The best houses of 2024

Throughout this year we spent exploring living, as Domus has done for almost a century, we have encountered architectures capable of showing us a new, non-exclusive definition of the very idea of house: instead of shelters, it is more a matter of being fundamental units, integral parts, of habitats. Of the houses we encountered, each one interacts with its context, each one has something to say: it listens to the context, respects it, integrates it, sometimes criticises it, sometimes helps it evolve. In that multiplicity of forms and scales ranging from tiny houses to villas, seeking their own space in the forest or in the city, evoking Mies van Der Rohe, brutalism or the materiality of ground, interacting with tropical climates and inspiring landscapes, with earthquakes and social disparities, with the search for an experience that makes living unique, the houses we have selected from those we published in 2024 are architectures that show character. And again, this year, they are not only conceived for humans.

A hour's drive from Melbourne lies Mount Macedon, a small town where Ben Lance Architects has built a house that stretches over 50 meters in length. The simple forms of the volume, including the modest pitched roof, conceal a deep architectural concept that addresses fundamental themes such as the relationship between circulation space and served space, as well as the connection between interior and exterior. Read more 

In the village of Salvador do Mundo, north of Goa, the wild natural environment and tropical climatic conditions, with a monsoon season lasting six months, determine the characteristics of the built space and the habits of its inhabitants. In this context, the young Indian studio Field Atelier has created a house that, on the one hand, embodies the archetypal vocation of architecture as a shelter from external agents and, on the other, as a place of intimacy and domestic relations that unfolds around common areas and open spaces. Read more

L’edificio si staglia nel rigoglioso contesto naturale in riva all’oceano con la sua geometria nitida ed essenziale, composta da un immacolato basamento parallelepipedo a un piano da cui svetta, al centro, una piramide tronca rivestita in laterizio. Continua a leggere

With the sole purpose of creating an oasis of peace in the dense metropolitan fabric of Leblon, an “organism” perched atop an existing building rediscovers the spatiality of the Modern maestros. The intervention concerns a space with an “L” layout that houses a large central room without partitions, connected to an existing access area to the east – with kitchen, services and a small atelier – and overlooking a hanging garden to the north that, as in the Maison de Beistegui by Le Corbusier in Paris (1931), is configured as an open-air room in the heart of the metropolis, with the lawn as the floor and walls framing the sky. Read more

Nana House, the residence designed by Jean Benoît Vétillard Architecture, is located on an urban lot in Bagnolet – Parisian banlieue – divided into two parts: the building, created in continuity with a group of existing dwellings, occupies the southern sector by making the most of light and space, while the northern part of the area has been transformed into a garden, protected by a glass canopy and enriched by various elements designed to house plants. Read more

In the woods of Mount Rokko, the renovation of a historic villa with five new cottages offers the opportunity to lodge, work or simply contemplate nature, decanting the pace of a not-far-away metropolitan life. Read more

The building, referencing the vernacular wooden constructions of the region, is lifted on a pointed structure – lightening its footprint on the ground and protecting it from the flooding of the river – and bypasses the existing vegetation to alter its balance as little as possible. Read more

Bare and essential volumes, straightforward and durable materials, a passionate dialogue with nature: this house by Equipo de Arquitectura in Asunción, Paraguay, effectively interprets the principles of Tropical Brutalism, bringing them up to date with a contemporary sensitivity for environmental well-being. Read more

With the project of Casa Blanca in Tala, Mexico, Cotaparedes Arquitectos realize an architecture that, in its designers’ words, manifests itself firstly as an architecture of intentions.
The desire to create an architecture understood and accepted by the community, being the result of a dialogue between the architect's research and the client's aspirations, finds a perfect synthesis in Casa Blanca. Read more

Ikea U.S. has partnered with WestEast Design Group to design and build a model tiny house for homeless seniors in the San Antonio, Texas community. The Swedish giant's challenge stems from a desire to engage in social causes on a deeper and more consistent level than occasional donations. Read more

Architect Aziza Chaouni has created an innovative, low-cost prototype house in Morocco’s Haouz region, which was devastated by an earthquake a year ago. Read more

Designed to express the dialogue between nature and architecture, a villa emerges in the landscape of Valle d'Itria Valley – in Apulia, between Ostuni and Cistemino – for its sculptural geometries and formal purity. This 115 square metre house was conceived and developed around a large oak tree, visible from different angles and the protagonist of the entire project. Read more

Overlooking the Balearic Sea in the town of Salou, studio MH.AP has recently completed a single-family house that merges rural and Mediterranean atmospheres with contemporary architectural design.
The project harmonizes geometries and materials to unite the differing visions of the clients, Alba and Oriol. Read more

Casa Jeronimo is a small building surrounded by the terraced vineyards of the Douro region, an architecture that seems to arise from the landscape. It relates to the ruins of an ancient farmhouse, of which only old stone walls remain, and to the soil, reorganized by massive retaining works. These production-oriented structures are the raison d'être of the house: elements to which the new volume constantly refers by detaching, getting closer, or integrating. Read more

Located south of Lisbon, Aldeia do Meco is a rural village that has seen a substantial change in the last forty years due to its proximity to the beaches, becoming a tourist location. Originally characterised by low, traditional buildings, this site underwent major construction in the early 1980s that radically altered its structure. Read more

In Porto, a nineteenth century building that had previously been the object of an unsuccessful extension to create tourist accommodations and remained for five years half-finished, stood like a “sore thumb” (or an “unburied corpse”, Ernesto Nathan Rogers would have said) in the dense built fabric of Rua Aliança. Read more

From Kengo Kuma to Toyo Ito via Mvrdv, five stories from the upcoming exhibition at Adi Design Museum in Milan explore habitats designed for dogs from the perspective of interspecies empathy and inclusive design. Read More