At night, the exterior screen provides privacy when the house is illuminated.

"The building form was intentionally asymmetric and clad in hand-stained, split-face shakes and metal," says Campos Studio.

The architects inserted skylights in an artful pattern in the rooftop.

Estate Bungalow in Matugama, Sri Lanka, by Narein Perera as published in Cabins (Taschen, 2014).

Light and shadow play on the textured facade. Greenery frames the simple, geometric form of the house.

exterior view of the house

If you’re traveling to Puglia in Italy, one of the most iconic sights are trulli (trullo is the singular), an ancient hut that's specific to the Itria Valley in the Apulia region of Southern Italy. Made with dry stone, trulli date back to medieval times.

With its stucco facade and steel-framed, arched windows, Plaster Fun House is an architectural anomaly amidst the cottages and 1960s brick residences of Torrensville in South Australia.

The 275-square-foot LOVT prefab is a feast of crisp millwork, with a modular daybed stacked on drawers and kitchen cabinets with cutouts for pulls.

This compact vacation home by TACO—or, Taller de Arquitectura Contextual—is immersed in southeastern Mexico’s wild landscape. The home is designed for a pair of young adults, and the firm’s objective was to achieve a reflective and contemplative place that links the occupants with the surrounding environment. The result is an intuitive, functional, and simple living experience that offers great spatial warmth.

In accordance with the brief, the firm left the landscape largely in its natural state.

Perched quietly on the dunes of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, Hut on Sleds serves as a small, sustainable beach retreat for a family of five.

Masahiro and Mao Harada of Mount Fuji Architects Studio wanted to break with the traditional definition of a house when they designed this small Tokyo home. They achieved their goal by using the same material for the ceiling, the walls, and the floor, creating a space that flows beautifully. Photo by Ryota Atarashi.

Masi also turned the miniscule guest quarters into a pool house.

A basic box that’s as tall as it is wide (28 feet) and 16 feet long, this Portland, Oregon house consists of rooms stacked vertically: an unfinished basement on the bottom, a kitchen-living area and a bathroom in the middle, and a bedroom on top, with the stairwell hinged onto the front of the home. The only interior doors are those to the bathroom, basement, and root cellar, leaving the rest of the space open and unfettered. At just 704 square feet, Katherine Bovee and Matt Kirkpatrick's home is a great lesson in making the most out of every inch. Click here to see the interior.

The Bracy Cottage — Front Facade

Tucked beneath a grassy roof covered by nearly 200 species of plants and grasses, the structure is virtually invisible from the nearby street. In fact, the 1,400-square-foot house is so well hidden in the earth that it doesn’t seem to register on the radar of local wildlife either. Birds, butterflies, bees, dragonflies, hawks, snakes, lizards, and frogs all treat the house like just another grassy knoll.

The fully glazed north faced overlooks a private garden to the rear. This large area of glazing allows natural light to fill the home.

Smart, lightweight, compact, and easily transportable, MARS Case was designed to circulate energy and create zero waste.

The Bracy Cottage — Front Facade

Brett Zamore calls the house he designed for David Kaplan the Shot-Trot, now the Kit_00 homes, because it fuses two regional housing types, the shotgun and the dogtrot.

Per the Kebony website, their wood products are composed of sustainable softwoods that have been modified with a bio-based liquid to give them the characteristics of hardwoods, making the end result hardy and durable.

To take in views of Victoria’s coastline from all directions, Austin Maynard Architects crafted a bach-inspired beach house using a circular, corridor-free design and full-height glazing. Exposed trusses and a simple material palette keep focus on the outdoors, while rooftop solar panels and a rainwater harvesting system help the dwelling reduce site impact.

Davor (with his wife, Abbe, and son, August) designed the main living and dining pavilion as a double-height space to increase its perceived volume, and added high cubbies for extra storage.

Now that the daughter lives just steps away from her mother, Campos says, "The laneway has reunited the family and provided a house that reflects their cultural heritage in a subtle but significant way."

The bedroom takes up the small second floor of the house.

The exterior is wrapped in cement fiber boards with a Cembrit patina finish. Due to a lack of onshore infrastructure, a big challenge of the project was the addition of self-contained sewage and clear water tanks.

Black-framed windows and doors tie in with the black metal roof and dark chimney.

Pictured is a rendering of a 570-square-foot 2X lightHouse with a one-bedroom unit stacked atop a two-car garage.

The apartment occupies the top floor of a converted Georgian house.