Here’s an appealing simple concave-shape house, created by a cube of air chopped out of the middle.

It’s utter simplicity perfectly reflects the boundless Pacific… that stretches across the horizon, literally from the ends of the earth.

Built by Owen Dalton, it confronts the ocean at Malibu, in California.

The beach house has everything you need (ie: not much) to relax in this heavenly space.

The bedroom is as sublimely simple as the endless blue seas it looks out on.

Even the pillow sofa looks like passing puffy clouds in the sky.

At the back of the central open space, the kitchen takes up the side wall.

Behind the kitchen, in the tiny enclosed side of the house, is the bathroom.

The opposite enclosed side of the open cube houses the stairs that open at the front of the house to the bedroom on the second floor.

Simplicity itself in uncomplicated design for an idyllic life.

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A Gorgeous Minimal Malibu Beach House

Looking for a way to add some character and warmth to a neutral or boring space? It can be a problem for many of us who have seen so many safe beige interiors that we’re afraid to step out of the box. But no need to fear! There are plenty of touches you can add to your home which can bring instant personality and style.

Paint the Floor a Bold Color

The cool thing about painting the floor is that while it makes a statement, it also fades into the background.  The red floor in the loft above is definitely bold. But because it is a floor color that is used throughout the space, it also recedes. In other words it functions more the way an “accent” wall would, without dominating. Painted floors can also work in traditional spaces. The painted checkerboard floor below feels almost “Old World” and is the perfect quirky accent to this room.

Paint a Mural

In Ancient Rome these were called frescoes, but they still achieved the very same function they hold today. A mural or a painted wall depicting some scene can be an instant way to add quirky charm to an interior. Just take a look at this interior in Barcelona:

Below, a mural adds instant style to a child’s bedroom:

And below, two different dining rooms gain instant and distinct personality in two different scenes:

Please note that when it comes to a mural, the quality of the artwork is of the utmost importance. (Otherwise you will regret this decision). It pays to hire someone who is an experienced muralist and who can show you a portfolio of work.

Paint Your Woodwork

You’d be surprised at how quickly you can transform a space just by making bold choices on painting woodwork, trim and doors. Above, an intricate pattern on an exterior door instantly advertises that the occupant has a distinctive style. Below, a mellow yellow trim is comforting, traditional and unexpected, all at the same time.

Here, a trim painted the same color as the walls, feels modern and edgy:

And below, an ecru trim paired with boldly colored walls brings everything together in a warm, funky, yet elegant way:

The above photos serve as prime examples of how unexpected painting choices can instantly lend an otherwise bland room a ton of style. If you want your home to feel stylish, warm, quirky, edgy, opt for bold color choices in unpredictable places. Time to break out that can of paint!

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Design Dilemma: Three Unexpected Ways to Warm Up Your Home

Here’s a house that makes great use of large expanses of windowless stucco to create a canvas for offsetting the three pretty colours of Spain’s terracottas against each other.

The house is sited in Mérida, an old town settled by the Spanish in the balmy dry warm climate inland on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Designed by Seijo Peon Arquitectos, much of it is completely open air for al fresco dining and living.

Slicing through the garden, the entrance from the street leads directly to an enclosed glass corridor leading to enclosed bedrooms.

To one side of that corridor, this fully al fresco dining room is sheltered only from the heat of the sun under a cooling high ceiling.

From the garden gate, the first view is a welcome from the family in the open air living and dining outdoor room.

No eating at the kitchen sink for this family.

The kitchen, not shown, is a separate and very spacious room to the right.

This is an eating space for savouring the joys of family and friends.

Large paving stones create a seamless transition from exterior to ‘interior’ space.

The corridor along the entire length of the house is glassed on both sides as it passes a garden space between the kitchen and the bedrooms.

So from the garden you can see through this part of the house.

Terraces off the bedrooms also connect with the garden.

Contrasting with entirely open ‘rooms, large expanses of featureless stucco wall allow a jolt of colour like the simplest canvas.

Together with its sober and efficient layout, this changing palette of colour brings moments of joy in traversing the spaces.

The house has a very interesting quality.

One might be startled by a visitor at the front gate as one leaves a bedroom.

But the front gate is locked. It acts as a front door.

In this way, the entire indoors and outdoors space has become ‘the house.’

Combining the private courtyard spaces of traditional Spanish living with the influence of Mies Van der Rohe, in this effortlessly simple and original and yet straightforward design, one experiences a calm and pure pleasure in the joy of living.

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Seijo Peon Arquitectos: A Delightful Family Home in Merida

Unlike many beach houses or coastal houses, there is no bringing nature in, in this house.

On the contrary.

Refined and chic, its sophisticated glossy interiors are the antithesis of the coastal scrub outside.

But ‘interior’ is a relative term.

Sliding floor-to-ceiling glass walls completely open each of three floors creating an open air living space.

Its terraces cantilever out over the romantic outdoor rooms into the gigantic view beyond.

The entrance has a subtle zen-like charm with a cool and sophisticated grey stone facade.

This leads directly into the stunning view.

Using only shiny surfaces; glass and marble, SAOTA gives this family home a sophistication that is unusual in a seaside house.

The result, a family home that is perfect for entertaining – an instant resort.

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Sleek and Glamorous Beach House in South Africa

At first sight, this huge steel framing structure capturing the sky appears to be an open pavilion.

In fact it is entirely glassed in, to house what must be the most glamourous lap pool ever, in a double height glass pavilion.

It is one of several sweet surprises in this unusual renovation.

It is entered through the small original cottage on the site – on the third floor – shown at the back here.

On entering, the first interior sight is this stunning view that captures a huge sky and overlooks the city lights in the harbour through the second floor double-height lap pool atrium.

