Spaces for cooking, washing, sleeping and storing are housed within plywood compartments inside this former nursery in Barcelona, recently renovated by local architect Carles Enrich Giménez (+ slideshow). More about Plywood partitions create rooms within rooms inside two Barcelona apartments
A lounge contained within a house-shaped extension is one of several interventions designed by Tigg Coll Architects to add a more homely feel to a student housing block in London (+ slideshow). More about Tigg Coll overhauls east London student housing to be "more akin to a members' club"
A slanted roof with a timber underside is elevated above this top-heavy house on the Chilean coast, designed by architects Alvaro Arancibia and Sebastian Coll (+ slideshow). More about Timber-lined roof perches at an angle on top of Chilean seaside home
Four concrete boxes make up this holiday home by Paris architect Pascal Grasso, which nestles into a verdant hillside on the southern coast of France (+ slideshow). More about Concrete Maison Le Cap house features mirrored glazing to reflect the seaside scenery
A void in the centre of this gabled guest house near Porto contains an entrance onto a patio that links it to the adjacent main property (+ slideshow). More about Oficina d'Arquitectura's Portuguese guest house is cut in two by a recessed entrance
This house on a hillside in Leiria, Portugal, has two wings – a three-storey block that follows the slope of the site, and a bedroom block that cantilevers out at an angle (+ slideshow). More about Vidigal House by Contaminar has a V-shaped plan enclosing a triangular garden
The stacked horizontal volumes that make up this house in Jammu, India, are clad in vertical timber battens to regulate the amount of sunlight that enters (photos by Edmund Sumner + slideshow). More about Sameep Padora's Lattice House is an Indian holiday home wrapped by wooden screens
Tasked with designing a "small but prestigious residence" in an Alpine village, Italian studio Pedevilla Architects planned an asymmetric house with a chalky-white exterior (+ slideshow). More about House at Mill Creek by Pedevilla Architects features a homogenous off-white exterior
This family home in Surrey, England, is fronted by an asymmetric wall of blue bricks, described by designer Groves Natcheva Architects as a "lighthouse in a sea of green" (+ slideshow). More about Esher House by Groves Natcheva Architects pairs blue brickwork with red wood
A concrete pier stretches from the Tasmanian shoreline to the entrance of this hotel, which is set within a recently renovated turbine house on the centre of Australia's deepest lake (+ slideshow). More about Cumulus Studio converts an Art Deco pump house into a hotel on a Tasmanian lake
Perforated brickwork, an open-air living space and a roof covered in palm leaves are among the traditional methods used to improve the climate inside this house in Vietnam (+ slideshow). More about Vietnam house by MM++ Architects features a palm-leaf roof and an open-air living space
The cantilevered upper storey of this house in Katowice, Poland, looks even more dramatic than it really is – because the podium that supports it is camouflaged behind a wall of mirrors (+ slideshow). More about Mirrors emphasise the cantilever of Robert Konieczny's Living-Garden House
Japanese studio Naf Architect & Design rounded one corner of this Tokyo home to broaden a footpath, then clad the walls in glossy midnight-blue tiles to offer reflections of the streetscape (+ slideshow). More about Half & Half House in Tokyo has a curving wall to allow pedestrians to cut the corner
This black building stretches 37 metres along a narrow plot in the heart of Austria's Rhine Valley to provide a home for a young family and a studio for a graphic designer (+ slideshow). More about Juri Troy Architects creates 37-metre-long house and studio in the Rhine Valley
A staircase formed of wooden boxes and platforms, and supported by a black metal framework, rises up through this Sicilian residence that was recently renovated by Milanese architect Francesco Librizzi. More about Sculptural staircase connects two mosaic floors in an old fisherman's cottage in Sicily
This London house extension features a red brick exterior thought to look like a profile of a fox and a multi-hued interior that references Adolf Loos' Modernist houses of the 1920s (+ slideshow). More about David Kohn's Sanderson House extension conceived as a fox in the garden
Dark grey bricks alternate between protruding and receding rows to give a ribbed texture to the facade of this family house near Brussels by Belgian studio Lezze (+ slideshow). More about Protruding brickwork gives a ribbed facade to Lezze's House VR in Belgium
This house in the Utah desert is covered in sheets of rusty Corten steel to match the colour of the earth, while its four glazed gables are designed to take in views of the mountainous landscape (+ slideshow). More about Imbue Design completes a rusty steel dwelling in the Utah desert
Over three years after completing their first prefabricated dwelling, architects Mário Sousa and Marta Brandão have now installed modular homes all across Portugal. Their latest is a summerhouse in scenic Alentejo (+ slideshow). More about MIMA House in Alentejo is the latest in a series of prefabricated Portuguese homes
The upper storey of this home in the Lithuanian countryside is contained within a pointy shale-clad roof, while glazed walls provide woodland views for rooms on the ground floor (+ slideshow). More about Aketuri Architektai clads woodland house in Lithuania with shale tiles