The Apple House is an imaginative test of natural materials
A community building with heart, The Apple House features hemp, lime plaster, spruce glulam and an earthen floor – all with a respectful outlook to the surrounding orchard.
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La Crêta Farmhouse shows us the art of taking away
The most profound thing Bard Yersin did to this 18th-century Fribourg farmhouse was strip away layers from an earlier renovation. La Crêta is an adaptive reuse project that proves sustainable design’s most powerful tool is restraint.
Reviving a wounded mill: Ennenda Mühle is restitched with care
At a former medieval mill in Ennenda, Switzerland, Atelier Lando Rossmaier begins with careful deconstruction, peeling back layers to reveal and renew the building’s original structure. The adaptive reuse project rebuilds the house using materials sourced within roughly ten miles, including local timber, lime and hemp-lime walls that help regulate moisture in the ageing masonry. Through this restrained approach, the once-abandoned mill is revived as a home and goldsmith’s workshop while preserving the character of its historic fabric.
Inside Casa Wabi’s coastal residences
On a wild stretch of Oaxaca’s Pacific coast, Casa Wabi reimagines the traditional palapa as a minimalist artist’s refuge – pairing open-sided, palm-thatched structures with locally crafted timber furniture and raw, material-led artworks by founder Bosco Sodi.
House LO is a hempcrete experiment in a forest
In a woodland clearing in the Czech Republic, House LO stands as a testament to refined design and experimentation. Designed by Ateliér Lina Bellovičová, the home is built almost entirely from hempcrete – a bio-based material not often used in the region.
A healthy home made with cork, bamboo and hemp
With its compact footprint and clever urban insertion, Brown House treats home as an ecosystem, using bio-based materials to construct a healthier, lower-impact model for urban living.
Casa Plaj is a study in lime render
At Casa Plaj, a holiday residence in Portugal, the defining feature is a lime render skin that coats the building inside and out.
A look back at Kengo Kuma’s Great (Bamboo) Wall House
Along a Beijing ridgeline, Kengo Kuma trades the stand-alone house for a living wall, letting the architecture follow the terrain. Using bamboo in articulated densities, the project turns a single material into structure, screen and atmosphere – binding the dwelling to place with a line drawn ever so softly.
A steeped material – tea earth bricks cover the walls of this store
This calm retail interior features a biocomposite brick made by compacting local soil with spent tea leaves using a traditional rammed-earth technique. Pressed rather than fired, the “tea-earth” material turns waste into a tactile architecture – all with lower embodied carbon and a circular end-of-life.
Proclamation House by State of Kin is wrapped in a custom hemp render
Proclamation House by State of Kin is a masterclass in material expression and warm minimalism. Designed as a sanctuary for its owners, the home draws strength from its sculptural form and earthy textures, most evident in its embrace of a custom-rendered hemp plaster that wraps both inside and out.
About Futures is an independent magazine documenting the homes, ideas and conversations shaping a new era of sustainable design.
The most exciting architecture being built right now is sustainable. About Futures covers the groundbreaking materials, the alternative building processes, and the people reimagining what home can look like when it’s designed for the future.
