This modern eco-home features a garden roof and integrates the surrounding forest into its design!

Hugging House is a modern eco-home architecture concept that features a garden roof and incorporates the natural landscape of the land into its layout.

Noticing the devasting changes that come with climate change, most modern architects look to the natural world for inspiration to help preserve it. Whether that means building a self-sustainable home using a ‘passive house’ construction method or incorporating biophilia into the design scheme, architects interpret earth’s many ecosystems in exciting and different ways.

Cuba-based Veliz Arquitecto conceptualized a modern eco home called Hugging House that integrates the land’s rolling terrain and surrounding trees into the layout of the building.

Hugging House is a large, bi-level, cantilevered home located somewhere with dense forestry and overhead treetop canopies. The two sections that comprise Hugging House merge together as if in an embrace. Concrete slabs comprise the home’s surrounding driveway that leads to the ground level and outdoor leisure areas.

Veliz Arquitecto’s Hugging House is still only in its conceptual phase, but if brought to life, Hugging House’s location would be fully incorporated into the layout of the home. Describing the design in his own words, Veliz Arquitectos notes, “We have taken advantage of the slopes of the land in order to create visual connections at different heights with the existing vegetation and beyond the landscape, as well as [used] the premises with which we always try to characterize the project.”

Choosing to merge the outdoor areas with the home’s entire layout led to some exciting design choices including a garden roof and abstract overall frame. The Hugging House’s garden roof is located in a terrace-like enclosure where residents can lay out and feel as close to nature as if they were sitting on the ground below.

In addition to the garden roof, Hugging House features a swimming pool, fire pit, and concrete driveway. On the inside, residents and guests can enjoy a living room, kitchen, dining room, bathroom, and laundry room.

Designer: Veliz Arquitecto

The inside also features garden walls and ceilings to further the home’s biophilic design principle. 

Upstairs, natural stone walls give the bedroom a sultry, cozy appeal.

The dining area and bar room feature bright and dark design elements respectively. 

A floating staircase brings guests from the living room to the second floor. 

This nontraditional A-frame style cabin blends classic and modern design elements for an inspired new look!

Pisqal is a small, bilevel concept residence envisioned on the beach and inspired by the traditional A-frame cabin, hosting a myriad of classic and contemporary design elements that give Pisqal its distinct, alternative look.

Usually with A-frame cabins, what you see is what you get. From the outside, an A-frame cabin’s general floor plan can be figured out with few surprises. There’s a cozy appeal found in the familiarity and simplicity of A-frame cabins. Borrowing the A-frame cabin’s traditional shape and charming feel, architects Yaser Rashid Shomali and Yasin Rashid Shomali from Shomali Design Studio conceptualized an inventive A-frame cabin called Pisqal that incorporates abstract structural elements, giving the traditional cabin a contemporary twist.

Split evenly between two floors, Pisqal comprises around 70-square-meters in area, forming a cubic frame that backdrops the cabin’s A-frame style eaves. The designers behind Pisqal chose a cubic frame to border the cabin’s A-frame style eaves to create more interior space. Inside the cabin, the Shomali designers gave the home an open-floor layout, with the living areas contained to the first floor and the main bedroom occupying the entire top floor. With such an open-air layout, quirky design elements were incorporated like a ladder that replaced a traditional staircase, bringing residents from the cabin’s ground floor to its loft bedroom.

Envisioned on a beach, even the location of Pisqal challenges the A-frame cabin and brings it into a new light. Following the open feel throughout the house, Shomali Design Studio squared each room off with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that bring guests up close and personal to the outdoor seaside views. Interior design elements like white linen curtains and unfinished wooden walls also help to brighten up each room, collecting pools of natural sunlight that pour in through the glazed windows.

Designer: Shomali Design Studio

These modular prefab homes could be the world’s first to use a steel 3D-printed “exoskeleton” construction system!

Located in Orani, Sardinia, Exosteel comprises the world’s first housing development to use a steel 3D-printed “exoskeleton” construction system that supports and distributes all the functional elements of the building, inspired by the sculpture work of Costantino Nivola.

Museums are social hubs for travelers. They’re cultural and artistic landmarks first, yes. But they’re also guaranteed spots where tourists can take some respite from long hours spent wandering the city. Near the Nivola Museum in Sardinia, Italy, international design studio Mask Architects visualized a cluster of homes to function as a housing development for the surrounding community. Conceptualized as a small village of modular prefabricated steel houses, Mask Architects is the world’s first architecture and design firm to use a steel 3D-printed “exoskeleton” construction system to build the small village, calling it Exosteel.

