The single-storey House in Sonvico is constructed on a 20-metre long concrete slab, which is elevated above the ground on one side to line up with the highest level of the site.

"We and the clients both wanted to create a single-storey house," architect Martino Pedrozzi told Dezeen. "Because of the slope, we invented a level section."

Rather than create an entrance at the point where the building meets the ground, Architetti Pedrozzi e Diaz Saravia designed the house with a hollow centre so that residents climb up from underneath to enter. This arrangement also creates a terrace beneath the building with a swimming pool alongside.

Timber-framed windows sit within the houses's chunky concrete frame. White ceramic tiles clad any walls between and feature a mixture of polished and matte finishes.

The rooms of the house are arranged in sequence around the perimeter, while a corridor runs around the inside. There are also circular rooms inside the columns and one contains a staircases so it can double up as a second entrance.

Other houses completed recently in Switzerland include a family home with a corner missing from its roof and a house with vertical seams. See more Swiss houses on Dezeen.

Photography is by Pino Brioschi.

Here's a project description from Architetti Pedrozzi e Diaz Saravia:

House in Sonvico

A one storey house on a quite steep slope. That was the challenge imposed by topography and client. A most welcome challenge of course: to us one storey architecture is the best condition for good architecture. Its solution stays in the section of the project: a big horizontal prestressed slab of fifteen by twenty metres sitting on the natural land on one hand and laying on two gigantic round pillars on the opposite site. Above twenty pillars sustain the roof. Under a main space is created for outdoor living.

The house structure is external and integrally made in concrete. None of its parts penetrate the internal insulated spaces that are organised around a central void, between slab and roof. Ceramic white tiles, shiny and opaque defining a graphic pattern, contrast with concrete and enclose the indoor living spaces.

Where the house lays on the ground, there is the access. Descending upstream the slope a big porch introduces the house main door. Inside, the square-shaped ground floor is divided between public and private spaces. Public spaces like entrance hall, living room, dining room and studio are placed in the middle of the sides. Private spaces like bedrooms and kitchen find their place in the corners and when it is necessary can be isolated from the rest.

The central void makes the connection between indoor and outdoor living spaces. A staircase leads down to a paved and partially covered surface integrating a swimming pool, a laying and a dining area, surrounded by an impressive natural environment.

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The two temporary stands increased spectator capacity from 2500 to 7500 during the Olympic games, but their removal will enable the building's conversion to a public swimming pool, set to open in spring 2014.

The final two 172-tonne trusses were removed yesterday and huge panels of glazing will now be installed along the two side elevations, allowing natural light into the building's three pools and corresponding with Zaha Hadid's original design. Once open, it will also offer a cafe, crèche and dry-dive training area.

The renovation forms part of the £292million legacy programme to convert the Olympic site into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which will open in phases beginning with North Park this July.

The Aquatics Centre could be used as a competition venue again if London wins its bid to host the 2014 FINA Diving Championships and the 2016 European Swimming Championships.

Hadid's building was completed in July 2011, a year ahead of the London 2012 Olympics and features an undulating wave-like roof and six curved concrete diving boards. See more images of the Olympic venues in our slideshow feature.

See more architecture by Zaha Hadid »
See all stories about London 2012 »

Photography by David Poultney for LLDC.

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Tying in with the French city's designation as European Capital of Culture 2013, MuCEM is one of several civic buildings set to open there this year and will be dedicated to the history and cultures of the Mediterranean region.

Ornamental concrete shrouds the glazed exterior of the museum like a lacy veil, moderating light through to the building's two exhibition floors. Meanwhile, an inclined walkway bridges out from the roof the building to meet Fort Saint-Jean - a seventeenth-century stronghold that will also house museum exhibitions - before continuing on towards the Eglise Saint-Laurent church nearby.

Rudy Ricciotti describes the building as a "vertical casbah", referring to its arrangement on the harbour. "Open to the sea, it draws a horizon where the two shores of the Mediterranean can meet," he says.

Other projects to open in Marseille this year include a polished steel pavilion by Foster + Partners and a contemporary art space on the rooftop of Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse housing block. See more architecture in Marseille.

See more photography by Edmund Sumner on Dezeen, or on his website.

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Architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov of SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov designed the building to house the collections of the Tchoban Foundation, which the architect founded in 2009 as an archive of architectural drawings from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Located on the site of a former brewery, the five-storey museum will be the foundation's first address and comprises a stack of overlapping concrete volumes with a glass penthouse positioned on top.

Architectural reliefs cover all three of the yellowish-grey concrete facades and form repetitive patterns. The surfaces are also broken up into groups of gently angled planes, intended to mimic overlapping sheets of paper.

