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If I had a dollar for every project described as “framing the landscape,” “capturing views” or “bringing the outdoors in,” I’d probably be rich enough to buy one of these buildings. (Well, maybe not in this economy). But to be fair, a good view is hard to resist. Architects, clients and architecture writers alike love talking about what can be seen through the glass: the mountains beyond, the city skyline, the forest canopy. The story is almost always told from the perspective of the person standing inside, looking out.
This collection turns around and looks the other way.
Weishan Chongzheng Academy Bookstore of Librairie Avant-Garde
By Trace Architecture Office, Dali, China
Jury Winner, 13th Annual A+Awards, Commercial Renovations and Additions
Housed within a 500-year-old academy in Weishan Ancient Town, this bookstore was conceived as a cultural destination that reconnects a historic site with contemporary urban life. Rather than treating the academy as a closed monument, the design introduces new reading spaces, exhibition areas and gathering places that encourage everyday use. Long book galleries thread through the courtyards, creating carefully framed views that shift between historic buildings, mature trees and collections of books.
Its most memorable gesture appears at the eastern edge of the site, where a largely glazed addition faces the street. Unlike the inward-looking academy, this new volume acts as a public display window, offering passersby a direct glimpse into the bookstore’s interior. Books, events and daily activity become part of the streetscape, turning curiosity into an invitation to step inside.
Açucena House
By TETRO ARQUITETURA, Nova Lima, Brazil
Popular Choice Winner, Private House (M 2000 – 4000 sq ft), 11th Annual A+Awards
Casa Açucena was shaped by a simple premise: preserve the site as completely as possible. Rather than clearing vegetation or reshaping the steep terrain, the house occupies the spaces between existing trees and rises above the forest floor on slender columns. This approach allows the landscape to continue beneath the building while giving residents a daily perspective usually reserved for the canopy itself.
Large expanses of glass play a central role in that experience. Living areas, bedrooms and circulation spaces remain visually connected to the surrounding forest, with views extending through trunks, foliage and openings in the treetops. From outside, illuminated interiors become visible between the trees, offering fleeting glimpses of life within.
Rosy Mound Retreat
By Lucid Architecture, Grand Haven, Michigan
Designed as a response to strict dune protection regulations, Rosy Mound Retreat rethinks how a house can maintain a relationship with the shoreline when it can no longer sit near the water. Forced farther inland than the cottage it replaced, the project raises its primary living spaces to recover views of Lake Michigan while limiting its impact on the sensitive landscape. The floor plan remains deliberately compact, creating a modest retreat focused on outdoor living and connection to the site.
Glass plays a key role in maintaining that connection. A suspended living room volume opens views through the property toward the lake, preserving sightlines that would otherwise be lost. Large glazed openings draw the changing conditions of the shoreline into the interior, while at night the elevated living spaces become visible from outside, appearing to hover lightly above the dunes.
Los Pacheco
By Taller Ezequiel Aguilar Martínez, Puebla, México
Behind the thick stone walls of this centuries-old manor house, a series of contemporary homes unfolds through courtyards, double-height rooms and unexpected shafts of light. The project converts a deteriorated historic residence in Puebla’s UNESCO-listed center into seven apartments, while carefully restoring original arches, bays and architectural features that had been concealed over time. Rather than treating preservation as a limitation, the design uses the existing structure to generate distinctive living spaces with varying layouts and spatial experiences.
Because new openings were largely prohibited, light enters from above through skylights and vertical voids that connect multiple levels. From the courtyards, passersby and residents catch glimpses of circulation, illuminated interiors and daily activity, creating moments of visual connection within a building that otherwise appears remarkably private from the street.
Alta North
By Prospect Studio, Alta, Wyoming
Large areas of glass define the experience of Alta North Residence, a family retreat positioned at the edge of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. Inspired in part by the landscape-focused collages of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt Resor House, the project is organized around a central living space where the surrounding scenery becomes an active part of everyday life. Private spaces branch off from this core, including a primary suite overlooking nearby wetlands and a guest wing designed for gathering after long days outdoors.
The main living area is framed by opposing curtain walls that open broad views across the site, creating the feeling of inhabiting a clearing within the landscape. From outside, these transparent façades reveal glimpses of daily activity, while the solid concrete volumes that flank the space provide contrast and frame the house’s connection to the mountains beyond.
Ziin Beijing Store
By Atelier tao+c, Beijing, China
A furniture showroom might seem like an obvious place to put products on display, but this project turns the entire building into a carefully staged viewing experience. Created within a former textile warehouse, the design inserts two rotated square frameworks into the existing industrial shell, establishing a new spatial order while preserving the character of the original brick structure. Visitors move through a sequence of rooms defined by these intersecting volumes, with shifting perspectives revealing furniture, architecture and people from unexpected angles.
Transparency plays a central role in that experience. A polycarbonate-clad volume acts as a glowing outer layer, offering partial views into the interior and creating a sense of curiosity from the outside. Glass, open circulation routes and the spaces between old and new structures allow activity to remain visible throughout the building, turning everyday use into part of the exhibition itself.
The Stone Pavilions
By DODESIGN, Chongqing, China
A chance encounter with a granite boulder became the starting point for The Drifting Stones, a small architectural intervention designed to deepen visitors’ experience of a mountain valley in Chongqing. Positioned among streams, dense vegetation and rocky cliffs, the project consists of a lookout structure and a small pavilion, both carefully placed to encourage observation of the surrounding landscape. Movement through the site is choreographed as a gradual ascent, with changing viewpoints revealing different aspects of the valley.
Transparency plays an important role in maintaining this connection to nature. Beneath a series of stacked stone-like slabs, frameless glass walls enclose interior spaces while preserving uninterrupted views across the forest and water. From outside, reflections and transparency soften the distinction between architecture and landscape, creating moments where visitors catch glimpses of people, scenery and structure layered together within a single frame.
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