Exosteel comprises a group of modular steel homes that would be constructed using ​​a 3D-printed construction system that supports and distributes all the functional elements of the building. Mask Architects co-founders Danilo Petta and Öznur Pınar Çer felt inspired by Costantino Nivola’s sculpture work, in particular a travertine sculpture called ‘La Madre.’ Punctuating the terrain of a sloping mountainside in Sardinia, Exosteel is comprised of heart-shaped, white homes with center ‘energy towers,’ oriented in the same way as the head on Nivola’s ‘La Madre.’

Mask Architects plan on building Exosteel by first inserting a hollow central column ⅓ of the building’s height into the ground, reinforced by wooden beams to support each home’s three floors. Then, on each floor, a perimeter frame “divides and supports the [home’s] facades made up of panels modeled to follow the organic shape of the house,” as described by Mask Architects. Following Nivola’s pursuit of binding communities together through art, Mask Architects chose Exosteel’s location due to its proximity to Orani, Sardinia’s national museum, where Nicola’s ‘La Madre’ is on permanent display.

Striving to ensure each building is entirely “self-sustainable,” Mask Architects designed each module that comprises Exosteel to be expandable and flexible to meet the conditions of Sardinia’s natural climate and weather conditions. Considering Orani’s propensity for wind, the homes of Exosteel are completed with built-in voids that guide wind through each building to the development’s communal wind turbine. As described by Mask Architects, Exosteel garners energy from individual energy conduits placed at the top of each home.

Describing the energy conduits, Mask Architects note, “Each building is centered with an ‘Energy Tower’…covered with solar panels that will harvest solar energy while the top of the central energy tower itself will rotate 360 degrees at the same time with the wind that will also generate wind turbine energy…​​The main centered energy tower that houses all the systems is constructed out of a steel skeleton. By connecting our bearing steel beams to this skeleton column, we actually created a completely self-supporting steel carcass metal structure.”

Designer: Mask Architects

This 3D architectural design envisions a modernist villa designed for a family of five in the hills of San Sebastián, Spain!

Rico Villa is a cantilevered, modernist architectural 3D visualization designed for a family of five in the mountains of San Sebastián, Spain.

Known for their modernist structures that flair with midcentury elements, the latest from architectural visual designers, Amirhossein Nourbakhsh and Mohammadreza Norouz envisions a contemporary villa for a family of five in the hills of San Sebastián, Spain. In collaboration with Didformat Studio, the two designers took to the rich natural surroundings of the mountains for inspiration throughout the design process. Towering right above a calm pond, Rico Villa is a bilevel, cantilevered concrete structure with an idyllic, midcentury personality.

The beauty of modernist architecture is found in its simplicity. Generally recognized for the incorporation of semi-outdoor spaces, clean framing, and bulbous geometric elements, modernist architecture stands out for acute attention to the home’s details. Outfitting Rico Villa’s exterior with modernist design elements, Nourbakhsh and Mohammadreza incorporated semi-outdoor spaces on all sides of the home. Guests would be able to access Rico Villa from its north and south sides (via garage entrance on one side) and immediately find overhead concrete covering while still outside the villa. To enter the home’s interior, an internal set of staircases and elevators bring guests from one floor to the next.

On the first level, guests can enjoy a semi-outdoor space before entering the first floor’s interior. Cantilevered by design, the first floor’s semi-outdoor space is wedged right the gap between the two floors. Then, when guests are inside, they can escape to one of the many semi-enclosed terraces available onsite. Floor-to-ceiling windows expand the inside of the home and offer unfettered views of the natural surroundings, once more blurring the line between outdoor and indoor spaces. Sunlight also pours in through Rico Villa’s lengthy skylights, brightening the inside of the family home throughout the day.

Designers: Amirhossein Nourbakhsh and Mohammadreza Norouz

Posed beside a still pond, Rico Villa’s modernist edge is softened with its idyllic location.

The post This 3D architectural design envisions a modernist villa designed for a family of five in the hills of San Sebastián, Spain! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This all-black cabin finds balance between escape and mystery with floor-to-ceiling mountainside windows!

The Bali House from CASA Studio is a cantilevered multi-level mountain retreat with fully glazed glass windows for an almost-all-glass exterior, open-air terraces that offer unobstructed views, and sophisticated living areas with dark stone and warm wooden elements.

