Even homes built on tight budgets should be more than just simple shelters built from the elements. Lower-cost housing tends to have small windows and few openings to the outdoors, making it feel dim, drab, and cut off from its environment. Designing a building with this kind of sharp delineation between outside and in may shave a few dollars off the project’s total price tag, but it doesn?t exactly boost the health and happiness of its inhabitants. Studies have shown that access to vitamin-D-boosting natural daylight and fresh air can prevent the onset of a range of conditions and diseases ? and views are just plain nice to have, even if they?re just of the sky.

That?s especially true when your environment is as beautiful as this lush hilltop in Granja Viana, Brazil. Relatively speaking, the clients had a limited amount of money to work with when they commissioned to design a home for their steeply-sloped building site. The plot has stunning views of the horizon, but the clients couldn?t afford the highly reinforced style of house typically built for similar hillside locations. The architects had to think creatively to come up with a solution that would satisfy their budgetary constraints without turning to forms that would limit their enjoyment of the setting.
With retaining walls out of the question, the architects turned to a novel approach: inverting the whole house. Rather than building up from the access point at the roadside, reinforcing the slope, and supp...