Minimalist architecture: homes that inspire calm

Casa Pujada del Rey Martí, Spain

Fuses-Viader Architects and Montserrat Nogués Architect

This Girona house is an elegant merging of two period homes in the city’s centre. Set in a richly historical part of town, Casa Pujada del Rey Martí is the work of a collaboration between Spanish studios Fuses-Viader Architects and Montserrat Nogués Architect, and it blends its heritage location with a distinctly contemporary interior and minimalist architecture, fit for the 21st century. ‘The site, right outside the Roman city and in front of the former Via Augusta, was an ancient necropolis, from which human remains from the 2nd to 3rd century AD, remains of opus signinum [paving], and a funerary oven, that have been preserved, were found. During later construction, from the Carolingian period, medieval houses were built, [and] later highly modified,’ explains Nogués. In this powerful context, the team tackled the redesign of two adjacent plots – one of which contained a house in need of renovation, and the other the remains of a second, which was almost entirely destroyed. Photography: Pep Sau

231 Napier Street, Australia

Edition Office

Edition Office’s latest project in Fitzroy, Melbourne, makes a bold contemporary statement. Designed by local architecture studio for developer Milieu, the Fitzroy apartment building contains 11 units, each with a distinct character and apartment interior design, arranged around visually dramatic common parts and shared spaces in pristine minimalist architecture. The development, 231 Napier Street, is located right in the middle of Fitzroy’s downtown, a block from Town Hall, and surrounded by small businesses, restaurants, and stores. The new seven-level structure replaced a low-rise commercial unit, and has a façade defined by generous balconies with slender vertical railings that bend over the distinctive curved edges. Additional writing: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Rory Gardiner

Zhejiang Private Penthouse: The Gentle Hurricane, China

YuQiang & Partners, EK Design

A private owner approached the architecture teams at YuQiang & Partners and EK Design to create a holiday base for them in the Zhejiang Province in China. The project, an apartment interior design refresh, was conceived with a minimalist architecture angle, favouring a serene, warm place, perfect for entertaining, art and fashion. Clean lines and geometric volumes (such as the dramatic round columns that define the entrance to the living spaces) meet neutral colours and natural materials. The result is a domestic interior that is calming, and at the same time perfect for hosting and showcasing art. Photography: Zhu Di @ SHADØO PLAY

Casa El Aguacate, Mexico

Práctica Arquitectura

Creating a home that fosters a close relationship with nature; making the most of the region’s natural light; and producing a compact house that causes minimal intrusion on the surrounding natural landscape were all key drivers in the design development of Casa El Aguacate, a Mexican retreat outside Monterrey by the locally based studio Práctica Arquitectura. The single-level, minimalist architecture of this pink house was composed around a series of interconnected open-air patios, a flowing, airy interior, natural light and smart circulation plans. The project was a private commission for a holiday home for a young family of four – a couple and their toddlers. ‘El Aguacate seeks to be the interface between its inhabitants and the place in which it is deployed; a welcoming space for rest and coexistence,’ the architecture team explains. A geometric, almost minimalist approach helps instil clarity in the studio’s vision and a neutral background for life to unfold inside the home. Photography: Cesar Bejar

Patio in Arronches, Portugal

Corp Arquitetos

In the heart of a small, picturesque, historic village in Portugal’s Alentejo region, a period home has got a brand new minimalist rooftop terrace and swimming pool. The brainchild of Diogo Menéres Pimentel and João de Oliveira Ribeiro’s architecture studio Corp, the space is moulded through a constant dialogue between the new structure and ’humble previous uses, the olive trees and degraded tiles of the neighbours and the characteristic blue sky of the Alentejo,’ the team explains. Photography: Guilherme Blasco

