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An Airy Underground Home High Above the Welsh Coast

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Wow. What a stunning and gorgeous hilltop home wide open to the coastal view. Oh, you don’t see it?

Here – here’s a close up view of the back of Malator house on the Welsh coast – one of Future Systems few smaller commissions before the death of its visionary founder Jan Kapicky:

You can look through the house to the rugged and beautiful coast of Wales at St. Brides Bay. The house is set right into its own man-made mound on the top of the hill.

Most of it is underground for passive energy control.

The front of the simple Welsh hilltop home is wide open to the view to the coast. Yet it looks almost organic, set into the hill like a glinting jewel. With no taming of the wilderness around it, the house becomes one with the land.

Pods within the house concentrate the plumbing needs into one compact (mass production) unit that has a quaintly humorous and dated air, like a vision of the 21st century from the 19th.

Operable windows are round portholes set into the glass on both sides of the house – both the smaller back here, and the much more expansive front, facing the coast.

Future Systems was known as laying down the agenda for architecture in the 21st century.

“At Malator you are at one with the sea and wind-buffeted cliffs, your life is full of light and there is an incredible sense of freedom and space. ” says Dr Stevenson of Y Ty Cymreig.

“The best architecture should also challenge your prejudices about the home, even change your world view. It should make you think about the relationship between how we use space and how we build and decorate our homes.”

Images: Future Systems and aerial photographer  Hamish