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Architect Sven Matt mixed basic shapes with rich details in this Austrian home. The lattice shell was hewn from silver fir sourced from a nearby forest. Eternit shingles clad the roof.

Arba, the architecture firm founded by Jean-Baptiste Barache and Sihem Lamine, designed a 1,786-square-foot residence for Dominique Jacquot 45 minutes outside Paris. The house is her sanctuary from city life.

Ever aware of context, architect Henry Siegel says of his house, “A lot of architects’ buildings look better on a pedestal than in context. Our design would look out of place on a pedestal—we placed it so it really fits its specific site.”

When Belgian fashion retailer Nathalie Vandemoortele was seeking a new nest for her brood, she stumbled upon a fortresslike house in the countryside designed in 1972 by a pair of Ghent architects, Johan Raman and Fritz Schaffrath. While the Brutalist concrete architecture and petite but lush gardens suited her tastes to a tee, the interiors needed a few updates.

After an unprecedented year of earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires, a bright light has been shed on the benefits of building with concrete.

Tucked beneath a grassy roof covered by nearly 200 species of plants and grasses, the structure is virtually invisible from the nearby street. In fact, the 1,400-square-foot house is so well hidden in the earth that it doesn’t seem to register on the radar of local wildlife either. Birds, butterflies, bees, dragonflies, hawks, snakes, lizards, and frogs all treat the house like just another grassy knoll.

The defining gesture of a house on the Big Island of Hawaii by architect Craig Steely is a 139-foot-long, four-foot-tall concrete beam spanning the roof.

The house is about 3,000 square feet with six bedrooms, four of them on the second floor, surrounding a stairway to the large open space below where cooking, dining, game-playing, and movie-watching take place.

“We sought to create a house that would not damage the environment and not be too visible,” says architect Tina Gregorič. A single zigzagging roof stretches over 5,380 square feet, doubling the area of the interior spaces and serving as an ideal spot for sunset cocktails and whale-watching.

The house's angled placement on the site, as well as its narrow footprint, provide effortless cross ventilation and abundant natural sunlight.