The Hill in front of the Glen, Mexico

HW-Studio Arquitectos

Set within a thickly forested area near Mexico’s historic city of Morelia, this new home is a clean, minimalist arch, semi-buried neatly into the earth. ’The main inspiration was the subtle murmurs whispered by the virgin environment, and from the user’s search for protection and shelter,’ the architects at locally based HW-Studio Arquitectos explain. Inside, clean surfaces, refreshingly sparsely dress spaces and raw concrete come together to both provide shelter and focus on the views out, balancing nature and architecture through serenity. Photography: Cesar Bejar

Loft A, Spain

Arrova (Atelier Rojo-Vergara)

The traditional loft apartment arose out of the transformation of an industrial space into a residential one, bringing a commercial scale and space to the domestic realm. Over the years, the term has been much debased as square footages shrink and oxymoronic terms like ‘new-build lofts’ creep onto the market. It’s therefore refreshing to find a post-industrial residence that retains all the character of the original space. Loft A began life as a motorbike repair shop in Pamplona’s Milagrosa district, south of the city centre. Designed by Cristina Vergara and Enrique Rojo of Arrova (Atelier Rojo-Vergara), the project was intended to be a prototype for the area, which has a large number of abandoned and redundant industrial properties. ‘Their transformation would greatly help to revitalise the area,’ the architects write. Photography: Inaki Bergera. Additional writing: Jonathan Bell

Islington House, UK

McLaren Excell

This London renovation, the redesign of a listed Georgian home in central London’s borough of Islington, delicately transforms an existing period property by elegantly slotting in 21st-century style and updates. The result, Islington House by McLaren Excell, is perfectly poised between old and new, large and small scale, artfully blurring the boundary between architecture and furniture. The project’s minimalist architecture feels refreshing and efficient, forming a multi-layered platform for daily life that is both serene and functional. The project brief outlined the renovation and extension of a family home. The architects obliged, adding a monolithic-looking, double-skinned, fair-faced concrete rear extension with a dramatic split level, which negotiates the listed building’s existing different internal levels and connects the interior with the garden at the back of the plot. The extension’s concrete volume sculpturally folds to form breakfast bar, kitchen worktops and shelving features, as well as walls and flooring, creating ‘an effortless cohesive architectural language’, explain the architects. Photography: Rory Gardiner

Casa Costa, Spain

Arquitectura-G

This Barcelona home is ’an exercise on making a porch habitable around a patio garden,’ explain its architects, the local studio Arquitectura-G. Composed of clean white and light grey surfaces that combine plaster walls and exposed concrete, the house is a minimalist composition that turns its elegant back to the street and focuses around its central, planted atrium. ’The plot is surrounded by party walls, and the façade is just one more wall that encloses an interior space that wants to be exterior,’ the architecture team says. Meanwhile, inside it all comes alive in splendid minimalist calm. Photography: Maxime Delvaux

Richmond House, UK

McLaren Excell Architects

In transforming a historic 1930s building in Surrey (a former council house semi), London architects MacLaren Excell have created a haven of domestic minimalist calm. The design brings together brick, timber and an uncuttered style to compose strong, abstract forms that serve the property’s new owners, a young family, as a warm yet serene home. Exquisite detailing, such as the seamless oak veneered panelling and natural stone surfaces, add to the overall effect. Photography: Rory Gardiner

House in Aldeburgh, UK

David Walker Architects

Set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, this Suffolk home was originally built in 1965 as a typical bungalow. New ownership and almost sixty years later, it has been reborn as a contemporary home, courtesy of David Walker Architects. The phased transformation, which started in 2012, balances rural references and the building’s original character with a pared down, modern design that favours simple volumes and materials and a neutral, light colour palette. The old and new minimalist architecture is complemented by a new, flat green roof that sits next to the existing gable ended roof elements. Photography: Timothy Soar

Tree House, UK

Fletcher Crane Architects

This minimalist home is a two bedroom abode in Ealing, London. Its architects used a simple exterior palette of grey brick, black timber and tubular metalwork, which inside translates to exposed brick and timber, and clean white walls. Large windows frame the urban context using the vistas as a living canvas against the interior’s calming feel. ’The simplicity and rawness of finishing is carried through to the internal spaces where brick walls, ash joinery, terrazzo tiles and delicate metal balustrades contribute to a comprehensive vision,’ say the architects. Photography: Lorenzo Zandri

