Best of #RuralArchitecture

Whether designing a cowshed, a hotel, a school or a house, architecture in rural areas reinterprets the context shaped by agriculture over the centuries, in a contemporary way. We have collected 15 particularly successful examples.

 
– Casa No Tempo: Aires Mateus, together with the owners João and Andreia Rodrigues, transformed an old family farm into a modern retreat in the rural landscape of the Alentejo region, Portugal.

– House Unimog
: the unusual task and the difficult building site were a big challenge but also a big potential for this lowbudget house with workshop designed in Germany by Fabian Evers with Wezel Architektur.

– Grooming Retreat: Gartnerfuglen and Mariana de Delás’ project – built in Mallorca for a young professional urbanite – focuses on the ritual of self-cleansing, both mental and corporal.

– Paolo Carlesso, CM House: respect for the history, self-construction and sustainability are the principles that have guided Paul Carlesso in designing of this house in a rural area near Milan.

– Nakuru Project: built in just eight weeks and characterised by a range of different social space, the home completed by Orkidstudio in the rapidly developing agricultural outskirts of Nakuru, Kenya, will house local disadvantaged and abandoned children.

– House in Slovenia: the house completed in Slovenia by Matej Gašperič reinterprets a traditional architectural typology for contemporary living, to host an elderly couple and their list of expectations and personal preferences.

– Compact Karst House: Dekleva Gregorič Arhitekti redefined the model of a traditional stony Karst house transforming it into a compact, stony, pitched roof volume for contemporary countryside living in this region.

– Kirkmichael School: the primary school delivered by Holmes Miller promotes a distinctive and contemporary design solution based upon an understanding of South Ayrshire’s rural character.

– House at Hanging Rock: located on a picturesque rural site in Victoria, Kerstin Thompson Architects’ House at Hanging Rock nestles into the steep slope with a view, redefining its surroundings.

– Torre de Palma Wine Hotel: João Mendes Ribeiro’s project for a Wine Hotel in the landscape of the great lowlands of the Alentejo region aimed to respond to the new functional program while respecting the old farm buildings and the surrounding landscape.

– House on the canal: Equipe Amsterdam designed in the semi-rural outskirts of Amsterdam house with a traditional pitched roof like the neighboring houses, with a very contemporary edge.

– Casa dos Caseiros: this small house, completed by Sara Antunes Mário Ferreira Arquitectos at the entrance of Quinta da Boavista, in the Douro Valley (Portugal), is set in a dramatic landscape transformed by man over the centuries to produce wine.

– House Riihi: Oopeaa – Office for Peripheral Architecture – completed a house that blends in with the surrounding landscape through its shape and materials and with a composition that subtly recalls the feeling of a traditional Finnish farm.

– Cowshed Wildenstein: designed in Basel Land by Kury Stähelin Architekten, the cowshed extends and reinterprets the existing farmyard context incorporating at the same time the current requirements of the organic agricultural production.
 

Top: Gartnerfuglen & Mariana de Delás, Grooming Retreat, Santanyi, Mallorca