House is not just simply a place where you live. It is an identity. The house can even show who you truly are. It can be easily seen from the design and the types of houses that people build and use as their living place. It gives the guest a clear impression of what kind of personality of people that lives there.
However, most of the design that used to show the house owner personality is design applied to a modern house. Many traditional style houses are affected a lot by the culture of the area where that house is built. And, with so many different culture and tribe from around the world, you also can find many different types of houses.
This time, we will take you to travel around the world and see many different houses from many countries, culture, and civilization. Mostly, they are an ancient house. But, many of those styles are the most popular house style that people who live in that area use. They even combine that unique traditional style with modern style house.
Below, we have a list of houses that has a different style and type. Each of them is built based on the location. The style or design follows the geographical structure in that area as well as the weather. But, all of them have the same purpose, which is providing a comfortable living place. So, let’s get started and see what kind of houses on the list.
1. Courtyard Houses – Types of Houses
You can find the types of houses like this one in Syria. There are two big parts in this house type, which are the courtyard and the house building. This is where the Courtyard House name comes from. The house building is built surrounding the courtyard. The courtyard can be accessed from any room in the house ground level.
Speaking about flooring, the Courtyard Houses commonly has 3 floors. The underground floor is used for winter. It feels warmer living on this floor level. Then, the ground level where you can access the courtyard is the main living place. Then, there is the second floor where many private rooms are located.
The Courtyard House of Syria has a long history. The first type of this house found in 3000 BC. It comes from the nomads that build their tents in a circular shape and leave space in the middle to keep their cattle from escaping.
2. Cape Dutch House – Type of Houses
This house style originally comes from Netherland. There are many houses like this in Amsterdam. People in South Africa use this style in many of their building. However, they don’t just copy-paste that style onto their building. They use several trademarks of the Dutch house, which then gives a born to this Cape Dutch House.
One of the notable parts is the gables. It is similar to the Dutch house in Netherland. The round shape on top of it with complex accent gives it that style. Other than that, this house has its unique feature, such as how they divide the room or area inside the house.
In many Cape Dutch houses in South Africa, the house has three important areas. The first area is the main or principal area where people gather. Then, the 2 perpendicular wings for a more specific function, like bedroom, kitchen and such. Then, the 3-sided garden in the back is the last area found in this house.
3. Mar del Plata House
Maybe you can find the types of houses like this easily near your living place. You may know this type of the house as the Californian style house. This house type comes from Argentina, precisely a city called Mar del Plata. This is also the reason why this house type is well-known as the Mar del Plata House.
The most attractive part of this house is the stone exterior. As you can see in the picture, they use so many stone materials to build the exterior part of the house. You can easily see it on the wall and fence. Then, there is also some part that uses a log frame. It gives this house a natural ambiance.
The other unique part of this house is the triangle gable. This type of gable also can be found in many Spanish houses. Other than that, most of the Mar del Plata houses also have a chimney, tiled roofs, and flower beds in the front yard.
4. Hanok
If you love to watch Korean drama, you can easily find these types of houses in it. Yes, this one is the traditional house from Korea. It’s not limited in South Korea where those dramas come from. But, Hanok house is also used by people in the Korean Peninsula. It means North Korean also use this house style.
This is one of the most beautiful house types you can find in the world. Unfortunately, it is rare to find Hanok in a big city in South Korea. However, many villages and suburban area in that country that still use this kind of house. There is even a village where all the houses in that village are Hanok house. If you want to see them, visit Bukchon Village in South Korea.
Hanok has several unique part and principle. One of the unique parts is the Ondol style room. This room design allows the smoke and heat that come from the fireplace outside the house to move under the floor. Thus, it will make the floor warm which is perfect for winter.
Hanok houses also are built by integrating it with the environment surrounding the area. Commonly, Hanok house is built facing the river and with a mountain in the background. It gives the house a peaceful atmosphere and it relates to the fortune and such.
5. Izba
Izba is the traditional house from Russia. From first glance, you can see that this house main material is woods. And, you can find this kind of house in the village or used as the cabin hut for hunting or vacation in summer. However, that types of houses is originally coming from Russia.