Bloomsbury House and Mews, UK

West Architecture

Two Grade II listed Georgian buildings in central London are united in a single residence in this residential project by West Architecture. The architects carefully converted back the building to its domestic use (after being used as an office), cleaning up the interiors and revealing the rear garden by removing a past addition. A new extension in sharp, minimalist architecture is made out of a simple timber frame structure resting on built from bricks reclaimed from the demolition of this previous building on site. Meanwhile, ’the main house has been refurbished with a particular emphasis on restoration of the finer rooms on ground and first floor,’ the architects explain. Photography: Ben Blossom

Casa Cabrita Moleiro, Portugal

Atelier Data 

An old granary mill structure in Portugal’s Algarve has been given a minimalist transformation by local studio Atelier Data. The architects mixed the building’s original character with elements of the local vernacular and contemporary treatments. The result is a five-bedroom, family-run holiday home with a distinctly modern feel. ’Casa Cabrita Moleiro is a flexible living space that can accommodate various possibilities of use and sharing,’ say the architects. Its pared down, minimalist approach helps to that end, as well as creating a striking contrast between its crisp, white, contemporary architecture and the natural, rural environment. Photography: Richard John Seymour 

Hampstead House, UK

Oliver Leech Architects

A sculptor turned to architect Oliver Leech and his team for the transformation of a dilapidated house in North London’s Hampstead into a modern, minimalist residence with all-mod-cons. The new space carefully designed with an attention to detail and a restricted material palette that lets the architectural composition take centre stage - creating a home that feels as serene and uncluttered as a high-end art gallery. ’At Hampstead House, we thought carefully about each material and every colour to create an overall coherent palette, whilst also creating unique spaces within the home that served their particular purpose. Natural light is an important feature of all our work and on this project we wanted to soften the light to provide a gallery-like backdrop for the clients artwork and sculptures,’ says Leech. Photography: Building Narratives

Project K, UK

Studio Hazeldean

The design of this Surrey home started with one key question, explains Studio Hazeldean’s founder and principal Dan Hazeldean: ’How can the inside become one with the outdoors?’ The answer was in creating a sophisticated interior with finely crafted features and pared down decor that allows the views to shine through the large openings. ’Minimalism and Japanese simplicuty characterise the interiors, with nothing to detract from the confident lines. Strong geometry balanced with a muted palette to create restful harmony,’ the architecture team explains. The result uses matte grey green doors, soaped oak, sintered stone and leather. Photography: Dan Hazeldean

Casa da Volta, Portugal

Promontorio with Joao Cravo

Located in the Southwest of Alentejo, deep in the Grandola hills, this house is a minimalist gesture in the rich Portuguese countryside. Created by local studio Promontorio in collaboration with architect Joao Cravo, the generous, six-bedroom home ‘echoes the tradition of the Portuguese alcáçova - or qasbah, following its Arab etymology - which functioned as a defensive citadel, or compound, with its constructions built within and protected by a high-walled perimeter,’ explains the team. Clean geometric volumes, calm and neutral colour compositions and natural materials make the surrouning landscape the progragonist in this serene home. Photography: Alexandre Ramos

Belgravia Mews, UK

Finkernagel Ross

London based architecture practice Finkernagel Ross spearheaded the redesign of the boutique residence in a mews house in the city’s chic Belgravia neighbourhood. The project, for a private client, a family of four who split their time between Asia and London, draws on the ideas of light and space. The design is calm and crisp, emphasising bespoke details, a minimalist attitude and plenty of natural light that bathes the craft-led and art-filled interiors through windows and skylights. Photography: Anna Stathaki

