Fifteen years of AR Houses in all shapes and sizes

Now in its fifteenth year, the AR House awards are diverse and wide-ranging, often branching beyond the traditional remit of the dwelling. AR House recognises originality and excellence in the design of dwellings of all types, budgets and locations. The house is a key rite of passage for architects, offering the potential for innovation and the opportunity to ferment and crystallise new ideas.

Many winning and commended projects are traditional single dwellings, located in a variety of geographical locations and climates. Highly commended in 2018, Vo Trong Nghia Architects’ Binh House is a single dwelling located in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City. Designed for three generations of the same family and integrating vegetation into its architecture, the project was described by judge Amin Taha as ‘an inspiring experiment’. Hytte Lille Arøya on the other hand, is a summer house built on a remote Norwegian island by Lund Hagem Architects and was highly commended in 2017. The house is ‘both a part of the landscape and a human-made installation to celebrate it’.

The surrounding landscape in which a house sits often forms an integral part of its design: turning the house typology upside down, the Inverted House Japan by Oslo School of Architecture and Design with Kengo Kuma and highly commended in AR House 2017, subverts conventional ideas about houses by embracing rather than sheltering from the elements. A very different house but equally wedded to its rural landscape, David Chipperfield Architects’ Fayland House in Buckinghamshire is a radical new take on the English country house and named the winner of AR House 2015.

Not all homes recognised by the AR House awards are new buildings: 2022 winner Yuka to Tenjo by Kochi Architect’s Studio in Tokyo, Japan, was a rare example of adaptive reuse in a country renowned for rebuilding rather than recycling houses. ‘Just by shifting the floor plates, you can create all these little tailored spaces’ said judge Alice Casey, adding that ‘sometimes such projects can feel contorted, but this one doesn’t, which is a difficult thing to achieve’.

AR House 2022 winner Yuka to Tenjo by Kochi Architect's Studio

In 2017, the AR House award was won by an anti-seismic prototype by Edward Ng, Li Wan, Xinan Chi at Hong Kong University. In the wake of a devastating earthquake in Ludian County, China, concrete and brick were sidelined in favour of traditional rammed-earth construction to generate a prototype for future dwellings in the area.

2018’s winner, the Habitat for Orphan Girls in Iran by ZAV Architects, was a girls’ orphanage set in the foothills of Iran’s Zagros Mountains, described by our judges as ‘atypical’ and ‘brave’; and in last year’s edition, Domat won the award for a modular furniture system that introduces dignity and flexibility to the lives of the thousands of Hongkongers crammed into subdivided flats of less than 10m². 

Habitat for Orphan Girls in Iran by ZAV Architects was announced the winner of AR House 2018

The AR House awards feature exceptional house projects of any scale, budget, or style

Credit: Domat