, she closed the window openings with special external curtains made of a material resembling canvas. View the project Holiday home in Mexico Casa Texcal is a holiday home located near Mexico City, in the village of Tepostlan. His customers — a married couple with sons and grandchildren — wanted to have a place to relax, where they could enjoy the silence and the view of the Cerro del Teposteco, a rocky mountain that rises directly above their home. Architects HGR Arquitectos designed a two-storey house in the shape of the letter T — this layout allowed to open the best views of the landmark from all rooms. View the project Photo: Diana Arnau Photo: Diana Arnau Eco-friendly Tecla house, «printed” on a 3D printer Bureau Mario Cucinella Architects and the manufacturer of construction 3D printers WASP presented their joint project Tecla — the world’s first house completely «printed” from local raw materials. Its area is 60 m2, and the construction took only 200 hours. View the project Photo: Iago Corazza Photo: Iago Corazza Residential complex with a green wall in San Francisco San Francisco has a new residential complex with access to the beach, a spa for dogs, as well as a huge living wall five stories high. It was created by local Habitat Horticulture specialists, involving more than thirteen plant species, including geranium and agapanthus, twisted into a wavy pattern. Photo: Woods Bagot Wooden apartment house in Paris The French studio Mars Architectes built a wooden Japanese-style apartment building in the courtyard of a residential complex of the 1970s. And she turned the space around the building into a green oasis with ferns, resinous trees and groundcover plants. View the project Photo: Charly Broyez Photo: Charly Broyez A house without walls in India ”Less walls means more unity with nature» — this was the principle that guided Taliesyn Studio when designing this house in the Bangalore countryside. The team has erected a structure that is almost completely open to the landscape: most of the walls here are made in the form of sliding partitions, which are almost always assembled and erase the boundary between the interior and nature. View the project Photo: Harshan Thomson Photo: Harshan Thomson House with a protective screen made of terracotta While developing the building project, the architects analyzed prehistoric human habitations and tried to create a safe unified space, sheltered from the hostile outside world. They were based on the image of a cave and traditional communal houses — rong. To provide this feeling of security, the authors decided to give the building a facade similar to a lace screen, smoothly embracing a structure of concrete beams and ceilings. View the project Glass House in Tasmania This spectacular house is not the main residence of its owner. It was conceived as a place for solitude, search for inspiration and writing, so it was decided to place it at some distance from the main residential building of the estate. The laconic glass pavilion opens a 360-degree panorama. View the project Large-scale residential complex in Bordeaux under the MVRDV project The new residential complex has 282 apartments, including 128 units of social housing, parking, a rooftop restaurant and many commercial premises. MVRDV architects used this project as a testing ground in which they were able to implement the concept developed for the reconstruction of an area in Bordeaux. View the project Houses with a mirrored facade in Quebec Bureau Bourgeois / Lechasseur architectes built two cabins for glamping. And to ensure maximum privacy, they were placed «back to back”, fifty meters from each other. One is facing east and the other is facing west. Their most striking feature is a fully glazed wall that reflects the forest. View the project Photo: Adrien Williams Holiday home with Pacific Ocean view Casa Calafia is located in Todos Santos, a small settlement in the Mexican state of Southern Baja California. The continuity of the circles on the facade symbolizes the endless desert landscapes that never end and merge with the horizon. And the waves represent sand dunes and the waters of the Pacific Ocean. View the project Photo: Miguel Angel Vazquez Calanchini Photo: Miguel Angel Vazquez Calanchini A house on a hill in Northern Italy The owners of one of the local wineries decided to replace the dilapidated villa on top of the hill of Castelac with a modern one. The architects carefully analyzed the complex site, and its geology determined the shape of the building. To provide the residents of the house with the opportunity to admire the circular panorama, the authors decided to use a ribbon structure that wraps around the top of the hill in a spiral. So the idea of a U-shaped building with three sectors, which are located at different heights, was born. View the project Photo: Gustav Willeit, Samuel Holzner Photo: Gustav Willeit, Samuel Holzner Seattle Houseboat Houseboats are not uncommon for Seattle. There is a long tradition of constructing such buildings on the water, so Susanna Stefan built her new house on a log foundation of the early 1900s. The square-shaped structure consists of one floor with an area of 60 m2. The facade is lined with dark cedar and Richlite composite material made of resin-impregnated paper. Photo: Kevin Scott Photo: Kevin Scott Bright hostel in Indonesia Indonesian architect Ismail Solehudin came up with the optimal layout for a hostel located on a small plot in a densely built-up area of the city of Bogor. Instead of building a traditional corridor-type building, he made a staircase as a connecting element, to the platforms of which all the bedrooms go out. This made it possible to significantly save space and create cozy places for rest and communication in the stairwell area. View the project Photo: Mario Wibowo Photo: Mario Wibowo Residential complex in China The new Grotto Retreat Xiyaotou complex in Hebei Province is so called for a reason: it consists of several buildings that the authors of the project, architects from Studio Avoid, designated as vertical grottoes. The shape and structure of the streamlined two-story buildings were suggested to them by cave dwellings, which still serve some local residents. The project was developed within the framework of the revitalization program of Chinese villages: its founders believe that the influx of tourists will be able to provide new jobs and return to the deserted villages of residents who left them for decades to work in big cities. View the project Photo: Guo Zhe, Breeze Image Photo: Guo Zhe, Breeze Image Egg house designed by Grigory Orekhov Grigory Orekhov’s project was born out of a request from his daughter Agatha. “She dreamed of her own playhouse in the yard, but all the classic options seemed boring and unsuitable to me. Then I had the idea to create a house in the shape of an ovoid with four faces. Already in the process of working on the drawings, doubts gave way to confidence in the result. The egg house is a personal shelter for people of all ages, because we all need privacy from time to time,” he said. View the project Photo: Ivan Yerofeyev Lake Cottage in Canada The customers bought a plot on Lake De Montagne to do their favorite sailing. But it was not easy to build a house here: part of the territory is located outside the flood line, which must remain untouched in accordance with the rules of urban planning. The customers and architects of Paul Bernier Architecte saw this as an interesting task and designed a building whose shape was formed by this line. View the project