It’s hard not to fantasize about our future dream home. Open-air terrace walkways, somewhere with plenty of sunset views, a semi-outdoor dining room, skylights galore. Using 3dsmax, Corona Renderer, and Adobe Photoshop, interior photography and CGI studio, CASA creates 3D visualizations of architectural plans and their interiors for clients in advertising and PR. Designing the escapist homes of our dreams is their job at Casa, and their latest called Bali House features an almost entirely glass facade and a cantilevered frame.

The Bali House seems to be tucked away in the mountains, somewhere with a subtropical climate. Lodged into the mountainside, the Bali House keeps an obscure profile, with a jet black finish and unadorned exterior. On the property’s wood-slatted ground level, an infinity pool takes center stage beside a lounge and roofed dining area. The outside deck area is accessible by a set of stairs that connect to the home’s first floor. The first floor’s kitchen follows the same enigmatic design scheme as the home’s exterior.

Frosted dark stone countertops refine and cool down the kitchen’s rustic wooden panels, giving the kitchen a cozy yet elegant personality. The living area swaps out the home’s sturdy, rectangular elements for playful, circular touches. The standing, arched light fixture almost grazes the ceiling and the room’s circular floor rug showcases a round coffee table in its center. Exiting the living area, a set of stairs leads to the main bedroom and washing areas.

The stairs from the living room bring you to the home’s primary bedroom where a king-sized bed wrapped in ash grey sheets and fluffed with houndstooth pillows. Warm lighting emanates from a smoky grey glass light fixture to set the mood for the bedroom: suave, yet cozy. Walking from the bedroom to the bathroom, a walk-in closet divides the two, and residents are greeted with an open-air layout. The bathroom’s sink, tub, and shower are kept in the same room without doors or borders to separate them, giving the bathroom a subdued mature ambiance ideal for newlyweds and solo travelers.

Designer: CASA

This hubless e-bike perfectly balances an artist’s brush stroke with sleek aerodynamic design

BaoPham Design’s aerodynamic e-bike is something straight out of the cyberworld of Tron.

Bicycle design concepts have a way of transporting us to our favorite sci-fi flick or parallel universe where everyone hovers instead of pedals. Whether the year is 2140 and we’re zooming through the neon streets of Tokyo to catch up to the corrupt corporate villain or fighting zombies on an electric mountain bike deep in the woods of Georgia, there’s a bike concept to fit the bill. Product designer and 3D visualizer, BaoPham Design recently unveiled their plans for an aerodynamic e-bicycle destined to hit the streets of tomorrow.

The e-bike concept from BaoPham Design features centerless wheels that reduce the rotating inertia found in heavier wheels. Equipped with slim road bike tires, BaoPham’s concept e-bike boasts an aerodynamic build that cuts out the extra drag from air pressure and skin friction to give the bike a speedy ride. Conceptualized with a swift, Z-frame, the e-bike concept from BaoPham Design would host an electric motor located in the bike’s rear-wheel rotor that would be activated once the pedals are moved.

The Z-frame of BaoPham Design’s e-bike would be constructed entirely from metal or aluminum for a sleek look and swift ride. Additionally, the hubless wheels of BaoPham Design’s e-bike reduce the rotating inertia found in wheels with spokes and a hub. The aero bike seems to be rendered in an entirely metallic or aluminum body, including everything from the handlebars to the paper-thin pedals.

3D modeled with Shapr3D and rendered in the KeyShot app, BaoPham Design imagined an aerodynamic electric city bike that enhances the bike’s essential parts and moves past the bulky components of yesterday. While it’s currently only a concept, BaoPham Design’s e-bike might not be hitting the streets anytime soon, it’s not hard to imagine a future cyber world filled with these slick aero bikes pelting down city streets and weaving through traffic.

Designer: BaoPham Design

The viral Xiaomi robotic dog posed to be an affordable challenge to Boston Dynamic’s Spot just released new images + sketches!

Quadruped robots hit the scene in 1976 and since then, they’ve been used for everything from unsafe forensic and governmental tasks such as bomb-sniffing and mine surveying to clinical tasks like connecting with patients to provide remote medical attention.

Quadruped technology is the talk of the robotics world. Four-legged robots are relied on by industries across the world for tasks that require a stable walking gait and agile mobility. Xiaomi, a Chinese tech company, recently unveiled more 3D renders of their own Quadruped robotic creation, CyberDog.

Currently, the bio-inspired, four-legged robot has been engineered as a robotic companion whose future technical capabilities are still in development. In a recent press release from Xiaomi, it’s said that CyberDog comes complete with “AI interactive cameras [and sensors], binocular ultra-wide-angle fisheye cameras, and Intel ® RealSense™ D450 Depth module, and can be trained with its computer vision algorithm.”

