Hillside House
Houses built on sloping sites, covering how architects respond to terrain, structure, and views through stepped plans, roofs, and courtyards.
A hillside house is a residence sited on a sloping lot, where the grade itself shapes the plan, structure, and access. Architects working on these sites typically stepping floors down the slope, use retaining walls or cantilevers, and place rooms to capture views and daylight. The terrain tends to set the organisational logic more than a conventional flat-lot layout would.
Members here share projects that split a house into separate volumes, fold or plant roofs over the landscape, and thread courtyards through single-storey plans. Work ranges from Brazilian and Californian examples to a concrete and oak house in Slovenia, showing how the same site conditions produce different spatial and material answers.
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Latest journals
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TETRO Arquitetura Splits a Bahia Hillside House into Four Blocks Beneath a Light-Filtering Wood Roof
In Itacaré, on Bahia's southern coast, four blocks step down a seaward slope while a biriba wood screen turns tropical sun into moving shade.
SAOTA Folds a Planted, Branching Roof over a Hillside House in the Los Angeles Bird Streets
Above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Helix Residence lets a sculpted, planted roof act as facade, landscape and privacy screen over a hillside site.
Raketa and Tria Studio Pull the Istrian Landscape Inside a Concrete and Oak Hillside House in Slovenia
Above Slovenian Istria, a 271 m² family house uses perforated block screens, oak joinery and gravel gardens to blur the line between room and terrace.
Montalba Architects Threads Garden Courtyards Through a Single-Story Beverly Hills House Under Layered Rooflines
A 7,000 ft² hillside home in Beverly Hills where overlapping roofs, clerestories and woven courtyards favor shade and calm over spectacle.