As you can see, the house is made by cutting the logs and shapes it into a special shape that fit each other. The interesting part about this process is they do it by using a hand tool. It is not a machine job. Therefore there is always a slight error in the size and shape, which can create a gap. For the house that is a built-in a cold climate area, this is not good.
Russian uses clays to fill up this gap. They usually take the clay from the nearby river as many Izba house is built near the river. This house also doesn’t use the metal material to connect the logs, such as a metal nail. They avoid it to save more budgets to build it and to avoid the damage that can be caused by the metal to the wood.
The modern Izba house use galvanized sheet metal for the roof. Some of them also use ordinary roof tiles. However, the old Izba house uses a straw roof. This is the main characteristic you can find on the real Izba house.
6. Adobe House
You can easily find the Adobe types of houses in the regions of North America, especially Mexico. Just go to the Southwestern area of the U.S., you will find this kind of house there.
From its appearance, you can guess what kind of material they use to build this house. Yes, it uses the clay material. Even though it is not the main material, but we can say that 60-70% of the house use clay. In the modern Adobe house, the percentage of the clay is lower. However, the wall uses clay as the main material. Why clay?
First of all, the Adobe house mostly is built in a hot and dry location. In this location, clay can be easily found and make. Moreover, the hot and dry weather helps to harden the clay used for building the house. This condition saves more building time. Plus, in the first step, when there is some mistake, you can easily fix it and make it look like new.
Clay isn’t only easy to use. Clay also gives you the cool temperature inside, which is perfect for the hot and dry location where this house was built. When winter comes, the temperature inside is warm because clay material also can easily absorb heat and keep it for a long time. At night, when the temperature drops, the Adobe house is warm.
The types of houses and the building method in Adobe House have been used since long time ago. It even went back to over 4,000 years ago. This is the traditional method to use clay as the building material. The Western who come to North America then introduced how to make bricks from clay.
7. Stone Cottage
This kind of house is the common house you can find in the 18th century. However, there are still many people in Ireland that use this house as their living place. Of course, with some modification and addition of modern house part and technology to make it more comfortable living place. Plus, it also adds more features and facilities for their activity.
As you can see from its name, the stone cottage is built using stone as its main material. The stone was brought from the nearby area. The scientists also found that the stone that people use to build stone cottage come from a 5-miles radius area.
People in the past used an animal to carry the stone to the building location. Then, they sculpt the stone into a shape that can easily pile up and form into a building structure. It uses many different stones from a similar area. Therefore, the shape, pattern, and texture are also different. It gives this house a unique appearance you won’t find from other types of houses.
The interior of the stone cottage of Ireland is similar to the modern house. There is a fireplace, living room, bedroom, and kitchen. Mostly, the old stone cottage doesn’t have an indoor bathroom. But, today, people start to build it inside for convenience purpose.
Moreover, the bedroom is built near or behind the fireplace. The purpose is similar to the Ondol style in Hanok house in Korea, which is getting heat from the fireplace. Therefore, when winter comes, the bedroom will feel warm and comfortable.
8. Longhouse
Longhouse is the traditional house of Iroquois people that live in North America. The shape of this house is extremely unique. It also shows where the name comes from. But, the most interesting part for us is how this house was built. The building method and material makes it different than other types of houses in North America.
Longhouse of Iroquois is built by using wood poles and elm bark. The wood pole is arranged as the frame and shapes the house. Then, using the wood pole that they stuck in the ground beforehand, the elm bark is applied. The elm bark is used to cover these poles and it will shape the outer wall of this house.
The similar method is also applied on the roof. Unlike many traditional houses that use straws and similar material for the roof, this one uses the elm bark for this part. So, from the outer appearance, we can easily call it as the elm bark house.
As its name implies, this house has a long and big shape. And, in one longhouse, many families live in it. We can even call this house as a clan’s house. A group of people that live together stays in this house.
However, the interior is similar to a modern house, where every family has a specific area where they live. For protecting family privacy, people use the straw mat to make a partition and clear separator.
