Press Release
Floating House Residential Architecture by Oliver Schutte Receives the Silver A' Design Award in Sustainable Products, Projects and Green Design
Oliver Schutte recognized for sustainable products, projects and green design by the international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 15, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Floating House Residential Architecture by Oliver Schutte has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Sustainable Products, Projects and Green Design category. The recognition forms part of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Silver A' Design Award Means
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Floating House Residential Architecture
The Floating House is a three-level home located in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. The building measures about 400 square meters and is placed on a sloping hillside site. Passive design strategies guide the project, including site-specific positioning and the use of natural resources. Industrial and prefabricated building techniques are combined with locally harvested and regenerative materials. Large roof overhangs protect the spaces below from rain and solar radiation. Solar energy is collected on the roof. Terraced gardens and balconies face the surrounding landscape.
About Oliver Schutte
I was educated as an architect, which is a profession that naturally interacts with a lot of other professionals who are related to the process of planning and building. Through personal drive and external influences, I started to look way beyond that group of people to think about development in a broader and global sense. I was lucky to work with a series of masters and colleagues whom I admire and who encouraged me in pursuing that path. My own office now focuses on breaking those boundaries of single professions or perspectives in order to co-create through our interdisciplinary work methodology.
Award Record
This recognition makes Oliver Schutte a winner of 4 A' Design Awards. The awards were granted between the 2019 - 2020 and the 2025 - 2026 editions of the A' Design Award & Competition.
About the A' Sustainable Products, Projects and Green Design Award
The A' Sustainable Product Design Award is an international design competition recognizing good sustainable products by leading designers and brands worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to sustainable product designers, green product manufacturers, eco-friendly product brands and industrial designers from all countries. Typical entries include sustainable projects, environment friendly designs, recycled, upcycled and bio-degradable products. The awarded sustainable product designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/sustainable-product
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/183497
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/183497
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!183497
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/276201
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://www.a-01.net/
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Floating House Residential Architecture
- Function
- Residential Architecture
- Category
- Sustainable Products, Projects and Green Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Sustainability
- Colors
- Peru, Dark Slate Blue, Black, Dark Slate Gray and Goldenrod
- Images
- 5
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Oliver Schutte
- Country
- Costa Rica
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #183497
Credits
- Image Credits
- A-01 / Garcia Lachner
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- The Floating House is located in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, which houses the Greater Metropolitan Area with about sixty percent of the national population. In this context, the project creates a suburban oasis on a beautiful hillside location. Hanging gardens and balconies provide the home owners with spectacular views of the surrounding landscape, while large roof overhangs protect the individual spaces from rainwater and solar radiation. Solar energy is harvested on top of the roof.
- Inspiration
- The Floating House is inspired by its surrounding landscape and the local tropical climate. A series of interrelated volumes and outside spaces are placed according to the logic of the target site. Ample roof overhangs follow the sloped site condition, protecting all spaces below while revealing spectacular views onto the Costa Rican capital San Jose. Interior rooms merge with their surrounding exterior gardens, creating a balanced and harmonic relationship of nature and the built environment.
- Research
- Costa Rica has shifted from a strategy of sustainability to regenerative development. In this context, the ongoing No Footprint House series, the NFH project, drives innovation through the development and incorporation of renewable and locally sourced building materials in combination with passive design strategies and local energy production. The project is optimized through industrial and prefabricated building techniques, the first of its kind in Central America.
- Challenge
- The main challenge of the No Footprint House series, including the Floating House as an expression of its ongoing material development progress, is to unite a broad variety of entities in a joined multistakeholder approach. Such broadness and systemic thinking are required to find solutions for some of the greatest challenges of our time, which includes the lowering and leveling of emissions in all sectors that significantly contribute environmental contamination.
- Realization and Technology
- The Floating House combines prefabricated and local building techniques. Its ground floor transitions from a sloped site condition to the terraced building geometry. Private rooms at the top float above a sandwiched garden level, resulting in three different conditions that are vertically stacked on top of each other. Large glass doors and sliding walls are designed to dynamically moderate the relationship among interior and exterior spaces, according to the necessities of rainy or dry season.
- Operation and Interaction
- The Floating House is designed according to the principles of bioclimatic architecture and passive design strategies. Industrial building techniques combine with locally harvested and regenerative construction materials. The project is based on the research of the No Footprint House, a modular building system that allows for a broad variety of residential typologies. The larger project framework engages with academia and industry to cocreate sustainable and regenerative building solutions.
- Project Duration and Location
- The actual duration of each project from the NFH series depends on the specific building size and its respective location. Beyond the building of individual homes, the NFH framework engages in strategies of sustainability and regenerative development. This includes, for example, topics like reforestation, the creation of food forests, permaculture, local energy production and a continuous life cycle improvement. The duration of these aspects can be described as ongoing and potentially endless.
- Specifications
- The three-level building measures about 400 square meters in total. Floating light-frame structures are contrasted by service areas that are built onto the sloping terrain. Social spaces in the center of the house are opening up to the surrounding gardens of the property. The project is based on passive design strategies such as site-specific positioning and the use of natural resources. Industrial building techniques are combined with locally harvested and regenerative construction materials.
- Keywords
- Architecture, Bioclimatic, Climate, Cocreation, Design, Development, Modularity, Prefabrication, Sustainability, Regeneration, Residential, Tropical, Zero emission, Zero footprint