"This artistic touch is supposed to emphasise the function and contents of the exposition in the museum's architectural look," explain the architects.

The ground floor of the building accommodates an entrance hall, shop and library. The collections will be housed on the three middle floors and will only be accessible by appointment, while the the glass penthouse and roof terrace will function as an events space.

The Museum for Architectural Drawing is set to open in June and will present both a permanent drawing collection and loans from international collections.

Architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov have worked together on various projects as SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov. Their past collaborations include curating the Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

See more museums on Dezeen, including the new Design Museum for Barcelona.

Photography is by Patricia Parinejad.

Here's a project description from SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov:

Museum for architectural drawings of the Tchoban Foundation

The Museum for Architectural Drawings is meant for placing and exposing the collections of the Tchoban Foundation founded in 2009 for the purpose of architectural graphics art popularisation as well as for interim exhibitions from different institutions including such famous as Sir John Soane's Museum in London or École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

For the construction of the Museum, the Foundation purchased a small lot on the territory of the former factory complex Pfefferberg, where the art-cluster is formed. Here are already located the famous architecture gallery AEDES, modern art gallery and artists' workshops. The Architectural Graphics Museum that is being constructed will become a logical continuation to the development of the new cultural centre in a district Prenzlauer Berg that is very popular among Berlin residents.

The new Museum building will flank the firewall of the adjacent four-storey residential house. Such neighborhood and the location under the conditions of the current development implied the irregular space-planning arrangement of the Museum. The volume that is compact in terms of design rises up to the mark of the neighboring roof ridge, forming five blocks clearly cut in the building carcass and offset in relation to each other.

The upper block, made of glass, hang over the whole volume of the building in cantilever. The façades of the four lower blocks are made of concrete and its surfaces are covered with relief drawings with architectural motives, repeating on every level and overlapping each other as sheets of paper. This artistic touch is supposed to emphasise the function and contents of the exposition in the Museum's architectural look.

On the first and third floors from the side of Christinenstrasse, the flat surfaces of the massive concrete walls alternate with large glass panes accentuating the building’s main entrance and a recreation room in front of one of the graphic cabinets. On the first floor there will be the entrance hall – library. Two cabinets for drawings exposition and archive are located on the upper floors. The levels are connected by an elevator and stairs.

Address: Christinenstraße 18a, 10119 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Germany
Customer: Tchoban Foundation. Museum for Architectural Drawing

Authors: Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov of SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov, Moscow
Planning and project management: nps tchoban voss GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin
Architects: Philipp Bauer, Nadja Fedorova, Katja Fuks, Ulrike Graefenhain, Dirk Kollendt

Start: 2009 - 2011
Construction: 2011 - 2013

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Located on the east coast of the bay in Kyonan, the hostel was designed by Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects as five rectilinear wooden buildings with grey-painted exteriors and exposed timber interiors.

Three of the buildings accommodate guest facilities, including bathrooms, communal kitchen and dining areas, plus large Japanese-style rooms with tatami mats across the floor.

Compact bedrooms occupy the other two buildings and are stacked up on two storeys to make room for 12 in each block.

"All the rooms have a view of the Tokyo Bay, each one becoming a space like a ship's cabin," says Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects.

Each of the eleven-metre-long containers has a timber frame and follows similar dimensions to a shipping container to allow it to fit onto a freight truck. "The client requested guest units that had the possibility of future relocation or addition," explain the architects.

A car park is positioned behind the buildings, but could provide space for three extra buildings in the future.

Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects previously designed a holiday home that looks like a children's shape-sorter toy.

Other capsule accommodation to feature on Dezeen include the Sleepbox Hotel filled with portable sleeping capsules and a six-bed dorm by Atelier Van Lieshout.

Photography is by Yasutaka Yoshimura.

Here are some extra details from the architects:

Hostel in Kyonan
2012 / Chiba Japan / Hostel

This private training center has 2 capsule-hotel and 3 tatami-style buildings. They are positioned with various angles of axis and all the rooms have a view of the Tokyo Bay, each one becoming a space like a ship's cabin.

The client requested guest units that had the possibility of future relocation or addition. While clearing these requirements and in order to ensure the necessary dimension for the bedroom spaces with economy, we utilised a wooden structural frame on a standard freight-truck of adequate dimensions.

Location: Kyonan, Chiba, Japan
Principal use: hostel
Category: newly built
Structure: steel, 1 storey
Completion date: 2012

Site area: 1,013.22 sqm
Building area: 149.85 sqm
Total floor area: 149.85 sqm
Structural engineer: ASA
General contractor: Ajiro Koumuten

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