The Floating House (or Das Schwimmhaus) may, with its prefab style set aboard a floating platform as if a cabin, seem like a confused direction, but, in fact, this German-designed and German-moored home is making good use of urban density and sprirally living costs for its owners. Combining the dual experiences of Germany design company Confused-Direction's Flo Florian (interior design) and Sascha Akkermann (master carpentry,) The Floating House fulfils the increasingly modern craving for a new type of existential habitat, and one which works with our pocket alongside the planet.

Sourcing a local workforce committed to sustainability and re-usability, Florian and Akkermann have created a home which is not only eco-friendly in regards to building materials, but also in allowing the inhabitants a grassed-roof garden area. Financially speaking, this kind of home makes sense particularly for those on a quest for uber-contemporary living on a budget as a recent Grand Designs Houseboat episode showed. Though the moorings are, for the most part, the bigger cost, the design and materials and space (it's rare and excessively expensive to have even the tiniest outdoor space in London) are much more affordable and can be a more accessible means of creating your dream contemporary home.

Visit Confused-Direction online at www.confused-direction.de

“...with all the chutzpah and brilliance of a well-performed magic trick... this project is a triumph over adversity.”

 - Kevin McCloud, Grand Designs

If you love the smell of horse poo in the morning, then get yourself to 'Nham. That's Cheltenham, the West Country's Regency wonderland and home to the famous equine racetrack. If you're chomping at the bit to get a snaffle of the more refined side of genuine West Country life and are lucky enough to have a 'spare' £25, then mayhap you should enter this 'ere comp.

All's you have to do is pay the good folk 25 of your lovely, hard-earned English pounds and answer one racing-related question and you're in the running for a super prize. And just what is this super prize, I hear you ask? Well, the grand giveaway is a 3-storey, ultra-modern, low-maintenance house as featured on the really rather splendid Grand Designs. This quite divine dwelling is 3-bedroomed (master with en-suite, dressing room and wet room) and comes complete with large contemporary spa room, cinema room and decked patio/terraced gardens. But that is not all...oh no, the house comes fully furnished with all mod cons and is an ideal first mortgage-free step onto a particularly grand property ladder.

So, a unique and very lovely prize, I'm sure you'd agree, but, you must be in it to win it, people, so get yourself on over here to get your entries in. I hear the going's good to firm. Good luck!

The RIBA award-winning Casa Kike in Costa Rica by Gianni Botsford Architects is not only one writer's paradise, but an architectural aphrodisiac for the eyes. Set in lush natural landscape, this shoreside home boasts the "coupling [of] indigenous techniques and materials with modern design technologies and aesthetics" and is stunningly harmonious yet outstanding for it. At a cost of a mere £55,000, this astonishing abode is based around a main studio space, with library, writing desk and grand piano, and set apart via a raised walkway are the bathing and sleeping quarters. This wooden structure contains roof beams up to 10m long and a mono-pitched roof elevated towards the sea shore.

It is incredible to me living in England that what is essentially my dream home where I could write and read and play piano amongst the wood and the sunshine is available by the power of major-award-winning architects for what is a relative pittance. To have that level of contemporary design in such a setting would be not only inachieveable here but also astronomically expensive. I would gladly swap the concrete jungle for Nature's own in an instant as here's proof it doesn't Costa Lot to live in Costa Rica. Truly inspirational.

© photographs copyright christian richters you can view more at archdaily.com

If you're cravin' a haven, this little prefab sprout could be just what you need. Read-Nest (Need-Rest?) is a 10m-squared prefabricated structure created to be your own private mini-hideaway situated wherever you choose for a spot of sanctuary. This smart update on the traditional garden shed is constructed with an exterior clad in vertically striated naturally oiled wood and an interior clad in waxed birch-plywood. The interior offers a fold-away bed for additional space when required which nestles beneathe a skylight, fitted shelving units and a work table situated before a large window which also folds horizontally to create and outdoor cover. Externally and internally, Read-Nest is created to be environmentally complimentary whilst providing you with all you need for quiet relaxation or study.

Visit Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter online at www.dortemandrup.dk

Living in the city all too often means sacrificing nature's hand in our habitat, a decision which, for the less green-fingered among us, can be a gladly made and conscious one. However, two Yale professors are working to change this attitude, to help us embrace more greenery in our immediate scenery and prove that city-dwelling lovers of smart design can have the best of both worlds. Architect Joel Sanders and ladscape designer Diana Balmori are teachers of a course called Interface; a study of the harmonising of these two disciplines. With the green light from Lower Manhattan penthouse owner, Matthew Blesso, Sanders and Balmori took the $4 million, 3,100-square-foot apartment as their canvass, creating $1 million-worth of indoor and outdoor renovations.

