Czech studio Senkyr Architekti has completed the Architect’s Loft in Prague, a residential conversion of an abandoned attic space. Working with limited resources, the architect focused on exposing the original historical elements like the chimney and wooden beams.
With a ceiling height of five meters, the 75-square-meter apartment features understated built-in furniture, including a glass partition and concealed storage, highlighting the old house’s historical features.
Joshi House is a single-family home in Bengaluru, India, designed by Anahata in 2023. The design balances art and architecture, creating personalized spaces while maintaining common areas for togetherness. The house features geometric volumes, with a cantilevering circular balcony as a standout element.
The interior mirrors this circular volume, enhancing flow and cohesion. Clean lines, natural light, and brass elements characterize the decor, blurring boundaries between personal reflection and shared experiences.
The Three-Courtyard House by Habanero Architecture in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, showcases a Vastu Shastra-inspired design, blending contemporary aesthetics with traditional harmony. The house’s leveled plane creates three courtyards, enclosed by a U-shaped retaining concrete wall. This structure not only aligns with nature but ensures energy efficiency with concrete masonry units and stucco, adding insulation internally.
Architectural studio Ayami Takada Architects overhauled a relatively new house in Shizuoka, Japan, by incorporating three translucent spaces and a sunroom equipped with solar panels. The team aimed to create a completely different environment through expansion and renovation, rather than rebuilding, by “taking advantage of the topography of the river breakwater bank and the privilege of having a panoramic view of the landscape beyond.”
Designed in 2023, the 143-square-metre home is characterized by a transparent box forming a junction between interior and exterior spaces.
In Wagstaffe, Australia, architecture studio buck&simple. has divided this 2021 house into public and private spaces through a solid brick courtyard. Known as Permanent Weekender, the home is elevated to maintain its water views and create an artificial ground plane, accessible from the upper floor living areas. A subdued, textural palette enhances the home’s friendly, warm and calm atmosphere, along with abundant natural light and tactile materials like recycled brick and blackbutt.
Wohnhaus AGM is situated in Montaccio, a small hamlet in the Bergell region, Switzerland. Renovated by Renato Maurizio Architekten in 2024, the house combines historical and contemporary elements.
The design focuses on preserving the building’s original 1719 structure, using rough stone masonry and lime plaster alongside exposed concrete for new structural elements. Old timber cladding and roof beams are repurposed as floorboards, wall cladding, window, and door frames, maintaining the house’s historical character and blending it with modern additions.
In 2024, Sara Gelibter Architecte reimagined Felsenburg, a historic house in Biel-Bienne, Switzerland, originally constructed around 1860. An urgent roof renovation served as the catalyst, leading to a design featuring corrugated fiber cement panels and exposed wooden structures.
The project prioritizes economic and ecological considerations, showcasing a collaborative effort between architects and owners, resulting in a space that honors its historical heritage while embracing contemporary design elements.
Fishermen’s House B-10, designed by Marco de Gregorio in 2021, is an historic terraced house located in Spain. It’s part of a small settlement built for fishermen and their families in the late 1950s, designed by Spanish modernist architect José Antonio Coderch y de Sentmenat in an andalusian style.
The renovation preserves the original layout with a simplified design using simple and durable materials inside and out, retaining features like the whitewashed facades and red clay tiled roofs.