T House, UK

Matthew Giles Architects

A four bedroom house in London has been reimagined by Matthew Giles Architects with an all-natural feel in mind, following the owners’ wishes. The project, the transformation of a 1960s building, brings light and serenity into the existing structure, which suffered from dark spaces and clutter. Using minimalist architecture, light colours and strategic bespoke storage solutions the design team has now created a space that is both in tune with its residence’s life and better connected with the outdoors areas of the property too. Photography: Lorenzo Zandri

MUD Residence, Belgium

Andy Kerstens

This lush getaway, set in the woods surrounding Brussels, is a guest home that can boast a recent revamp by Belgian interior designer Andy Kerstens. The domestic space, set within a period structure that follows the areas’ traditional vernacular, has been transformed using a sharp, contemporary material palette including smoked oakwood, Grigio Alpi, stucco, mortex and untreated bronze. Bridging modern minimalism with a heritage, countryside feel, this project is a hidden gem that can accomodate up to four people - and even comes with its own recording and creative studio. Photography: Piet Albert Goethals

Friern Road, UK

Kieran Wardle Architects

The redesign of thie Victorian abode in East Dulwich, South London, is the brainchild of Kieran Wardle Architects. The design team aimed for ‘multifunctionality, light and hiding the clutter,’ they explain. Trying to create a modern, clean space for their clients, while reducing the environmental impact of unnecessary demolition were both important drivers for the architects. An interior made of sharp concrete, white marble and timber dominate the new extension, while a decluttering of the existing spaces seamlessly helps the old unite with the new. ‘The project made use of the under-used areas of the house and garden create a light, flexible space that could be a breakfast room before the kids go to school, a workspace during the day, a space for cooking and eating together, a sitting room during the evening, and a place to entertain family and friends,’ says practice director Kieran Wardle. Photography: Nick Dearden

Plaka House, Greece

Demetra Karampelia and Divercity Architects

Set right in the historic centre of Athens, in the Greek capital’s iconic Plaka neighbourhood, this home dates back to the 1920s. A recent redesign by Demetra Karampelia and Divercity Architects led to its transformation into a sleek and minimalist family home for a family of six. Working with the building’s existing historical features, the team implemented timeless materials such as Greek marble from Naxos island, dark oak wood and bronze details to create a serene composition that feels contemporary and sophisticated but is also a flexible and robust background for daily family life. A generous common area on the ground level comes with four large bedroom suites on the upper floors, complete with views towards the ancient Acropolis. Photography: Mariana Bisti

Parallel Lines, UK

ConForm Architects

Set in London’s Islington, a stone’s throw from Angel station, this project brings significant improvements to a historical period property, adding a fresh take without compromising the site’s heritage character. The interior and building fabric were thoroughly refreshed, including a striking, calming and minimalist roof terrace at the top - a largely underutilised space prior to the renovation. ‘The historical context and robust façade articulation were the starting points,’ the architects explain. ‘Horizontal stucco banding and cornicing features form parallel lines along the terrace of houses that dominate the front elevation, culminating at the second-floor parapet to the roof terrace. This high front parapet also ensured that roof proposals were sufficiently unseen and stepped back from the public realm. Further to being minimally viewed, a delicate and considered proposal was required to prevent any visual hierarchy diverting away from the cohesion and history of the listed façade.’ Photography: Lorenzo Zandri

Heath Lane, UK

Hollie Bowden

Set in a leafy part of London, this project draws on the farmhouse typology and the existing structure on site. Its interiors’ author, designer Hollie Bowden, completely redesigned the space, infusing it with her tactile and warm signature minimalist aesthetic. The contemporary internal facelift also includes seamlessly integrating thermal efficiency into the fabric of both the old and new part of the building. As a result, the original structure, an old coach house, was artfully reimagined and has also been extended with the addition of a sleek, suitably minimalist summer house in the garden. 