CyberDog’s external interface features an array of camera sensors. CyberDog’s involved vision sensor system allows the robot to carve out its own navigational map and analyze its surrounding environment in real-time, allowing it to look toward a destination and avoid physical barriers on the way. Currently, CyberDog’s integrated software allows the quadruped robotic companion to operate like a real dog.

Inspired by the pet-like nature of canines, CyberDog also features built-in smart technology that allows posture and facial recognition, which means CyberDog can even follow its owner around like a real dog. Xiaomi filled CyberDog with 11 high-precision sensors that allow the robot to register, analyze, and interact with its surrounding environment. With a maximum torque output and rotation speed up to 32N·m/220Rpm, CyberDog can move at speeds up to 3.2 m/s.

Syberdog also comes with 3 type-C ports and 1 HDMI port so users can attach hardware add-ons, Xiaomi describes, “be it a search light, panoramic camera, motion camera, LiDAR, or more.” In addition to its integrated biometric technology, CyberDog responds to voice commands like assigning tasks or operation control. Alternatively, users can manage CyberDog’s movement and direction via accompanying remote control or smartphone applications.

Expanding on CyberDog’s technical and managerial potential, a “rich external interface” includes 3 type-C ports and 1 HDMI port, allowing users to attach hardware add-ons or software systems to make acute improvements to CyberDog’s existing technology. On CyberDog’s ability to register commands, Xiaomi notes, “CyberDog can be called on for the most unique tasks, and the ways in which it can be interacted with holds unforetold possibilities.”

Designer: Xiaomi

Rubber bottomed feet allow CyberDog to move around rugged terrain and indoor settings alike.

Hinged limbs allow CyberDog to move just like a canine animal.

CyberDog can even do push-ups. Only half-kidding. It can do push-ups, thanks to its 220 rpm32N-m maximum torque.

Soft rubber bottoms allow for soft and nimble treading.

11 high-precision sensors fill out CyberDog’s internal wiring that give CyberDog the power to understand, analyze, and interact with its environment.

CyberDog comes equipped with voice command technology and facial recognition software so it can follow humans around and respond to tasks like a real canine might.

CyberDog can conduct high-speed movements up to 3.2 m/s.

This new AirPods Pro case takes on a barrel shape to fit in pockets with your other EDC items!

Antón visualized an AirPods Pro case concept that holds each AirPods Pro in vertical placement, swapping out a rectangular build for a barrel-shaped case.

The new case for AirPods Pros is even wider than the previous generation of AirPods. Wedging that case into your pocket between your keys, wallet, and other EDC items is uncomfortable and makes our pockets too bulky. Iván Antón, a product and graphic designer based in Madrid, recently visualized an AirPods Pro Case concept that gives the case a vertical edge, ditching a wide body for a slim, barrel-shaped one.

The current case for AirPods Pro is about 20mm wider than the AirPods case, a substantial difference that requires a lot more room in our back pockets.  In contrast to the bulkier, horizontal AirPods Pro case, Antón’s concept case would fit nicely into any pocket even if it’s already stuffed with your house keys, wallet, and whatever else. Individual charging lights emanate from both ends of the cylindrical case to accurately indicate how much battery juice each AirPod has. Antón also visualized the AirPods Pro case in a matte black, a shade that we’ve yet to see Apple experiment with on charging cases for AirPods and AirPod Pros.

EDC items like house keys, wallets, lighters, and multi-tools fill our pockets daily. Finding the space to carry our charging cases for AirPods can get difficult considering the little room we do have. 3D visualizer and product designer Iván Antón created an AirPods Pro case that swaps out a bulky, rectangular build for a cylindrical one that can easily slide into the fullest of back pockets.

Designer: Iván Antón

These bamboo villas curve into lotus flowers creating a Disney-worthy villa!

Known for creating 3D visualizations of architectural residences that shake up the thrillseeker in each of us, graphic designer Thilina Liyanage has conceptualized a subdued bamboo retreat for when the adventurer grows tired. Taking inspiration from lotus flowers and magical realism, Liyanage’s Hideout Lotus Bamboo Villa rises above the ground on bamboo pillars to form a raised, single-story home resembling the look of a giant rattan table with an intricate, interwoven bamboo lotus mounted on top.