Next to the glass atrium of the pool, the living room occupies a cosy space to the back of the house.

The kitchen/dining is placed in the front, suspended right within the harbour view, creating a blissfully happy place for making food and enjoying it.

While the living room is destined for a more intimate focus, of cosy nights talking and reading around a fire.

Two childrens’ bedrooms are on this offset top floor (LEVEL I), the original cottage, a separate smaller building at the top of the hill.

The stairs that connect this entry floor to the rest of the house which is entered beside the pool, are at the front “on the outside” of this entry floor.

Under the living room, the simple and unassuming master bedroom is placed on the ground floor.

With tufts of grasses waving across a short lawn, this would seem very natural and earthy, like sleeping in a field.

Sited on the banks of Hobart’s Derwent River in Tasmania, the house is a huge extension of and remodel of an existing small cottage which is now just one of the three floors making up the new house: just the small and unassuming entry level.

The remodel really flouts conventions:

1. By putting childrens’ bedrooms on the entry level/parents’ two floors down on the ground,

2. Putting the kitchen in the view/living room facing the other way,

3. By entering the house into a pool atrium/centering the house around the lap pool,

4. By reusing the old cottage as an entry floor,

this house offers many charming surprises.

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Glass House Features Dream Lap Pool

On this perfect-for-solar house in Korea, the roof is sloped at an angle to receive best sun exposure year around and sized for 3KW PV system providing all its electricity, and solar heat collection tubes to heat its water.

In addition to the solar energy, efficiency is key. Windows are sized to prevent heat loss, and placed to facilitate easy cross ventilation.

This net zero energy house in GyeongSangNam-do was inspired by an experience of the client’s; an architectural educator.

As a student in Milan, Italy, she was affected by a local truck-drivers’ union strike against the rocketing oil price.

Within three days into the strike, there were no fresh groceries to be found in the city.

The experience drove home our reliance on fossil fuels.

She decided to imagine an alternative vision for future architecture.

This house, Sosoljip is Dr. Jung’s first step towards her dream of self reliant communities.

She commissioned the Korean architecture firm Lifethings to build it.

The house houses the client and her parents. The client’s space is a large studio with private living space on the mezzanine level. The studio serves as a classroom for the architecture workshops she runs.

Sosoljip had to serve as proof that net zero building does not have to be expensive.

The 230 square meter house for the client and her elderly parents, and an architectural education studio, and including the PV system, the solar heat collection tubes, the wood burning boiler, with four kitchens and four bathrooms, was completed with $284,000.

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A Solar Dream Realized in Korea

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Design Dilemma: Patio Inspiration for Warm Weather

A tiny house in Los Angeles relies on a mezzanine bedroom to make it a liveable space.

With space so expensive in the heavily built neighbourhood, it’s lot is half the size of its neighbours.

Despite this, the solution houses all the necessities of Los Angeles living with a simple plan.

The plan depends on a mezzanine bedroom.

It’s a familiar loft bedroom solution.

This means the rest of the space is one big open space with the living room to the front.

The kitchen is at the back behind the living room.

The loft bedroom is no cramped crawlspace.

A huge and generous skylight brings the huge sky into the little house.

The single skylight brightens the entire house.

The house, designed by  Anonymous Architects, is far from anonymous.

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Update on the Loft For Los Angeles Home

An urban townhouse that occupies the perimeter of the lot – designed for a single client as a brief break from a busy professional life – centers around a courtyard.

En-nobling the means to get home from work with a translucent white plastic screen, the garage is an ever-present part of the courtyard.

Dropping the keys and turning on the TV after a busy day, the client continues through the movie room to the kitchen to unload the groceries.

Movie-watching gets its own wide but shallow room – perfectly proportioned to maximize the experience – that leads directly off the car park.

…but perhaps take-out is brought home, instead!

In this non-kitchen kitchen: food appears on the table by magic. The cupboards are disguised as a modular wall system.

Like in a stage setting, upstairs, the master bedroom faces an occasional guest bedroom across the courtyard below.

The guest bedroom is cleverly designed to accommodate either two visiting single-bed occupants – perhaps nephews or nieces – or a couple.

The only discordant note is sounded by the much more laid back surroundings.

The inner city apartment is sited within an old Auckland neighbourhood of intricately detailed wooden houses from the colonial era.

Fortunately, the view from these older New Zealand houses is of nothing personal, but merely this garden seating on the opposite wall.

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An Urban Courtyard Oasis that Suggests a Stage Set

After covering their gorgeous and well conceived house in Merida, Mexico, I had to see more from Seijo Peon Arquitectos.

This amazing solution to a familiar problem does not disappoint.

While this design looks as if it is for a luxury condo complex, it’s more complicated.

The clients, a couple with four grown daughters, had a single narrow lot facing the ocean view.

Each family was to get their own adjoining beach house on the same lot.

They had to be designed as though there were already neighbours on both sides, because here on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, there will be.

The clients had not foreseen that the now wide open, wild and empty coast would soon fill up.

The parents’ house at the front still serves as the main gathering place for all the families.

Although each house partially overlaps the one in front, it gets its own views on both sides, as the entrances lead up to small porches on the west side.

Its curved frame helps focus the stunning view.

The slightly curved wall is ever present throughout.

The concrete slabs are placed at different heights to redirect and take advantage of air currents so every interior space has a natural wind flow.

The floor plan of each house is identical – raising no sibling rivalry issues!

“The formal language has generated several interpretations among the local community regarding the contextual elements that may have inspired the design from the beginning (waves, sails, shells, dunes, boats)” say the architects.

“The truth is that the origin of the curvilinear design was the result of an extensive spatial and visual analysis towards the sea.

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More from Seijo Peon Arquitectos on Mexico’s Coast