Desert Accommodation. Image © WORS architects
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https://www.archdaily.com/1038155/from-desert-to-forest-8-unbuilt-houses-designed-as-contemporary-retreats
Residential architecture remains one of the most active fields for unbuilt architectural exploration, offering a lens through which architects rethink how domestic space can respond to landscape, climate, and contemporary patterns of living. In this Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected proposals bring together a range of residential projects that engage with houses, villas, and retreats as sites of withdrawal, mediation, and everyday inhabitation. Rather than treating the home as a fixed or isolated object, these projects approach it as a spatial framework that negotiates exposure, privacy, and connection to place.
Across varied geographies, from the deserts of California and Saudi Arabia to the hillsides of New Zealand, the urban fabric of Tehran and Nazareth, and the coastal landscapes of Greece and Portugal, the proposals explore diverse responses to contemporary residential design. They range from inward-looking courtyard houses and monolithic desert retreats to adaptive reuse and landscape-embedded dwellings shaped by topography and local traditions. While some prioritize protection and climatic moderation, others experiment with continuity between interior and exterior space, material restraint, and alternative domestic typologies. Together, they offer a snapshot of how unbuilt residential architecture is being reimagined as a more deliberate form of living across different environmental and cultural contexts.
