Building on a cliff usually means one thing: clear the site, pour a flat pad, and treat the drop as a view rather than a material. The ten houses and cabins below do the opposite. Their architects worked with the rock instead of around it, blasting into sandstone, following a boulder-strewn slope level by level, or wrapping glass around a loess cave that has housed families for generations. Here are ten projects that turn the ground itself into the main design decision.
1. House on the Cliff, Salobreña, by GilBartolomé Architects
GilBartolomé Architects built this steel and concrete house in 2015 on a slope that drops 42 degrees toward the Mediterranean, stepping the roofline down the hillside in a stack of curved, zinc-shingled forms instead of fighting the incline with retaining walls. Photographer Jesús Granada shot the house from the access road above, where the roofline reads as a single sculpted wave, and from inside the stepped living spaces that follow the same curve down toward the sea.
2. The Pierre, San Juan Island, by Olson Kundig
Olson Kundig named this retreat for the French word for stone, and it is partly blasted out of a sandstone outcrop, with the excavated rock staying in place as a wall inside the house. A guest bathroom sits inside the cave-like cavity the blasting left behind, with the sink and lighting fixed straight to the exposed stone. Photographer Benjamin Benschneider documented both that excavated interior and the low, dark-timber exterior settling into the boulders around it.
3. The Rock House, Whistler, by Gort Scott
Gort Scott won this project through competition and completed it in 2020. The house and guest house rise straight out of a granite outcrop above Alta Lake, with in-situ concrete blades anchoring the lower floors to the rock while a lighter timber structure sits above, an arrangement the practice has compared to Frank Lloyd Wright's idea that a house and its hill should live together. Photographer Rory Gardiner's images show the concrete faces emerging from the granite at ground level and the full 980-square-metre complex settled into the forest from above.
4. Fall House, Big Sur, by Fougeron Architecture
Fougeron Architecture designed Fall House to step down a bluff 250 feet above the Pacific in cantilevered volumes of wood and steel, rather than setting back from the drop the way most coastal houses do. Photographer Joe Fletcher caught the glass corridor that runs along the cliff edge, framed by wind-bent cypress trees, and the house lit up at dusk with the ocean behind it.
5. Cave House on the Loess Plateau, Weinan, by hyperSity Architects
hyperSity Architects renovated this cave house in 2016, in a region of China's Shaanxi province where generations of families have carved homes directly into the loess plateau's soft, thick soil. The project keeps the original arched, brick-lined cave form and adds an arched, gold-tiled entrance and contemporary interiors, without changing the geology that shaped the house in the first place. hyperSity Architects photographed the finished courtyard, the cave-lined bedroom, and the wider loess landscape the house sits inside.
6. Cliff House, Xunxi County, by Li Wenxi Architects
Li Wenxi Architects built this glass, steel and concrete house in 2023 against a rock cliff in Hubei province, on a site so difficult to reach that materials had to be carried in by hand. Architect Li Wenxi has said the cliff itself was the reason to proceed despite the access problems, and the house's extensive glazing keeps the raw rock face visible as part of the interior. Photographer Weiqi Jin shot the house lit up against the dark cliff at night and from the air, showing how closely it sits against the rock.
7. Saltviga House, Agder, by Kolman Boye Architects
Kolman Boye Architects completed Saltviga House in 2022 on Norway's Skagerrak coast, building it from oak and Douglas fir offcuts sourced from a flooring manufacturer's production line. Three low, gabled volumes step across five different levels to follow the boulder-strewn coastal terrain exactly as the architects found it, and the existing rocks, lichen and trees stayed in place rather than getting cleared for construction. Photographer Johan Dehlin shot the cabins nested among the boulders at dusk and the timber-lined dining space looking out at the water.
8. The Clifftop House, Lake Balaton, by Kontextus Architecture Studio
Kontextus Architecture Studio completed this holiday house above Lake Balaton in 2023, pairing a limestone-clad lower level, designed to read as a leftover chunk of the cliff itself, with a lightweight steel-framed pavilion in anodized aluminum on top. The lower level holds four bedrooms and a pool terrace over a basement garage, while the upper pavilion contains the main bedroom and open living space. Photographer Mátyás Borsos captured the limestone plinth against the raw cliff and the reflective aluminum volume balanced above it.
9. Big Sur House, Big Sur, by Field Architecture
Field Architecture split this Big Sur bluff house into two volumes, letting a ravine that runs through the site pass between them rather than filling it in. A glass bridge connects the two halves, turning the walk between them into a framed view of the ocean below. Chiseled stone walls anchor the house to the site, and photographer Joe Fletcher's images move the way the architects designed the house to be experienced, through a sequence of framed views rather than a single facade.
10. Bolder Star Lodges, Lysefjorden, by Snøhetta and Vipp
Snøhetta hung four wooden cabins off a cliff edge above the Lysefjorden on concrete pillars, engineered so guests feel like they are floating over the fjord rather than standing on solid ground. Snøhetta designed the architecture and Vipp did the interiors, and large panoramic windows in each cabin frame the fjord view while the elevated structure keeps the footprint on the rock itself to a minimum. Photographers Elin Engelsvoll and Elisabeth Heier shot the cabins from the air against the fjord and from inside, looking straight out over the drop.