From an exterior perspective, the Hideout Lotus finds a common outdoor area just below its mounted single-level lotus-inspired living area. Four curved bamboo pillars stack atop one another to create borders around the common area, creating a tiered walking space that contains the villa’s canopied deck. Wooden panels line the deck, complimenting the rest of the bamboo structure, where globular concrete mounds harness the villa’s main support beams.

Three wide bamboo shafts elevate Hideout Lotus’s upper deck, which supports the villa’s main interior living area. In a congruent style with the ground deck, the upper deck fashions wooden panels for its flooring, which merge with the villa’s more intricate bamboo lacework. Like a lotus flower floating in a pond, the main villa casually rests on the upper deck, with its bottom petals artfully draped over the edge. The villa’s windows are stationed behind an overlaid bamboo lattice that enwraps the entire villa, giving it an alluring, if not elusive personality.

Symbolic for rebirth and groundedness, the lotus is lauded for its ability to bloom beautifully despite murky waters. Positioned in a dense, wooded area, Liyanage’s Hideout Lotus Bamboo Villa bursts from the ground below in bamboo roots and chutes to grow into a hideaway that creates space for recharging and getting away from the thrill of it all.

Designer: Thilina Liyanage

The villa’s ground-level deck contains an outdoor common area complete with petal ceiling fans and rattan furniture.

Forming a cluster of villas, each one of Liyanage’s Hideout Lotus Bamboo Villa is connected to one another by strings of lights.

Reminiscent of cloaked fairy tale bungalows, the bamboo lattice that envelops each villa only enhances their enigmatic personalities.

Draped over the upper deck’s edge, the curved bottom petals of each villa are some of the finer details in Liyanage’s tribute to the lotus flower.

Supported by groups of concrete-fortified bamboo support beams, each lotus villa rests on a stabilized, secure foundation.

These wildlife-inspired futuristic cabins suspend off the cliffs like StarWars jets ready for takeoff!





Thilina Liyanage is a Sri Lankan 3D visualizer who conceptualized architectural fortresses that resemble wildlife, including villas that bend over mountainsides or a yacht club whose roof flexes into the curve of a manta ray’s backside. Developed to be constructed entirely from sustainable building material like bamboo and responsibly harvested wooden chutes, some of Thilina Liyanage’s 3D visualizations take a different approach. For example, one of his recent designs finds futuristic glass and metallic cabins inspired by the shape of dolphins puncturing a cliffside overlooking the ocean.

Similar to his Cliff Cabin 3D visualization, Liyanage’s Futuristic Ocean Cabins are lodged into a tropical mountainside, piercing the cliff to suspend in midair with a cantilever structure. Resembling the shape of a dolphin’s body, the Futuristic Ocean Cabins doubly mimic the rugged science fiction aesthetic of Star Wars, stationed on the cliffside like resistance X-Wing fighter jets ready for battle. Liyanage envisioned each structure bored into the cliffside with angled steel beams wrapped in concrete and yanked tight on their horizontal planes with four high-tensile suspension cables to create enough support for each cabin’s foundation. Accessible from an adjacent steel staircase, the interiors of Liyanage’s Futuristic Ocean Cabins come complete with enough space for a bathroom, sleeping area, kitchen, as well as a small living area.

Coated with glass facades reinforced with a concrete framework, Liyanage envisioned a future getaway that hinges on a transparent, exposed external structure and linear, open-air internal space. Jutting out from their cliffside foundation with the same tension of Star Wars III, the true thrill of Liyanage’s Futuristic Ocean Cabins rests in their support methods (four high-tensile suspension cables and one main support beam bored into the cliffside) to keep its cantilever structure horizontal over the bustling ocean below.

Designer: Thilina Liyanage

The wildlife of the mountainside merges with the futuristic structure of Futuristic Ocean Cabins to create a rugged, sci-fi escapist hideaway.

Bored into the mountainside, Thilina Liyanage’s Futuristic Ocean Cabins remain suspended over the sea.

The cabin’s glass facade framed with concrete give it a rugged look fit for the set of Star Wars.

Inside, the linear layout of each cabin allows space for a living and sleeping area, as well as a kitchen and bathroom.





In addition to the cabins’ beam foundation support, four high-tensile suspension cables sling the cabins horizontally over the ocean.

A vertical steel staircase grants access to each cabin’s interior space.

The cabin’s cantilever design gives it the thrilling edge that Thilina Liyanage is quickly becoming known for.

Equipped with all the amenities and utilities that one might need, the thrill of living above the ocean is balanced with human comforts like AC and septic tanks.