We selected ten of the houses we loved the most from the dozens that have come across our desks this year. Apartments are not included in this list as we dreamt on the archetypical typology of the single-family-house. Projects are set all over the world, from India to the US, crossing China, Australia, Europe and Central America. Their design features elements of surprise and specific responses to the diverse climate conditions. Using unexpected architectural solutions – from extruded volumes to blobby walls and parametric cuts – the architects had a special eye both on the materials and on the aspirations of their inhabitants.  

Curving concrete shrouds direct views to verdant gardens at Hawthorn House, while the upper floor is entirely hermetic to the outside world, instead favouring views of the sky. “Our objective for the home was to provide a strong sense of sanctuary, a feeling of being ‘elsewhere’ in this suburban context,” says architect Aaron Roberts, who designed the residence with Edition Office co-founder Kim Bridgland. Read full article here.

CollectiveProject designed a single-family house in Whitefield, Bangalore, characterized by fluid and interconnected spaces generated by the imperfection of handmade bricks and the way they are laid. Whitefield maintained its characteristic of a charming settlement surrounded by farmland on the eastern outskirts of the city of Bangalore until the late 1990s, when the local computer boom turned it into an important technological suburb of the city. Read full article here.

Nina Edwards Anker – Nea Studio designs a residential building half clad in cedar shingles and half glazed to open onto its garden. The project takes its name from the enveloping shape and its unusual section, which mixes a vault and a pitch. Read full article here.

In Alicante, Grupo Aranea's introverted and entangled house, sees interiors intertwined with verdant outdoor spaces. The residence, curvilinear and intertwined, is born in opposition to the banality of the architecture and suburban landscape of Alicante. Surrounded by concrete walls, the house designed by the Spanish studio Grupo Aranea is almost completely introverted. Read full article.