The Watervilla

Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger says traditional houseboats were his inspiration, but notes that, as places to live, they're uncomfortable. His Watervilla – more a house than a boat – rests on a hexagonal frame of steel tubes roughly two metres in diameter. This not only keeps the house stable even in the rough waters of the North Sea, but also allows it to drift at will. The base supports a three-storey structure, containing three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living/dining room and a kitchen, and a large open space on the top level that can be used as an office or spare bedroom. An eight-metre-long gangway provides access from shore.

Obviously, it's possible to navigate the Watervilla, and it can rotate 90 degrees to capture the best solar orientation, but it doesn't have many high-tech systems in order to keep costs down.

Spitbank Fort

Spitbank Fort is situated a mile offshore at the mouth of one of Britain's busiest harbours. Started in 1864 as a defense against the French military, it is one of the most unusual military structures in the world.

Current owner Michelle Jacolow saw Spitbank Fort for sale five years ago and knew immediately that she had to have it. 'It's just the most amazing home. Everyone dreams of living by the sea, but how many people can say that they actually live in it?' she says. 'Everywhere I look, I have the most glorious views of the untamed ocean. I wouldn't change it for the world.'

Hockerton

The Hockerton Housing Project in Nottinghamshire: the first earth-sheltered housing development in the UK. This terrace is a self-built co-operative run by a team of five committed families.

Unlike Mole Manor, which is dug into the ground, this project is built into a south-facing hill. The residents generate their own clean energy using a wind turbine, recycle waste materials and cause no pollution or CO2 emissions. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of Hockerton is that using solar energy makes it completely self-sufficient when it comes to space heating and hot water.

Mole Manor

Mole Manor in Gloucestershire, England, is a perfect example of a subterranean residence. This amazing oval-shaped structure, complete with a swimming pool, grand airy spaces and imposing classical pillars looks like some kind of perfectly preserved Roman villa, only one that has been buried. It has been recognised as an icon of twentieth century architecture and was recently voted as one of the twelve 'most desirable lodgings on the planet' by The Sunday Times. It is also remarkably efficient – it uses only 25% of the energy that a standard house would use on the same site.

Kate Winslet's Cornish retreat

If you like sun, sea and fresh air, Cornwall is a great place for a holiday. With its mild climate, dramatic coastline and great surfing beaches, it can seem like paradise. But what is it like as a place to live?

Film star Kate Winslet, who lives in Cornwall, thinks it is a good place to relax and get away from it all. Her first house in Cornwall, where she lived for two years, was near St Ives. The house, which was Japanese-style and built on stilts, was quite remote. To get to it, you had to walk across a ten metre bridge. 'I like living apart from the rest of the world,' says Kate.

Kate now has a house on the north Cornish coast just outside Tintagel. It's on top of a cliff with dramatic views of the Atlantic Ocean. The village where she does her shopping has only a few shops. 'That's fine,' says Kate. 'I didn't come here to go shopping.'

For some people, this may seem a boring sort of life. But Kate disagrees. 'I'm never bored here in Cornwall. Yesterday my friends and I went to see the Eden Project. It's a group of huge, space age "biodomes", where flowers and trees from all over the world grow in different climate zones. It's fascinating. Where else can you see that?'

However, for Kate, the main attraction of Cornwall is the scenery. 'A view which always excites me is the coastline round Tintagel,' says Kate. 'I love the rocks and the empty beaches and hays. It's so wild. It's my idea of paradise.'

An English Home

The English are obsessed with privacy. That is why a detached house, preferably surrounded by a large garden, is considered to be the most desirable type of accommodation. If it is a country house, it is also a status symbol. Terraced houses are very common in the suburbs; although they are frequently cramped with tiny rooms, they seem to give an illusion of privacy and are therefore more popular than flats. Blocks of flats in housing estates are commonly associated with low-rent housing for the poorest; infested with crime and vandalism, they are often dangerous places to live.

Another feature of home which English people value very much is cosiness. They try to make their houses cosy by furnishing them with old items of furniture and by having an open fire. If they cannot have a real fire, they will at least have some gas flames on artificial coals in the fireplace; still the hearth is considered to be the symbol of family warmth and security.

Cosiness and privacy are also important in the design of an English home. The areas where strangers are entertained, like the living room and the dining room, are carefully separated from the private area of the family, e.g. the bedrooms. The living room, sometimes called the lounge or the sitting room, is taken for granted, so that a two-bedroom flat actually consists of three rooms.

