A close Irish family keen to ‘holiday at home’ on a bush block outside Ballarat got just what they ordered with a clever house designed for bushfire safety and dramatically cantilevered to embrace gorgeous views.

If you’re blessed with a glorious natural attraction, such as a lake, why not make the most of it? And so they did.

It takes someone special to make their home in a former butcher’s shop. An exceptional recycler with a touch of the dramatic, for example.

Built from slate mined quite literally outside its front door, this undoubtedly modern house is in fact a celebration of the region's history in more ways than one.

With holiday houses getting larger and shoutier, it's telling that a small, budget weekender is the one turning heads.

Award-winning architect Drew Heath’s take on the shipping container as a house has plenty of design and a lot of nerve.

The clients of Tasmanian architect Misho Vasiljevich – a couple in their 70s – had a clear view of how they wanted to live now and into the future.

The clean, pared-back lines of this new family home belie the knotty problem- solving that went into its design.

Moving from the inner city of Brisbane to a rural valley, an architect couple has taken the vernacular and refined it to work with the landscape not against it.

From the wrong side of the tracks, a modest 1920s cottage in NZ is a now a carefully curated mix of old and new.