Salt Point retreat, USA

Suchi Reddy and Ai Weiwei

An angular, linear volume has been peaking out from the green, rolling hills of Salt Point, New York. It is the artful extension to an existing weekend residence, and it has been created by New York architecture studio Reddymade and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The new minimalist escape has a distinctive form that complements the original home’s cluster of hexagonal pavilions, creating a complex that is a real feast of geometries and a sculptural, exciting piece of architecture. ‘The extension was designed to be strikingly simple and minimal, which is reflected not only in its graphic language, but also in its materiality,’ explains Reddymade founder Suchi Reddy. ‘The metal rib exterior allows for a crisp edge, and ensures project longevity. Through its materiality, it also has a relationship with the previously completed Artfarm on the property,’ she adds referring to a gallery building. Photography: Ashok Sinha 

Tunbridge Winter Cabin, USA

New Affiliates 

Set within the leafy hills of Vermont, Tunbridge Winter Cabin was commissioned by a private client as an idyllic winter retreat and artists’ studio. Occupying some 1,250 sq ft, the project is generous but maintains a strong cabin-style identity, clad in a distinctive dark timber skin and featuring sharp, pitched roofs that echo traditional structures in this part of the world. The design by New Affiliates is inspired by ‘the area’s strange aggregate structures, in which barns, houses and sheds all grow on and around each other as if clustering for warmth’. Still, designed as two identical squares that in plan meet at a corner, the structure maintains a strong, contemporary sensibility. Slight misalignments and minor asymmetries add quirkiness and personality to the whole, while minimalist white interiors starkly contrast with the grey timber plank exterior, creating a dialogue betweek inside and outside. Photography: Michael Vahrenwald 

Fowóralé house, Nigeria

cmD+A

The luxurious and picturesque Ilashe beach outside Lagos, is the green setting of this crisp, white minimalist villa by cmD+A, Fowóralé house. Tosin Oshinowo and her seven-strong team worked with the serene, natural environment to compose the house’s design concept. This exclusive beach can only be accessed by water, making aggressive development in the area difficult, and allowing the natural environment to remain just that – pristine and untouched. The design seeks to reflect a sense of peace and connection with nature. ‘Our intent in the design was to create horizontally and vertically framed views, showcasing the calm serene beach environment,’ says the architect. ‘The minimalist aesthetic draws your eye to the surroundings with the casuarina trees planted in a colonial area that have blended beautifully with the indigenous palm trees.’ Photography: David Timibra 

Rounded House, South Korea

CHOHELO A+U

This generous private home in the outskirts of Seoul was designed with both work and entertaining in mind. The clients, part of a large family that enjoys hosting, called upon  CHOHELO A+U’s Shinhyung Cho and Stuart Helo for a house design featuring a generous kitchen and dining area that would be perfect for big family banquets, but also have enough space for a workshop on the lower ground level – one of the clients is an established metalworker. CHOHELO A+U obliged and Rounded House was born, defined by its scale and apparent simpicity. Its crisp, white, minimalist box form with rounded corners, which add a subtly futuristic edge, conceals a range of living spaces within. The public areas are located on the ground level, with a flowing dining area, kitchen, and living room spilling out to a large garden. Private rooms are upstairs, and the workspace downstairs. 

Maryland House

Remi.C.T Studio

Tucked away on an unassuming street, within a quiet residential pocket off the beaten track in east London, Remi Connolly-Taylor’s first new build cuts a distinctly contemporary figure. Marking the end of a residential terrace, the bold structure feels at once modern and respectful to the low Victorian housing it sits next to. Maryland House, named after its namesake neighbourhood in Stratford, is a highly tailored live/work space, designed precisely for the needs of its dynamic creator and her young business. The site used to be a small, empty lot filled with rubbish and debris from surrounding construction. Now, it holds a two-level home with a studio on top, and is clad in London stock brick that mirrors the surrounding materials and colour tones of the neighbourhood’s mix of Victorian and post-war housing. With only 100 sq m of internal space, size played a key role in design decisions. ‘Maryland House was designed around what we could and couldn’t do,’ says Connolly-Taylor. Working with local manufacturers and craftsmen, the project developed into a jewel box of a home, ticking all the boxes for efficiency, functionality, spaciousness and a clean, fairly minimalist aesthetic. Photography: James Retief