The most immediately striking of their work is, of course, the series of roof gardens which, complete with outdoor shower, is invitingly functional. But the goal here was not just to create a more natural edge to outdoor space, but to bring nature to flow within aswell as without of the property. The light and space within the apartment is heavily complimented by the foliage which winds unobtrusively amongst the gorgeously natural wood finishes, all of which work to promote a natural air of wellbeing within the urban sphere. A concealed drip irrigation system and sepecifically-chosen flora help the nature-craving urbanite for whom tending to more earthy necessities does not, in fact, come naturally. So, when it comes to habitation at least, nature and nurture needn't be a debate, but a happy co-dependency.

Visit The New York Times for more info on this story.

Baumraum is a german company specialising in treehouses. In our modern times, as we strive to create a haven for our children or child-like hideaway for ourselves, this is becoming less and less of a unique trade. Many companies these days have tapped into this want, creating rustic treetop nests or more elaborate almost-homes where we may seek a more fun, innocent and nature-embracing retreat from the world. However, what Baumraum creates is a modernist twist on the tradition; uber-contemporary examples of mankind's design to nestle amongst nature's own.

The Jungle House is one among several design templates offered and really is your home away from home. This pod-based lookout is strictly for grown-ups; an almost Bond-like hideout that yet retains the uncomplicated magic derived from an inherent need to seek a very personal refuge from the world. Baumraum do offer much maneuverability within the templates, with design and construction created to fit the client's needs and environmental constraints.

Visit Baumraum online at www.baumraum.de

Architect Juan Robles seeks for a balance between design and nature, for a committed and respectful interaction of the two, where architecture can at once stand out and blend in to its environment. MC1 House (Casa MC1) exhibits exquisite conformity to this concept, working its striking modernity into the lush Costa Rican habitat and proving a love of nature and desire for design need not mean a compromise.

Visit Juan Robles Architecture online at www.roblesarq.com

The Waters Edge Development is set at the heart of the Cotswold water park. Each of the homes offer completely unobstructed views from the large decks built directly over the lake.

The houses take cues from continental modernism, something still rare in the UK, with its stringent planning regulations (which somehow stop innovation under the pretext of making things in-keeping with the area, but allow the larger developers to fill the country with horrific mock Tudor and Georgian pastiche, built from plans that have probably been lying around since the late 70's)

The Cotswold Water Park is Britain's largest wetland nature reserve (It is man-made however, the lakes being former quarries)

While I personally think it is slightly disheartening that these are "second" homes, it's great to see contemporary house design being deployed on a slightly larger scale in the UK. One would hope this will help the case for individuals, architects and developers looking to build contemporary homes for family residence throughout the nation.

You can visit the developments website online at www.watersedgecotswold.com

This modern Swiss home finished in 2007, is set amongst panoramic views of lake Walensse and the mountains of Churfürsten. The way the scenery is framed by the floor to ceiling glass is simply sublime. Set on beautiful sloping meadowland this beautiful modern house generates most of its own energy using photovoltaic panels on the roof and a modern stove.

ArchDaily has more pictures of this stunning home by km Architektur

Those of us living in UK have enjoyed (or not depending on your property ladder status) an enormous and unprecedented boom in the housing market in recent years. Now that a looming bubble burst is upon us we have all considered the financial effects that this will have, but how many of us have considered social effects of the looming effigies to that rapid era of growth? With swathes of unoccupied market apartments likely to become the new slums and sprawling estates of mock Tudor horrors we seem so keen on living in, the UK’s architectural future looks bleak. For what so many people take for granted is the impact of our environment on not only our quality of life but our psychological well being.

And with that in mind I have a new raison d’être, a vision mission I know I’m not alone in dreaming. So my contribution to the cause? Why, I’m going to shamelessly plug some much needed UK based contemporary architecture in the hope we as a nation will start realising that modern can not only be beautiful but also offers us a better way of living and a sustainable future.

First on my list is Edinburgh based Zebrano Design who pride themselves on offering innovative, contextual and well detailed architecture for the 21st century. Bravo!

For more information visit Zebrano