Tag Archives: Hill House

A Polish Architect Rotated His House to Hide It in the Hill

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Most house designs start with a shape and then find a place for it. What KWK Promes did with the Yaw House, completed in 2025 and nestled in Poland’s Beskid Mountains, is almost the reverse. They let the land tell the building what to do, and the building listened.

The project began conventionally enough. The original concept was a classic gabled form, set parallel to neighboring structures, the kind of thing that blends politely into a mountain village. Respectable. Contextual. Probably a little forgettable. But the terrain wasn’t playing along. The plot has a pronounced slope, and rather than flattening it or working around it, architect Robert Konieczny rotated the entire structure. He literally yawed it, which is where the name comes from: yaw, the aeronautical term for rotation along a vertical axis. The gabled roof pivoted, the building reoriented toward sun and valley views, and something altogether different emerged.

Designer: KWK Promes

The result is a C-shaped house that embeds itself into the hillside rather than sitting on top of it. One corner barely makes contact with the ground. The rest of the structure hovers, tucks, leans in, to the point where the roofline peels away from the hill and dissolves into the surrounding lawn. Grass grows over it. The house doesn’t end where the mountain begins; they merge. From certain angles, you might not even register it as a building at first. That reads as a loss for anyone who wants their home to make a statement, but a quiet kind of brilliance if you’re more interested in belonging to a place than dominating it.

Interiors follow the geometry of the rotation, which gives the spaces a curved, almost circular quality that feels unusual for a residential home. On the ground floor, the orientation prioritizes what actually matters: greenery, natural sunlight, and wide views of the valley below. Private areas sit elsewhere in the plan, separated naturally by the structure’s layering into the slope. It doesn’t feel like a floor plan that was drawn and then decorated; it feels like one that was discovered.

The material choices reinforce all of this. Pine wood runs throughout, with plywood panels used for both the facade and interior walls. It’s warm, honest, and completely in line with the mountain setting. No marble-and-steel contrast trying to signal luxury, no jarring material moments designed to photograph well for social media. The palette is consistent because the thinking behind it is consistent.

I’ve been some residential architecture lately that feels performative, houses where the drama is the point and the living comes second. Yaw House is a useful counterargument. It makes bold moves, and rotating an entire structure to negotiate a difficult slope is not a timid decision, but it does so entirely in service of something real. The circular interior spaces aren’t there to be interesting in a magazine spread; they exist because the geometry demanded them. The green roof isn’t a lifestyle statement; it’s the terrain reclaiming its surface.

KWK Promes has a track record of this kind of thinking. Robert Konieczny’s firm has long been drawn to the challenge of how a building should respond to its specific conditions rather than impose a predetermined vision onto them. The Yaw House feels like a mature expression of that philosophy, one that is both technically ambitious and architecturally generous.

What stays with me, after reading more about this project, is how much restraint it takes to make something that disappears. Our instinct with ambitious architecture is to look for the spectacle. And yes, the Yaw House is spectacular if you know where to look. But it earns that quality quietly, through proportion, orientation, and a refusal to treat the landscape as a backdrop. The mountain isn’t framed in a window here. It’s invited in through the floor plan. That might be the most interesting thing a house can do.

The post A Polish Architect Rotated His House to Hide It in the Hill first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Madrid House Built From 5 Interlocking Cylinders

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The first time I saw photos of the House in Las Rozas, I genuinely thought it was a render. Not because it looked fake, but because it looked too intentional to be real. Five white cylinders, intersecting and overlapping on a gently sloping hillside just outside Madrid, with the Sierra de Guadarrama stretched out behind them like a painting. It’s the kind of house that makes you pause, tilt your head, and wonder exactly what kind of mind looked at an empty plot of land and thought: cylinders.

That mind belongs to Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, a Valencia-based firm that has quietly become one of the most compelling architectural studios working today. Their portfolio already includes some breathtaking residential work, but the House in Las Rozas feels like a step further out on the ledge. It’s a 370-square-meter home built not just around a geometry, but entirely because of one.

Designer: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos

Here’s what makes this project genuinely interesting rather than just visually provocative: the cylinders aren’t decorative. Each one houses a specific function. One holds the bedrooms. Another wraps around the main living area. A third integrates the garage and wellness space. The fourth contains the pool and technical facilities. The fifth marks the entrance. The form follows the function so precisely that you almost feel the logic in your body before you consciously understand it. You just know where you are in the house, because the architecture tells you.