ER Residence

Studio Hallett Ike

A touch of Scandinavian minimalist architecture has turned this compact flat in a typical Victorian terraced house in North London into a blissful haven of simplicity. Designed by emerging architecture practice Studio Hallett Ike, the project involved the one-bedroom apartment renovation for a private owner, including an extension towards the rear. Named ER Residence, the home now features two bedrooms and an open and bright living space at the front. The extension’s English larch cladding was charred on site by hand to create a tactile, rich textural effect. ‘Doing this, rather than painting or staining, allows the texture and grain of the larch to feel very present, and to age and patina over time,’ explain the studio founders Madeleine Ike and Jonty Hallett. This also helps the volume to feel natural and blend organically with the garden’s foliage. Photography: Stale Eriksen

Twin Peaks Residences

Michael Hennessey Architecture

A minimalist stack of boxes has sprung from an ordinary yet neglected single-family San Francisco home. The project, Twin Peaks Residences, was designed by Michael Hennessey Architects and involved the transformation of the existing, 70-year-old structure into a contemporary composition of three domestic units within a single, coherent, modern shell. Created for an owner who is a design enthusiast with a penchant for Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, the project bridges modernist architecture with a site-specific approach, all infused with contemporary sensibility. Located in the city’s Twin Peaks neighbourhood, the site offers impressive cityscape vistas across San Francisco. Working with the vertical axis, the architects made the most of the views, going high and installing large, strip windows and glazed expanses on chunks of the facade. A combination of steel construction with aluminium frame windows makes for an overall composition that feels both sleek and softly industrial-feeling. Photography: Adam Rouse

Rydon Street, London, UK

Moxon Architects

Set in the Arlington Square Conservation Area in central London’s borough of Islington, a Victorian house has been transformed into an urban haven of domestic minimalism by Moxon Architetcs. The project, the internal redesign and rear extension of a townhouse in a period terrace, promotes openness, minimalist interiors and improves internal connectivity and overall quality of life in this modern, family home. While the architects’ work involved reconfiguring the entire four-level building, the most striking change took place on the lower ground level. ‘The original building layout was disconnected from the rear garden, the property’s strongest attribute for the client, whom Moxon had worked with a decade earlier,’ say the architects. Photography: Alexandria Hall

Positively Negative, Venice Beach, USA

Dan Brunn

This minimalist beach house in California is the brainchild of American architect Dan Brunn. The house, located just on the waterfront of Venice Beach, is an ode to raw concrete and pared-down volumes, yet was born of pragmatism and functionality; Positively Negative, as the house is named, was created as a direct response to ‘the harsh marine weather and densely packed environment of its location,’ says the architect. Featuring a narrow frontage and attempting to address a healthy balance between natural light, privacy and outdoor space, the house design was conceived as a series of stacked cubes. The composition is quite complex but also feels at home within Los Angeles-based Brunn’s portfolio – the architect is well known for his clean, minimalist, sculptural work. Photography: Brandon Shigeta

Vancouver House penthouse, Vancouver, Canada

Leckie Studio

Sitting at the top of Bjarke Ingels Group’s Vancouver House on Canada’s West Coast, this exquisite penthouse has been designed to raw, pared-down perfection by locally based architecture firm Leckie Studio. The minimalist home, commissioned for a private client with a penchant for art and travel, balances the tightrope between warm, domestic space and finely crafted contemporary interior, suitable for the display of the owner’s personal collections. The two-storey unit contains a two-bedroom home. The internal design focuses on the client’s daily routines, working around views and light. ‘Through an iterative design process, the studio and client arrived at a highly bespoke, biophilic design that is attuned to the passage of time,’ explain the architects at Leckie Studio. Photography: Conrad Brown

