The firm Arquitectura G respects the building’s historical facade and proposes a dwelling pouring out to the backyard.

The neighborhood’s urbanistic codes required maintaining the original facade, which has been given a revamp and unified in a white tone. Inside, the floors descend to the rear garden, where the building shows its true scale. The fragmentation of the different levels results in a variety of spatial and visual experiences, thanks to double heights and interior balconies.

The central space connects the various rooms and is crowned with a large skylight that floods the entire complex with daylight. The dominant white is only interrupted by the ocher of the flooring and the constant presence of plants both inside and out, pervading all the spaces and playing a fundamental role in the house.

Panchón Paredes have transformed, refurbished, and adapted the interior, exterior, and in-between spaces of a dark and compartmentalized 1978 dwelling.

The new configuration addresses the needs of the occupants, who wanted a place in which to live, work or exercise. The spaces are neutral, flexible, and adaptable to genealogical changes and their consequences. The original perimeter has been broken up by courtyards, terraces, and balconies, and each level is divided longitudinally into two bays measuring 3.5 and 5.5 meters, with an 86-centimeter level difference.

In this way, what was a dark, much partitioned old residence is now open and bright, and the staircase is no longer a spatial and lighting obstacle but an essential heterogeneous space. All the strategies applied were aimed at making the new spaces as bright as possible, and with a palette of neutral materials, so it’s the inhabitants and their belongings that will fill the place with color.

Bak Gordon Arquitectos came up with this geometrical composition of abstract volumes that rises in the landscape of southern Portugal’s Alentejo region.

The Portuguese firm headed by Ricardo Bak Gordon designed this residence located in a vast plain of the Alentejo region, a territory characterized by its different tones of red and brown dotted with the green of holm oak trees. The south wall rises from a pool of water like a sounding board for the whole landscape.

The more social spaces are laid out behind this wall, while the private rooms are placed in the other wing, lit by an inner courtyard. The shape and geometry of the spaces, the abstraction of the openings, and the building’s immersion in the landscape – owing to the earthy colors of the lime mortar – all contribute to a unique sensory experience.

Floating Building was designed as a container for the intended program and also for unexpected, indeterminate uses.

The scheme drawn up by the Madrid firm Ayllón Paradela de Andrés showed a container of multiple overlapping scenarios. Use adaptability over time was key. It envisioned a basic dwelling where server elements were reduced to the minimum in favor of free, open, flexible served spaces. In essence, the objective was to maximize opportunities to accommodate multiple and different uses, so that the residents would be able to live as they chose, undictated by the building.

To subtly blend into the neighborhood and address the environment, the house uses the traditional materials that predominate in the area’s buildings, but on a contemporary note. It rises in a way that frees up the ground level and forms an intermediate space for the entry, a large threshold that is part of the courtyard into which the entire site has been turned. The domestic space is inside a ‘floating volume’ and the basement is a workplace beside a generous English courtyard.

Enrico Sassi has revamped this historic building, located in Gandría and with privileged views of Lake Lugano, after over a century of abandonment.

Though the building was in a poor state, the Swiss firm proposed to preserve its original appearance as much as possible, and defer to the history and landscape of the spectacular enclave. Intervention would be limited to consolidating what already exists, delicately enlarging the exterior terrace, and internally connecting the three levels with a new staircase.

The three levels are a basement with a barrel vault excavated in the rock, a ground floor, and an upper floor formerly reachable only from outside. Some walls inside were torn down to show the rock of the site and to build the new staircase in exposed reinforced concrete. Everything else has been either left as is or restored.

MG08 is an architectural intervention that yields a flexible dwelling, divisible into different units in accordance with the needs of the residents.

The Madrid firm BURR proposes a departure from the deep-rooted concept of ‘building a home for a whole lifetime’ through a house that can be adapted to the owners’ changing socioeconomic circumstances and address their future needs. MG08 thus opens up a wide range of possible ways to occupy one same ground-level space that previously served va-rious purposes (industrial, commercial, sports), the memory of which is deliberately evoked through the chosen gamut of materials.

María Guerrero is a house split into two. It currently harbors two dwellings, each with a patio of its own, enabling the proprietors to inhabit one half and rent out the other, and in that way shoulder the costs of acquisition and construction. In future the wall separating the two homes can be torn down, making the property a single residence with a large courtyard and a study-cum-bath opening out to the street; a larger house with two bathrooms and a small business space, ultimately a single home.

Bitelhaus proposes a new concept of weekend houses, one where versatility, low maintenance, and openness to the exterior take priority.

On the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the house by Alric Galindez is a bold and elegant single linear volume set perpendicularly to the street to get the best orientations and respect the mighty trees preexisting on the plot. The whole facade presents a system of mobile panels that ensures low maintenance and makes the building easy to open out to the garden and close up when not in use.

The linearity facilitates organization of the domestic program, allowing a half-covered space to be the house’s main room and distribution area, and maintaining indoor climate through cross ventilation. Continuous barrel vaults have different curvatures. This creates different environments, regulates the entrance of light and the flow of air, and generates a rhythm through the entire interior.

In L’Escala, a municipality in the Alt Empordà comarca of Girona province, stands this one-family residence designed by Bellafilarquitectes.

With a built area of 204 square meters, it was designed in compliance with two mandates: respect the pine trees on the grounds; and keep the property unfenced but for a low, 50-centimeter stone wall. Just a stone’s throw away is the beach, so the path to the house is much used in summer. One challenge in the project was to protect the privacy of the occupants.

The structure presents 2.2-meter-tall walls of reinforced concrete holding up a roof made of semicircular vaults, glazed and colored green, that cantilever over the south facade. The concrete walls stretch on beyond the limits of the indoor spaces, creating two semicircular courtyards – one within the other – that also contribute to ensuring the family’s privacy.