There are plenty of houses perched over rivers and creeks in the world. But few are as elegantly simple as the Bridge House, a home that hovers over a Russian river on a single timber truss.
Designed by Ivan Ovchinnikov, founder of Moscow-based BIO-Architects, the home’s unique features comes from a need imposed by the site itself. “The client’s site is divided in half by the river. On one side there was already a house, and the client wanted to put a second house on the other side,” Ovchinnikov says over email. “No one saw the river as a place for a house.”
To him, the project was interesting because of the way that the clean, simple form follows the building’s function and is perfectly integrated with the natural environment. Inside, there’s a living room, kitchen, and two suites of over 1,665 square feet. The facade is made up of large glass panels, which let in plenty of light and naturally ventilate the home in the summer.