19 houses designed by outstanding architects you can sleep in

Identified over the years as a style, the Bauhaus was actually a school, active in Germany between 1919 and 1933. Originally established in Weimar, it then moved to Dessau due to political pressure, where Gropius would later design the school's famous headquarters. Here, it is possible to spend the night in studio apartments, recreated on a replica of student housing. Everything, from the floor plan to the materials, has been restored to its original state. Some rooms evoke their former inhabitants by virtue of the design of the furniture: selected rooms are currently dedicated to the Bauhauslers Alfred and Gertrud Arndt, Josef and Anni Albers and Franz Ehrlich.

Together with Villa Savoye and Fallingwater, this villa is considered to be one of the major expressions of the dictates of the modern movement.  Built over three years from a steel structure covered in glass and concrete, it stands out with an elongated rectangular shape reminiscent of a ship, an impression reinforced by architectural details such as curved terraces, an external staircase and porthole windows.

One of Le Corbusier’s most famous buildings is the first of five similar housing complexes built in France and Germany between 1952 and 1965. The Marseille building project was commissioned directly by the French government shortly after the end of the Second World War; the aim was to define a model for a new generation of social housing throughout France. To cope with the project’s stringent technical and financial requirements, Le Corbusier designed a single large building for up to 1,600 inhabitants. Part of the imposing building is now occupied by Hotel Le Corbusier, where nothing has been changed from the original structure.

In the postmodern apartment complex in Manzanera designed by Ricardo Bofill, who died this January, several flats are available for rent.  Its disruptiveness, its Magrittian staircase, its colours ranging from pink to red, to the blue of the sky and the sea, have made it an ageless icon.

After leaving Australia in 1966, Utzon decided to build a retreat where he could spend time with his family, and in Mallorca he found the ideal place. However, over time Can Lis became a place of pilgrimage for architects. Can Lis is located high on a cliff, twenty meters above the Mediterranean Sea. The house is configured as a series of pavilions seeking the best orientation. The house is hidden behind a jagged wall from the path along the coast, and only a hall and a brick bench mark the entrance.

Villa Santanyi was built for two German art dealers in 1987. The lighting and design details derive mainly from the ingenious use of windows, cracks in the walls, and straight lines that elongate the perspective. Built around a central courtyard, every space in the four-bedroom holiday home is illuminated through dramatic spaces in the ceilings and walls, whether the kitchen with its floor-to-ceiling sliver of glass or the main bedroom and its staircase skylights.

In a dominant position overlooking the Isola Comacina, Villa Leoni was designed in 1938 for the Leoni Malacrida family, owners of a confectionery factory on the western shore of Lake Como. The south-east orientation determines the layout of the rooms: the living room on the ground floor and the bedrooms on the first floor face south towards the lake with large windows, while the service rooms are distributed on the side facing the mountain. The villa, classified as a historic monument by the Beni Culturali, is also detailed by the characteristic choice of colours: the main façade is finished in eggshell-coloured stucco; the fir frames are olive green; the patio beams are salmon pink; the interiors are painted light blue, green and light pink.

With a total of 38 houses and two larger cubes, the housing complex designed by the Dutch architect forms a distinct canopy of geometric shapes. The walls of each cube are inclined by 54.7 degrees, creating a surreal visual effect both from the outside and from the inside. The architecture also creates a pedestrian bridge over one of the busiest streets in the centre of Rotterdam.  In 2009 an architecture firm repurposed one of the largest cubes into a hostel to see what it's like to live in a cubic house.

Zumthor built two wooden houses in Vals for himself and his wife in 2009, called Oberhus and Unterhus. Both three-storey houses have a similar vernacular design, with gabled roofs and large balcony windows, but it is the Unterhus that Peter and Annalisa Zumthor made available for rent in 2013. Peter Zumthor also designed a third house, called the Türmlihus, which is also available to rent.

The Villa Winternitz is the last building by Adolf Loos to be completed during his lifetime.  In a record time of just one year, the spacious building has all the characteristics of Loos' ramplan, the "space project", which describes compositional macro-principles on which connections of volumes and floors of different sizes are developed and according to which the living theme moves along two distinct coordinates. The villa opened to the public in 2017.

In 2000, Tokyo's Art Front Gallery curated the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, designed to link art and nature. Spread over 187,800 acres of community, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Site has become one of Japan's most ambitious art installations. One of the first and most impressive works created for the event was James Turrell's House of Light, conceived as a house of meditation.  The artist's idea was to incorporate his media and lights with the traditional use of light in Japanese homes.

The house is the result of a collaboration between Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, Japanese architect Go Hasegawa and the residents of Yoshino. The structure is a hybrid architecture between accommodation and community space, designed to be a shared experience for both guests and local residents. Visitors can book the house directly on Airbnb, at the property or with one of the many local hosts.

During those years, the villa is part of a post-tsunami reconstruction plan run directly by Van. Positioned on a hill, the project is structured to capture a series of ocean, jungle, and cliff views. Using local materials such as teak, cement panels and coconut leaves, the structure features a series of porous walls composed of open slats and adjustable shutters. Natural light filters through the permeable façade dispersing intricate patterns on the white concrete floors.

This house by Philip Johnson has much in common with the Glass House: glass walls, open floor plans and a simple, clean interior. The house is specifically designed so that residents can watch the sunrise across the Hudson River from their bedroom and living room.

About two hours north of New York City, the private villa designed in 2016 by Steven Holl is an organic sculpture exploring a spatial language that seeks to link the energy of interior spaces with the ecology of the site. The house’s geometry - powered entirely by solar energy - is formed by the intersection of trapezoids and spheres. The interior spaces generated have great internal volumetric intensity. The entrance area is exemplary: visitors are greeted by a carved wooden sphere whose shape also characterizes the facade.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Eppstein House for Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein, and the Galesburg building underwent extensive renovation in the last year to save it from more than a decade of neglect. The house was originally planned as part of a Usonian community planned to contain twenty-one houses, although only four ended up being built.

In São Paulo, the Brazilian architect designed a residential tower with thirty-eight floors and a total of one hundred and sixty flats, developed according to rationalist dictates but set behind sinuous glass and steel facades. Although partially built, with enormous difficulties and significant transformations, the Copan is still one of the most extraordinary presences in the city.