10 strangely shaped homes

Glass House

Berlin

On the outside, this glass home designed by Pott Architects has an unconventional, futuristic-looking sloping shape. Beyond the sunken entrance, the interior is designed to be flexible and evolve as the owner's family grows. Open space easily becomes more intimate with walls and sliding doors. The main floor includes contemporary cooking, dining and lounging areas and a cylindrical, freestanding, floor-to-ceiling fireplace. A few steps up, the master bedroom is in a realm all its own; the children's quarters are on a separate upper level.

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Jigsaw Residence

Bethesda, Md.

A series of puzzle pieces that "interlock in a very unique way," architect David Jameson's award-winning, complex, yet column-free Jigsaw Residence is designed around a central courtyard that allows light to pulse into the home from every direction without compromising privacy.

"When you are inside the house, sometimes you feel like you are outside, and when you are outside you feel like you are inside," Jameson says.

Ribbons of glass and wall — stucco on the outside, plaster on the interior — and varying ceiling heights and clerestory windows help define the bright and airy spaces.

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Color Cubes

Sarasota, Fla.

Taking its cues from nature, this modern manse takes a puzzling rainbow twist. Foliage-green, grape-soda purple and banana-yellow walls delineate the concrete cubes that make up the exterior of the home. They also designate the formal and casual spaces of the resortlike family dwelling on 1.53 acres in a gated community on Siesta Key.

"It is striking and beautiful," says Linda Dickinson, an agent with Michael Saunders & Co., who has the listing for the $12.9 million beachfront property on the Gulf of Mexico. Despite its rainbow facade, the interior walls of the 14,000-square-foot home are neutral. Wide, covered balconies on every level provide shaded entertaining areas, and there's an oversized spa plus an "adult slide" into the pool.

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Bridge House

Kent, Conn.

Built in a "Z" shape, this sustainable yellow-cedar-clad residence bridges the landscape, which runs through and under the mountainside dwelling. Situated on 17 acres and designed with an open-air feeling, the vacation home overlooks a state park and the Housatonic River. It oscillates, in the words of architect Joeb Moore, between tree house, campground and cave. Two concrete buttresses, each with a chimney and a fireplace, support the home's primary living and dining space. To one side, the master bedroom has its own perch. Two more bedrooms and a studio are nestled into the hillside. Below the bridge, an open living room includes two fireplaces, an outdoor movie theater, barbecue and kitchenette.

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Distort House

Jakarta, Indonesia

Architects in Jakarta created a jigsaw-shaped home with angular, unglazed terra-cotta tile roofs. They twisted the structure — dubbed the Distort House — 15 degrees and shifted it toward the back of the lot to create a larger front yard. Its design and patchwork facade challenge the usual perceptions of a two-story home, soften its scale and provide fresh air. The upper level was designed to enjoy views of lush, tropical trees in a park across the road. An outdoor living room on the lower level has neither walls nor windows. A twisting staircase winds up and down, inside, outside and across a courtyard, melding the interior and exterior.

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Fallingwater

Mill Run, Pa.

On Smithsonian.com's list of "The 43 Places to See Before You Die," Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater is one of the earliest and most sublime examples of jigsaw architecture that jibes with its natural surroundings. It was designed in 1935 as a mountain retreat for a prominent Pittsburgh retailer who wanted to live near the waterfalls of Bear Run, Pa. Wright took his wish list a step further. He cantilevered concrete terraces 30 feet above the falls, ensuring that his client would live with the perpetual sound of rushing water. Wilderness views are unobstructed by windows that open outward from the wall corners.

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L-Stack House

Fayetteville, Ark.

Two independent boxes linked by a glass-enclosed staircase. That's how architect Marlon Blackwell of Fayetteville describes his L-shaped contemporary home built over a crawfish-stocked creek on a trapezoid-shaped lot not far from a city park.

"It is bridging and stacking," Blackwell says. "The box is the most efficient way to have space, especially when you are paying for it yourself." Stacking provided an extra 1,000 square feet of covered outdoor living space including a terrace and outdoor kitchen. "It is a way of incorporating the site as part of your living room," Blackwell says. Rotating the second floor 90 degrees minimized its scale on the street, helping to integrate the modern complex into a neighborhood of single-story wood homes.

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Nakahouse

Hollywood Hills, Calif.

To take advantage of the sweeping views, 40% to 50% of the walls of this once-modest, 1970s alpine ski-lodge-style home were removed. The result? Unobstructed floor-to-ceiling openings in a jigsaw home just below Los Angeles' iconic Hollywood sign.

Rooflines were reconfigured and 900 square feet of interconnecting outdoor terraces were added, making the now ultracontemporary, 1,890-square-foot, multilevel house by XTEN Architecture seem larger. The exterior is black; white dominates the interior, with a concrete epoxy floor throughout.

"Jigsaw patterns" architect Austin Kelly says, work "very well for these hillside properties." The residence recently won an American Institute of Architects award for its "feeling of serenity, spectacular framing of the views and the folded geometry of the enclosure."

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Beachfront jigsaw

Golden Beach, Fla.

A property once owned and used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as his "winter White House," this jigsaw home could double as a large modern-art sculpture. The property features a white onyx glass wall and a floating granite walkway that crosses two koi ponds leading to the entryway. The renovated, five-bedroom oceanfront home with a 12-foot stainless-steel entry door has a suspended, copper-winged, illuminated roof.

The residence's dazzling, curved-glass walls, glass ceilings and angled design interact with a cantilevered floating staircase leading to a suspended second-floor bridge overlooking the living room. Three patios provide outdoor spaces for conversation, al fresco dining and soaking up sun. Manicured grounds and an infinity-edge pool lead to a sandy Atlantic beach, the coveted last piece of the puzzle on this $12.9 million listing by Jill Hertzberg of Coldwell Banker.

See more of these homes on Forbes.com.

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