Platform 5 Architect designed the Meadowview house in Bedfordshire, England with careful attention to the surrounding landscape and did and incredible job with it. Platform 5 designed it as a family home for a retired couple. The land is enclosed by large trees and hedgerows. The house has simple lines with a horizontal emphasis and was inspired by the expansive fields that surround the home. The light, chestnut wood that flows over the top of the house and hangs over much of the outdoor viewing areas is a perfect compliment to the greenery and surrounding fields. The house is brilliantly set up so there is a meandering path when you walk in that takes you from very open areas with a lot of windows to more private and intimate areas. The double height living room offers you access to a beautiful courtyard garden where the couple is able to plant flowers that offset the mostly green and brown landscape.

Completed in just 2009 this Brentwood, California house combines style and sustainability which is not always an easy trick especially when it comes to architecture. The project team of Lorcan O’Herlihy and Pierre De Angeles did not have an easy task of turning client Dr. Sascha Jovanovic’s existing home located on this incredibly steep hill into the lovely, modern, and clean home you see here. The pair built a new guest suite, did significant modifications to the master bedroom, exterior appearance, and exterior decking and brought all of the new and old elements together. Using a reformulated PVC coated polyester woven yarn to wrap the house in they made the home look cohesive and better but also decreased energy use for the homeowners significantly. PVC coated polyester woven yarn is typically used to shade vegetation and outdoor space from insects. The reformulated yarn used on Dr. Jovanovic’s home is separated from the typical stucco finish so it does not look the same but protects the house from heat gain and solar abuse. In California weather and with homes high up on a hills closer to the sun this type of innovation for homes could start to become increasingly popular. Also, aside from the exterior of the house the interior is stunning with the use of white and simple orange, neutral and black colors. The home (after remodeling) is now 3700 square feet of beautiful yet simple indoor and outdoor aesthetics.

Architecture collective “Factor Architecture” of the Netherlands has recently collaborated with clients Anton Schouten and Hannie Kempink to design their avant-garde home in the Dutch province of Gelderland. The structure is futuristic, funky with a kind of clean industrial look, residing in a woodsy natural landscape located in Beekbergen village. Large windows are cut from and protrude out of the concrete building, providing beautiful views from the inside out, as well as opportunities to see the interior space from the outside. A swimming pool is installed beneath a glass ceiling which can be opened to convert the indoor pool to open air. This structure seems to revolve around themes of windows, light and playing with the future of industrial design.

Wiel Arets architects began their residential project “H-House” in Maastricht, Holland in 2005. The house was built for two artists: a dancer and actor, who wanted an open and inspiring space to suit their free-spirited lifestyles. The concept of the house was to have no structural walls, only a few rectangular columns to support the buildings anatomy. The walls are instead replaced by glass, both transparent and opaque. Some glass panes are movable while others are fixed, offering the ability to manipulate the amount of light to enter the house. A garden resides behind the house, which occasionally opens up to the public. The interior is loft-like, extremely spacious, with hyper-modern geometric furnishings. Even the staircase is futuristic. The space is fun and interactive, all gray and white like a kind of blank canvas, a perfect dwelling for its creative residents.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry just finished his ambitious Las Vegas design project for the new Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. Gehry wanted the structure to stand out from the visual dissonance and intensity of the Las Vegas aesthetic while also extracting the city’s whimsical spirit. The building is like a three-dimensional Dali painting, a giant warped emblem of surrealism that appears to be melting before your eyes in the hot Nevada sun. Its stainless steel exterior mimics the complex anatomy of the brain, a myriad of winding and convoluted folds visually encoding the structure with all of the brain’s perplexing qualities.

Gehry worked in close collaboration with Lou Ruvo who founded the Brain Institute in memory of his father, plagued with Alzheimer’s disease. Ruvo remembers sitting with his dad in a waiting room not too long after diagnosis, surrounded by patients with advanced Alzheimer’s. Some were wearing diapers, others were physically incapacitated. He vouched to never intermix people with different stages of Alzheimer’s, and therefore there are no waiting rooms in the Brain Center; patients are brought individually to their private rooms. The halls are filled with natural light and muted colors, so as to create a sense of calmness as one walks through the sculptural space. In addition, the institute will also have a museum of the mind, an investigative space for people to learn about the human brain and its evolutionary bi-product (the ineffable mind).

Who would have thought cardboard, pizza boxes and card stock could be so artistically prolific? Artist Don Lucho has accumulated a massive collection of these cheap materials to construct his amazingly resourceful installation: ‘Casa De Karton.’ The cardboard house is an exact replica of Lucho’s apartment, displaced as it sits in a gallery. Fashioned together with tape and coated in white paint, the installation is the perfect monochromatic portrait of Lucho’s own modest dwelling. The viewer walks into a fully furnished flat: a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, all equipped with appliances, windows, tables, chairs, utensils, personal objects and everything in between. An immense amount of tedious work: carving, cutting, painting and constructing have resulted in an incredible exhibition.

Steven Holl Architects has designed this beach house in Long Island, New York and used inspiration from the studio of Jackson Pollock. The residence reflects the Abstract Expressionist’s working space, which is located nearby in East Hampton. The north side faces a view of the Atlantic and is kept open, while the South side is more closed for balance. Instead of solid walls, a slatted open frame is utilized, creating light patterns that change throughout the day. Free form designs of the home were created based on the 1949 painting “Seven in Eight.”

Aonni Mineral Water Plant is located in southern Chile in Punta Arenas. It was designed by Bebin & Saxton architects and embodies the transient nature of the elements in the Chilean Patagonia. The oscillating, choppy form of the structure reflects the strong erosion of landslides, winds, and glaciers. Sustainable design principles were applied throughout the project, apparent in the inner solar gain that lights the interior spaces naturally and the reusable materials employed. Water is regarded in both its liquid form as a plant, and its frozen form in a unique ice pattern in parts of the glass. Included in the master plan is a museum of the history and geography of the region, as well as local crafts and subjects.