Cerulean, London, UK

Edwards Rensen Architects

Two years ago this terrace in Islington was a neglected four-storey building with the ground-floor living spaces made up of small, cellular rooms. And although the dilapidated Victorian house would require a host of interventions and a clear design vision, the double-aspect rooms, unusually large windows and the wide, west-facing garden immediately sold it to the current owners. They enlisted local architects Edwards Rensen to help them reorganise the internal spaces and transform the ground floor, creating sleek, minimalist interiors with a large open plan kitchen-living-dining area at their heart. This calming space connects directly to a lush, tropical garden space outside. Key improvements have been made to the thermal efficiency of the house by upgrading all the single-glazed sash windows to double-glazed, enhancing its sustainability credentials. For further comfort, work was undertaken to insulate the ground floor and the roof. Energy efficiency also includes the installation of new low-energy lighting throughout, and a boiler system that responds to changes in outside temperature and significantly reduces gas consumption. Photography: Adelina Iliev. Additional writing: Ifeoluwa Adedeji

Mews house, London, UK

DF_DC

Invited by a young family to extend and refresh their new home, architecture studio DF_DC got to work on this redesign of a 1980s mews house in West London in 2017. The residential project appeared small – originally at a mere 68 sq m – but had a lot of potential, and the studio, led by Dario Franchini and Diego Calderon and featured in the 2020 Wallpaper* Architects Directory, embraced its challenges. The architects’ clever, surgical interventions enhanced the spatial experience and quality of living for the owners. Now reaching up to 100 sq m, the house has an extended ground floor living space, which reaches out towards the rear garden – the remaining part of which was paved into a tidy patio. Photography: Simone Bossi

Oslo penthouse, Norway

Stian Schjelderup and Øystein Trondahl

This 400 sq m penthouse has a 360-degree aspect onto the city and a carefully planned internal arrangement to ensure the space makes the most of daylight – the interior’s bright materials defy any gloom. The apartment, located in the city centre, initially consisted of three smaller units, but now comfortably spreads out to cover the whole floor. Norwegian-born architects Stian Schjelderup and Øystein Trondahl of local practice Schjelderup Trondahl were called in to turn the fragmented space into a fluid, continuous, open-plan layout, created in a subtle style with minimalist architecture and details. Elegant simplicity was key for the architects. ‘It was a great challenge to conceal all the ventilation piping and other necessities while at the same time maintaining state-of-the-art craftsmanship and the simplicity of the atmosphere,’ says Schjelderup. Writer: Massimo de Conti

Okinawa House, Japan

John Pawson

In their search for the ideal year-round holiday retreat from their ‘box-shaped house’ in Tokyo, a Japanese family enlisted John Pawson Architects to design them a modern and minimalist vacation home on the island of Okinawa, the country’s southernmost prefecture. Developed by Taishi Kanemura, from Pawson’s London office, the execution of the interior programme and external shape of the home was led by the site’s catenary curve. Local limestone was used in two spaces within the home, featuring different finishes in each place; the kitchen unit’s countertop showcases a honed and polished version, while the property’s external pavement has a brush-hammered look. The Okinawa house is a bright and open family home that showcases Pawson’s signature simple, uncluttered and natural style. Its clean and tranquil atmosphere and far-reaching ocean views provide a calming and meditative residential escape away from the buzz of the metropole. Photography: Nacasa & Partners

Grigio, Tokyo, Japan

Apollo Architects & Associates

This house in Tokyo is designed by Japanese practice Apollo Architects & Associates, headed by Satoshi Kurosaki. Featuring raw concrete inside and out, the house, called Grigio, was created as a simple box. It may appear closed off but the architect has cleverly carved out parts to make it light and open inside. Decorative elements were kept to a minimum throughout to create a streamlined, minimalist appearance. At the same time, the refined colour palette features a simple grey scheme that helps create a sophisticated, gallery-like feel, perfect for art display. Two levels above ground and a sunken basement floor contain a spacious arrangement that comprises the master bedroom suite, children’s room, the family sitting room and an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area. The courtyard sits at the volume’s heart, centering the design. Photography: Masao Nishikawa