Make your home a safer place

You probably think that your home is the one place where you are safe. That's what I thought until last week. Now I know our flat is full of accidents waiting to happen. Next month we're looking after my niece and nephew while their parents go away for a short break. We asked them to come and make sure everything was OK. We got a few surprises. We started in the spare bedroom, where the children will sleep. Everybody knows you shouldn't put children's beds under a window in case a child tries to climb out. Everybody except us! Next was the bathroom. We keep our medicines on a shelf above the washbasin. A terrible idea, as my sister explained. Never leave medicines somewhere, children can find them. They might think they are sweets. Finally, the kitchen. This is the most dangerous room in the house. Knives should be kept in drawers which children can't reach, and all cleaning liquids in high cupboards. So we have three weeks to make our house safe. It's not difficult... once you know how.

Working on home improvements

If you look from a helicopter at any English town, you will see that the residential areas consist almost entirely of rows of small boxes, each with its own little patch of green. In better-off areas, these boxes will be further apart, and the green patches attached to them will be larger. The principle, however, will be clear: the English all want to live in their own private houses with their own private gardens.

What you cannot see from your helicopter, you will learn as soon as you try to visit an English home. You may have its adress and a map, but you will have great difficulty in finding the house you are looking for. Some humorists claim this is the result of 'a conspiracy to mislead foreigners', pointing out that our streets are never straight, every time a street bends, it is given a different name, there are at least 60 confusing synonyms for 'street', and the numbering of the houses is hopelessly illogical.

The house numbers are at least as well camouflaged as the street names. They are either hidden, or even not there at all. One taxi-driver explained: 'An Englishman's home is his castle, right? We can't actually have massive walls around it, but we can make it difficult to get to'.

The Englishman's home is much more than just his castle; it is also his identity and his prime obsession. This is why a house is not something you just passively 'have', it is something you constantly 'work on'. The mania for home improvements is wide-spread. Research shows that only 2% of English males and 12% of females have never done any Do-It-Yourself.

Working on home improvements is an opportunity to exercise our creative talents. Or at least that's how we like to think of it. Although it may sometimes be an economic necessity, we see the arrangement, furnishing and decorating of our homes as an expression of our unique personal taste.

The art of living in style

Converted spaces and older places lend style to student living

Beforefore you go to the nearest Huge Apartment Megaplex e find your living space for the next semester, let it be known that there are aiternatives. With a little patience and time to search around, you may be able to find an older residence that makes up in style what it lacks in modern conveniences, a place that had been many, many things before it became a place for you to call home.

Lauren Benz and her four roommates live in Studio Apartments, in the mostly commercial downtown area. Their loft-style apartment, which has been a graphic design studio and a recording studio, has a few problems other apartments don't. There is no heating system, no central cooling system, no residential garbage service and no parking. But the benefits of living in their apartment are numerous. The open architecture has allowed the room-mates to host parties with up to 600 guests, with space left over to allow bands to perform.

Henry Electric Apartments is another converted space. A former electric store opened in 1935, the building was divided into four separate apartments two years ago.

The contractors that renovated the building left the original, polished, concrete floors, while installing recycled pool tiles to the bathroom. They also left the original Henry Electric sign out front, which can invite some confused visitors to the property. Residents have come out of their bedrooms to find elderly men browsing through their belongings, looking for electrical supplies.

Rincon Apartments, located on East University Boulevard, are older apartments that boast the kind of early 20th century architecture one won't find in brand new places. 'It's the very first apartment building built in Tucson. It was built in 1908,' said owner and manager Margaret Sokser. 'The historic building has seventeen units in it,' she said, noting that over the years, there has been a fair mix of residents. Each apartment has wooden floors, high ceilings and a fireplace.

Another apartment building in the university area, the Castle Apartments was a hospital, tuberculosis sanitarium, nursing home, convent and vacation lodge before becoming an apartment building. The building, which was originally built in 1906, has thirty-two apartments and is mostly occupied by upperclassmen and graduate students, according to owner Kathy Busch. Castle resident Becky Blacher said living in a small complex owned by one person instead of a company made it possible for her to have an art show there, 'Kathy is so cool', she said about talking to her landlady in preparation for the show. 'What other landlord would let you put holes in cement walls?' Blacher said.