A longhouse size can reach 200 ft x 20 ft x 20 ft. This big house can hold more than 60 people inside. One thing is for sure, this is one of the amazing building structures you can find in North America area. Try entering it and you will know why we said that.
9. Thatched Cottage – Types of Houses
You can find this unique house in England. This is the most popular house style in England during the lack of roofing material in the 19th century. And, among many types of houses, you can find in this list, this one has one of the most unique roofs. As you can see in the picture, it has a different roof style than the other traditional houses in England.
Due to the lack of roof material, they use a different material for the roof. By collecting straws, reeds, palm fronds, and other plants, they make dry material that has high durability for the roof. This dry material can last almost forever. As you can see, many of the thatched cottages in England were built more than a hundred years ago.
How they make this dry material? First of all, they put all those materials we mentioned above in one place. Then they tie them down to make it into panels. After that, they place the panel outside the house and let the rain make it wet then the sun dry it. This process creates a strong material that can protect the interior from rainwater and heat.
The ways they tie down the material and arrange it on the roof create a unique roof shape. This is also the thing that makes this house stand out among others. Even though we see it as a unique and beautiful roof, in the past, this kind of roof had a different meaning. People saw this roof as a symbol of poverty.
10. Turf Houses – Types of Houses
Do you watch Lord of the Ring or the Hobbit movie? If you do, you must be familiar with the Frodo Baggins and other Hobbits unique grass roof types of houses. In New Zealand, they even build a special village where all the houses in that village look like the Hobbit houses. And, today, that village becomes one of the hottest tourism spots in that country.
And, as you can see in the image, you can see similar shape and design of the house like what you can see in Hobbit village. We can even call this Iceland Turf house as the original Hobbit house. The history of the Turf house went way back to 1,000 years ago.
At that time, there was a similar problem like people that created Thatched house in England face, the lack of roof material. So, people in Iceland use the soil to block the hole on their house roof, and then let the grass grow on it. The dirt/soil used on top of the roof is called sod, which becomes like the glue that protects the interior.
The wall and other parts of the house are made of wood. You can easily find it on the front side of the house. This is the only exposed part of the house, which makes it looks very similar to the Hobbit house.
The old Turf house has a fireplace in the middle of the house for many purposes, such as warming the interior and cooking. But, the modernized turf house uses a different method for this purpose. Nowadays, they don’t use this kind of design. People use the modern source of fire and warmth for that.
11. Log House – Types of Houses
Log house is originally the types of houses from Northern Europe. In this area, the forest area is big, so there is plenty of resources of timber for the building material. This house is quite similar to Izba house in Russia. Moreover, the area where it is commonly built was the area with plenty of timber resources.
The unique characteristic is the exterior that uses plenty of wood material. The arrangement of the log is also unique. The log placed in a horizontal direction and fit with each other. The shape of the log is carefully made, so it fits and won’t easily damage and fall.
Viking and people from the Medieval era use these types of houses. Then, in the 17th century, the traveler from Swedish that came to North America starting to build this kind of house there. From that point, the log house style spread around in North America. Today, we can easily find this kind of house in many places.
12. Yurt – Types of Houses
The last and most unique types of houses is Yurt. This traditional house can be easily found in Mongolia and Central Asia. Yurt is nomad’s house, so they design it to make it easy to assemble and disassemble. They use a wooden pole as the frame and the animal skin for the wall. For protecting people live inside from the winter, they also use extra canvas to add more layers.
Conclusion
Those are 12 types of houses that you can find from all over the world. What are the different types of homes? You may be able to find the answer from this question from that list. They have a different style and building method. Each of them is unique and has a different characteristic which makes them beautiful and has more artistic value.
One more important thing, those houses contribute greatly to the development of the modern building method. Some of their design even gave the idea of many great architectural masterpiece and house you can find today. For example, the Hobbit village inspired by the Turf house in Iceland.
So, we hope that the list of unique types of houses we wrote here can help you to appreciate those masterpieces. Of course, you also can visit them and get valuable experience and an interesting journey you can have. Or, you can also use them as a reference to build or remodel your house into more unique house.