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.
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.
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.
At Casa Plaj, a holiday residence in Portugal, the defining feature is a lime render skin that coats the building inside and out.
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.
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 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.
The Floating Bamboo House by H&P Architects reimagines traditional housing through the lens of climate urgency and local tenacity.
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.
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