Concrete can wear many faces. In the wrong hands it goes cold and clinical, the stuff of a thousand Brutalist eyesores.

When asked if his latest project, a vacation home in the Idaho resort town of Sun Valley, is at all based on a local vernacular, Tuscon-based architect Rick Joy bristles.

In a gravity-defying act of daredevil modernism, a villa in the Dutch province of Zeeland seemingly floats above the surroundings it was named after—the former 60-acre Kogelhof farm.

The interweaving of indoor and outdoor spaces in #house#1.130, by Madrid architect Estudio Entresitio, recalls the condensed landscapes of classical Chinese gardens in Suzhou: tightly framed vistas are crossed in close succession by multiple spatial events–glazed pavilions, light wells, bridges, terraces, beds of vegetation, a covered pathway angling slightly out of view.

Renzo Piano never wanted to build a house. With a portfolio of museums, towers, and other award-winning buildings across the world, his mind was elsewhere. 

Driving to Big Sur on coast-hugging Highway 1 — say, south from San Francisco — you have to be cautious.

It is no surprise to learn that, before turning his hand to architecture, Marcio Kogan directed films.

Architecture need not always be serious. And nowhere is lightheartedness more fitting than in a vacation house.