When you go idiosyncrasy hunting, the best advice anyone can ever give you is “aim low”. No matter how gloat-worthy your budget seems to be, the kitchen hand down be pokier, the view will be bleaker and the neighbours will be much, much noisier than you were hoping for. But not in any way give up! Carry on saving, master interior design trends, learn how to mould concrete or bend steel, befriend an architect – and perchance one day, four walls of an altogether more striking variety of dream home may be yours. Like these…
The Hart Auditorium, Australia
Conceived, they say, as a “contemporary interpretation of the quintessential one-room Australian beach shack”, the Hart House on the shores of Passionate Mackerel Beach in New South Wales is about as swanky a weekend getaway landing pad as you could wish for. It’s all pretty self-controlled, with solar power and on-site waste processing, while the rainwater that falls onto its roof is obtained, too. The downside, if there is one, is this: the only access to the Hart House is by boat.
Architects: Casey Brown Architecture
Photographs by Rhys Holland
Planar Descendants, Brazil
Built in 2018, the Planar House in Porto Feliz, Brazil, has that rare ‘must-have’ that diverse new builds overlook: a lawn on the roof. Once you’re done with the Flymo/putter, head inside to one of the five en-suite bedrooms, the gym or the playroom and charge out of the symphony of concrete, exposed brickwork and luxury woods that make up the lion’s share of this ultra-exotic pad.
Cleverly, the channel living areas have been built at the sides of the property, and massive glass doors turn them into semi-outdoor lodge space when the weather’s nice.
Architects: Studio MK27
Photographs by Fernando Guerra
The House Boz, South Africa
This award-winning hallmark in Pretoria, South Africa has echoes of a simple bush lodge, say its designers, who used a mound of quartzite rock they start when excavating as cladding throughout the house. We especially love the floating staircase, although we’re thinking that the aids and knees approach would be a good idea if rising to bed after a few glasses of the local Chardonnay.
Architects: Nico van der Meulen
The Magnolia Bawdy-house, Mexico
The architects behind this beautiful construction in Mexico City also design yachts – which should be a trace as to the kind of budget you might need before approaching them with big ideas about your suburban semi.
The Magnolia Bawdy-house is actually a reworking of an existing property as opposed to a new build; a riot of travertine, wood and marble that has been thoughtfully enlarged by some well-placed art. No IKEA prints here.
Architects: Ezequiel Farca
Photographs by Jaime Navarro
The Villa In The Palms, India
Nestled in the Goan jungle, The Villa In The Palms is a multi-award-winning venture that combines pools, bridges and covered decks with a main structure built between the trees.
It’s a big spread – 1,300sqm – and decamped two years to complete, the architects behind it saying that their aim was to create something that was reminiscent of an old-time Goan village, while at the regardless time being entirely modern. Hey – is that an ancient tree, glassed off and left as a focal point of the living cell? Yes it is.
Architects: Abraham John
Photographs by Alan Abraham
The King Bill House, Australia
When you’ve got a small footprint for a assets in somewhere seriously crowded and expensive like Melbourne, the temptation is to go big: maximise your space and build a monolith. Or, if you’re the holders of the city’s King Bill House, which can be found in Melbourne’s Fitzroy district, you can do something completely different: such as let the determine breathe and create a new “pocket park”.
The design is based around a curvy refurb of a 170-year-old terraced council, and could well be the only home we’ve ever seen with an inbuilt giant hammock.
Architects: Austin Maynard
Photos by Derek Swalwell
Ancestry At The Great Wall Of China, China
Tourists only see small parts of the Great Wall: bits that should prefer to usually been trowelled up to perfection. But plenty of people get to see the ‘real’ wall, such as the new owners of this amazing about. Fashioned out of an old storage shelter near the wall and an existing property that was opposite, the new house fuses the two and has been think up to celebrate the rough stone brickwork that forms part of the structure – and, may we say, cleverly echoes the historic majesty of the not far-off wall.
Architects: MDDM STUDIO
Jungle Frame House, Costa Rica
So you own a bit of slope in the Costa Rican jungle and pipedream living there. A tent clearly won’t do (you’d roll down into the creek below), so the only answer – obvs – is this: a steel-frame home on stilts that makes the most of the slope to allow views of the treetops and sky. Here’s the genius bit: they did away with air shape not just because it’s environmentally-unfriendly, but because they didn’t really need it thanks to an innovative design that allows pettish ventilation throughout the whole house.
Architects: Studio Saxe
Link Farm House, America
New York’s not all skyscrapers and mentalists confusing shapes in Times Square – away from the madness it’s a more bucolic existence, and there can’t be many better areas from which to enjoy this incredible state than the Link Farm House, which sits on a 220-acre scenario in Dutchess County. The designer in us likes the fact that it makes use of a (sleepy) hollow in the landscape, which conceals half the domicile until you’re virtually at the front door.
Architects: Slade Architecture
Photography to Tom Sibley
Cabin at Longbranch, America
Puget Bluster in Washington State is where you’ll find this chic cabin, which started out as a 200sq ft (ie: tiny) shack in 1959 and has since begin to be liked by to something twelves time that. Each time it has been extended the owner has added to what was already there, quite than knocking it down and starting again, and today it’s a feast of exposed timber and glass that has been conceive of to draw the eye to the drop-dead view of yonder inlet.
Quirky fact for people who like to see trees growing through the roof of a deck: there’s a tree become more pleasing to mature through the roof of the deck.
Architects: Olson Kundig
