Stone House or House in Stone Unreal Architecture A House Inside a Rock

Building a house, as the folk wisdom says, is a task that every man should undertake. Constructing a house involves difficulties in the process of erecting walls and completing roofing works. But all of this pales in comparison to houses that are carved inside rock formations. Who would have thought of creating a living space within a solid rock?

Chinese architect Amey Kandalgaonkar, before embarking on the creation of a house inside a rock, spent a considerable amount of time working on the configuration of the rock. Amey drew inspiration from the ancient structures of Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia for the construction of this house.

To create the house, the architect used cubic forms made of modern concrete, which seamlessly blended with the shapes of a massive standalone boulder amidst the vast desert with rocky outcrops in Saudi Arabia. The scale of the completed work can be appreciated from a bird’s-eye view, revealing an extraordinary modernist vision and its astonishing beauty.

This extraordinary house project required the architect to spend a long period selecting forms and configurations of suitable surfaces to achieve the perfect balance between the natural beauty of the stone and modern construction technologies. Later, when the architect inserted a modern house into the rock using a 3D program, he aimed to preserve the visual impact of the rock, minimizing the influence of simple geometric forms on the rough majestic beauty of the rock.

The skillful combination of the rough natural texture with the perfectly smooth surface of modern concrete allowed for a contrast between modern technologies and the old stone created by nature. Externally, the house inside the rock gives the impression that it grew out of the rock formation. A monumental shaft was constructed to provide access to the interior of the residential building, connecting the first floor with the rectangular-shaped living space. The living space on the outer side is open, and the gray-colored concrete structures form a geometric pattern around the natural protrusions of the rock.

At the top of the boulder, there is an open-air pool adjacent to a solarium. Access to the upper level is possible through a vertical shaft leading up from an open terrace. The techniques of modern conceptual architecture help push boundaries and blend natural beauty with contemporary design solutions.