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.