The site itself shaped a lot of the decisions here. The natural slope of the terrain meant that cutting the base of each cylinder at an angle was the most honest solution. Rather than leveling the ground to accommodate the building, the building accommodates the ground. Oblique cuts at the base of each volume let the cylinders sit naturally in the landscape, giving the whole composition a sense of growing from the earth rather than being placed on top of it. That distinction sounds small but it changes everything about how the house feels, and how it reads against those sweeping views toward the mountains.

Light is handled with the same level of intentionality. Skylights and carefully positioned openings track the movement of the sun throughout the day, so the interior is never static. Curved walls catch light differently than flat ones do, and the architects lean into that fully. The effect is a home that shifts its mood depending on the hour, which is the kind of livability that doesn’t photograph well but makes a place genuinely worth living in. At the center of the five cylinders, a compact courtyard acts as the spatial anchor, pulling natural light deep into the house and creating visual connections between each volume and the landscape beyond.

Minimalism is the interior language, and it works. Alfaro Hofmann handled the interiors, keeping the detailing clean enough that the cylindrical walls remain the main event. Each volume also opens onto its own terrace or courtyard, which means privacy is built directly into the plan. You don’t need curtains or clever furniture arrangements to carve out a personal corner. The architecture does that work already.

There’s a broader conversation happening in residential architecture right now about whether formal experimentation can coexist with genuine livability. A lot of striking houses look incredible from the outside and feel exhausting to actually inhabit. The House in Las Rozas seems determined to prove that the two don’t have to be in conflict. The curved walls, the natural light, the sequenced privacy, the connection to the terrain, none of these are trade-offs made for the sake of an interesting photograph. They are outcomes of a coherent idea applied rigorously from concept to completion.

What separates work like this from pure architectural ego is the sense that every unusual decision was made in service of the people who will live there. The cylinders are not a statement for the street. They are an organizing principle for a life. And somehow that makes them feel less radical and more inevitable, which is probably the highest compliment you can give a house.

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A House In Ecuador That Climbs the Land Instead of Changing It

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You approach La Miradora by moving uphill. The house sits at the highest point of a long plot in Ecuador’s central highlands, and from the start, it’s clear that the terrain is in charge. Instead of flattening the land, the design by Taller General works with its natural slope, letting the ground shape how the house is arranged, entered, and experienced.

The structure reveals itself gradually. A sequence of wooden ribs lines the exterior, spaced evenly and forming the main structural system. These ribs act as both frame and shelter, supporting the upper floor while creating deep overhangs that protect the interior from strong sun and rain. On one side, they rest on a brick base that follows the slope and disappears where the lower level fits beneath. On the other hand, the elements vary slightly in length to match the terrain and shift into metal where exposure to weather is strongest. The logic is visible everywhere. Nothing is covered or hidden.

Designer: Taller General

Before you even step inside, a ramp guides you along the edge of the house. This path lets you move around the building while staying connected to the landscape. One end of the site opens toward a ravine, the other toward a road, and the circulation route allows you to understand both conditions before entering.

The main living spaces are located on the upper level. Once you arrive there, the reason becomes obvious. From this elevation, views extend across open meadows and toward nearby volcanoes. The living room, dining area, and kitchen are organized as one continuous space, so the horizon remains visible from almost anywhere. This layout reflects how the resident couple lives day to day, placing shared spaces at the center and giving them the best vantage point.

Looking closely, you begin to notice how much of the house was resolved through direct collaboration with craftspeople. Specialists in wood, metal, ceramic, and fabric designed and built elements such as storage, lighting, stairs, partitions, and curtains as part of the architecture itself. These details are not applied later. They are integrated into the structure from the beginning.

A small loft sits above part of the upper floor. It functions as a viewing point with direct sightlines in both directions toward the surrounding mountains. The space is simple but intentional, reinforcing the idea that the house is organized around its setting rather than around decorative features.

To reach the lower level, you move down a central stair that connects the two floors without expanding the building’s footprint. This level is smaller because it is partially tucked into the slope, but it plays an important role. It is designed for visiting family and becomes more active during gatherings. Bathrooms, services, and covered parking are also located here, grouped efficiently within the structural grid.

The material palette reflects practical decisions. Construction materials are left exposed, which reduces finishing work, minimizes waste, and keeps the building process straightforward. Sustainability systems are integrated quietly: solar panels provide electricity, and water is treated through a sequence of filters and natural processes before returning to the ground.

What stands out most about La Miradora is how clearly it responds to its environment. The slope determines the section, the views determine the layout, and the climate determines the materials. Rather than imposing a form on the site, the project lets the site guide the design. Walking through it, you don’t feel like you’re touring an object placed in the landscape. You feel like you’re moving through a house that was shaped by it.

