City&Country: Defying convention

A house does not just provide shelter from the elements but offers an emotional refuge from the rigours of everyday living. Although the design of most houses are functional and practical, there are homeowners and architects who prefer the unconventional. No doubt, some quirky variation to a traditional house may help break up the monotony of everyday life.

We have compiled a short list of unconventional homes — some were built by professional architects and designers, while others were inspired by the homeowners’ personal conviction.

Take for example the Low Impact Woodland Home or the “Hobbit House” in the UK, whose design came out of a sense of conviction. Its creator, Simon Dale, had enlisted the help of some friends and relatives to build an eco-friendly home. Although it is often called the Hobbit House, Dale’s creation was designed for his normal-sized family members.

“The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation, gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature,” Dale says on his website (www.simondale.net). He estimates that he spent 1,000 to 1,500 man hours and £3,000 building his woodland house. It is filled with eco-friendly features such as plenty of natural light flowing into the interior of the house and the use of recycled materials.

A house by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company founder Jay Shafer was also inspired by the preservation of the environment. Some of his smaller houses, both mobile and stationary, are only about 100 sq ft in size, or the size of some closets and bathrooms here in Malaysia. He personally lives in one of these tiny mobile houses.

“My decision to inhabit just 89 sq ft [of space] arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I did not want to maintain a lot of unused and unusable space,” Shafer says on his website (www.tumbleweedhouses.com).

Other houses have strong design elements that look at living in harmony with the surroundings, like France’s Domespace house. Looking like a house ET would like to live in, the spaceship-like house rotates to follow the sun, which allows plenty of natural light into the home. Being made mostly of wood, it gives the interior a warm and cosy feeling.

Another strong design focused house is the Shell House in Japan. Developed by Japanese architect Kotaro Ide, the house is nicely placed within a wooded area and its white exterior blends in nicely with its surroundings. “Being in sync with nature isn’t about yielding to nature — it’s about coexistence,” the architect says. The Shell House is also fitted out with eco-friendly designs.
The other houses in this unconventional houses list isn’t exhaustive, but it hopefully provides a glimpse of what a house can look like if the means meet the imagination.

Bart Prince’s Monte Vista Home (the US)
Famed architect Bart Prince built his Monte Vista home and studio in 1983 with the help of students from the nearby University of New Mexico. Prince built the home on a small lot, which contains his private living space and his work studio. The top level of the house looks very much like a spaceship, and it is sometimes referred to as such. This unusual shape was deliberately done to provide privacy and good views from the house. The house has a southern solar orientation and tubes that are filled with water to collect and hold heat.

Waldspirale (Germany)
The residential building complex Waldspirale, or Forest Spiral, is not a house but it is certainly unconventional. It was designed by Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, planned and implemented by architect Heinz M Springmann and constructed by the Bauverein Darmstadt company in the 1990s and completed in 2000. This U-shaped building contains 105 apartments and has a spiral design that makes it look like a children’s play-dough creation with its different colour schemes. One unique element is despite having over 1,000 windows in the development, no two windows are alike. Also, different door handles are attached to the doors and windows of each apartment.


SHELL HOUSE (JAPAN)
The Shell House is nestled in the forest in Karuizawa and designed by Japanese architect Kotaro Ide, president of architecture firm ARTechnic. This shell-like vacation house has curved walls and as such, is filled with custom-made furniture. Additionally, the house is built around a fir tree making the building look like a letter “J”. The J-shaped structure is constructed by two different-sized oval cylindrical buildings. The design of the house is also very green like the design elements that allow as much natural ventilation as possible. During winter, there is a unique heating system to keep the occupants snug and warm.

A Casa do Penedo (Portugal)
A Casa do Penedo, or House of Stone in Portuguese, sits on a remote hillside in northern Portugal with a wind farm not far from its site. Built between four large boulders, the house is a popular tourist attraction, which made the current owner, Vitor Rodrigues, move out to find some peace and quiet from the curious onlookers. The house was built in 1974 as a family rural retreat and is not short of amenities. It has enough room for a family and all the creature comforts one would expect from a home, such as a fireplace and balcony looking down onto the living areas. The house has been likened to the home of the popular cartoon characters The Flintstones.

Domespace (France)
This flying-saucer house built by Domespace International is made from wood and rotates with the sun. It rotates at a speed that isn’t felt by the inhabitants while providing plenty of natural light inside. The frame of the house is made out of wood-laminated beams of spruce and insulated with pure expanded cork, in granules and plates, or wood pulp. The roof shingles are made from Canadian Red Cedar with its natural oil for protection. This “out of the box” design provides a cozy enclosed space and the wood adds to the warm environment.

CASA SON VIDA 1 (SPAIN)
Casa Son Vida 1 is situated about 15 minutes outside of Palma de Mallorca in an exclusive community called Son Vida. It is one of the six planned villas on the island and was built through the efforts of real estate development company Cosmopolitan Estates Ltd, boutique architect firm TecArchitecture and interior design firm Marcel Wanders Studio. The 8,500 sq ft house has a mix of Mediterranean and Tuscan styles and it has a bold curvaceous shape that gives it an organically formed look. Certain parts of the house look like a spaceship, while others have loud and bold colours. The inside of the home is wonderfully designed with chic furniture and decor pieces.

TUMBLEWEED HOUSES (the US)
Have you ever wondered how it would be living in a home with a built-up of under 100 sq ft? Tumbleweed Homes solves that mystery. Jay Shafer, the developer of Tumbleweed, has been living in a house smaller than the average Malaysian bathroom since 1997. He had decided to design a series of small homes to have a low impact on the environment while eliminating the need to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space. There are several versions of his homes with the smallest being only 65 sq ft and mobile, while another version is a stationary cottage, ideal as an external guest house or for elderly parents to come and go as they please.

Hobbit House (UK)
Although not exactly a house for hobbits from The Lord of the Rings, this low-impact woodland home certainly looks the part. It took Simon Dale and his family four months to complete building the house. Dale didn’t have much experience as a builder or carpenter although he had mucked around building a similar house, and his determination and vision created a lovely home. There are various green elements in the house to keep it functioning beautifully, such as a fridge that is cooled by air coming from underground through the foundations, a skylight to let in natural light and solar panels to power the electrical items.

This article appeared in City & Country, the property pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 892, Jan 9-15, 2012