ArchDaily Has Published the Winners of the 2020 House of the Year. Take a look at the three projects we selected

The house with a wood façade by the Portuguese architectural firm REM’A won in the «Best Use of Material» category. The central idea of the project — connecting public and private space on the available site by carving out voids and courtyards, both exterior and interior. For the home's common areas, the architects created niches that extend the living space when the doors are fully open. Part of the façade is clad in thermo-treated wood, creating a reference to a nest. The main finish materials are concrete and wood.

The Parasite House by El Sindicato Arquitectura of Ecuador was chosen as the best small architecture project. It measures just 12 m² and sits on the roof of an existing building.

The parasite house — is a search for the smallest possible footprint that still meets the basic needs of housing, and an attempt to create an optimal living space tailored to the owner's daily activities. The front has an A-shaped profile, and thanks to the large windows, natural light pours in through the north façade. The interior walls and floors are OSB, the exterior walls and roof are steel panels, and a 12-cm insulation gap is filled with coconut fiber. Steel footings anchor the structure to the slab of the existing building, to which all the utilities are also connected.

The main goal of the project — is to densify the city with minimal economic investment while preserving as much architectural heritage as possible.

The project by the Polish firm Wrzeszcz Architekci, Old Brick New House on the outskirts of Poznań, did not advance beyond the shortlist, but it deserves attention. Embracing the idea of recycling, the architects breathed new life into the building's very form and reused materials from the dismantled old barn. The masonry relief is a distinctive feature that lends the house lightness and elegance. The architects balanced the simplicity of the house's form with the sculptural quality of the brickwork. The façade is made up of four types of masonry with varying degrees of transparency, which blurs the line between interior and exterior.

We’ve already shown examples of three-dimensional masonry on the façade.

The architecture magazine ArchDaily has presented its Building of the Year award every year for the past 11 years. Readers vote for their favorite projects in several categories from among the thousands of homes the magazine publishes each year.