The post A House In Ecuador That Climbs the Land Instead of Changing It first appeared on Yanko Design.

PERLA Freezes a Breaking Wave into a Sculpted Hillside Home

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White villas step down the hills above Marbella, all glass balustrades and flat roofs, watching the Mediterranean below. The view is usually the star while the houses blur together, polite boxes that stay out of the way. PERLA flips that script slightly, treating the house itself as a single breaking wave pulled out of the water and pinned to the slope, a sculptural gesture that refuses to stay neutral or disappear into the hillside.

The client bought an existing project already under submission, which meant STIPFOLD could not redraw the whole building from scratch. Instead, the transformation became conceptual rather than structural, which the studio calls “an act of sculpting energy into stillness.” PERLA reinterprets the existing volumes as a frozen moment of a breaking wave, using a new fiber concrete shell and natural stone base to recast the house without rebuilding it.

Designer: STIPFOLD

Arriving from below, you see the upper floor curl forward like surf over rock, creating a deep overhang that shades the terrace and glass façade. The white fiber concrete shell reads as a suspended ripple, while the natural stone plinth grounds it in the hillside. The house feels less like a box placed on a plot and more like a fragment of the sea that decided to stop moving halfway through a crash.

Inside, beige fiber concrete walls pick up the wave metaphor in a quieter way. Flowing parametric lines ripple across surfaces, echoing the exterior geometry without shouting about it. A restrained palette of white, sand, and pale wood keeps visual noise low, letting natural light slide along the curves. Rooms feel connected by a continuous rhythm, more like a tide moving through space than a series of separate boxes.

Custom elements, from the sculpted kitchen island to soft, rounded seating and a large ovoid ceiling recess, all follow the same language. Walking from the living area to the dining space, you feel the ceiling dip and rise, the walls tighten and relax, as if the house is breathing slowly. Function stays straightforward, but the form insists on being felt with every step you take through the 400 m² interior.

STIPFOLD describes PERLA as a reflection of its identity “beyond borders,” introducing its sculptural minimalism to the Mediterranean. This is not a neutral white box trying to disappear. It is architecture that “resists neutrality” and aims to evoke emotion through precision. The studio says it is not designed to please everyone, but to make everyone feel something, even if that something is not always comfortable or easy to pin down.

Living inside a frozen wave means the main structural moves were inherited, but the surfaces and spaces have been tuned to a single metaphor. PERLA suggests that even within tight planning constraints, you can still carve out a strong narrative and tactile experience. Perched on a hillside full of polite villas watching the sea, a house that feels like the sea watching back probably stands out more than the architects originally intended.

The post PERLA Freezes a Breaking Wave into a Sculpted Hillside Home first appeared on Yanko Design.

Unlike Its Spooky Namesake, This Hill House Is Futuristic, Surreal & Built From Concrete

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Called the Hill House, this 10,720-square-foot mammoth structure is home to art collectors Bruce Heavin and Lynda Weinman. Tucked away in Montecito, California the home is truly eye AND mind-boggling. The home is designed by Southern California-based Donalson+Partners, and it does seem to be inspired by other Hill Houses, that seem to be omnipresent in the US, and in the famous Shirley Jackson novel ‘The Haunting of Hill House’. But the inspiration and similarity only apply to the home’s size and uniqueness, not spookiness.

Designer-  Donaldson+ Partners

The home is quite intriguing to look at and is constructed from concrete. Weinman and Heaven instructed the architectural team to create something that would “explore the emotional and irrational”. With these instructions, Donaldson tried to build something that was structurally innovative, and had an almost surreal feel to it, while also maintaining a harmonious connection to the natural landscape. This led to the birth of the rather odd yet futuristic-looking Hill House.

As you look at the Hill House, it brings to mind the image of a warped doughnut with a sunken courtyard nestled in the center, and the rooms positioned around it in two levels. Donaldson wanted to focus on the site’s topography as much as the architectural object of the home. The home’s lower level is set against the ground, while the upper level is topped with a walkable and fully planted roof. As visitors enter the home, they are often surprised by how comfortable it is. They are welcomed by a massive living and dining room, and which leads to a desert-inspired central garden, while myriad twists and turns guide them into the various nooks and crannies of the home.

The interiors of the Hill House are quite luxurious and comfortable. Some of the amenities in the home are a movie theater, a large garage with an automobile turntable, a bar, and a rec room. The basement of the home features a working fireplace, and it is marked by a swirl-like structure, which guests can enter, creating a truly surreal experience, unlike anything you experience in most homes these days.

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