Builders of Houses for Hillsides?

In my last former home I amused myself by building a house that fit nicely into the hillside stepping down the slope and creating two levels for living. I've just moved to another sloping lot right on the coast and would like to do the same perhaps when I get more time. I believe that architecture is about making a building fit the site.

Yesterday I went prefab shopping at a couple of places I'd heard of and saw some nice houses, but they were all essentially made to go on a flat lot. I'd rather not resort to severe terracing of my lot.

Are there any builders that make homes for slopes (that don't resort to to just sticking pilings under the downhill side)?

If not, is it because slopes vary too much and getting a bi-level prefab that fits one angle to work on another? (I ran into this when I tried to put my previous house on my new site. I could probably make a little scratch doing custom builds...)

If I don't find a slope-hugging home I thought of just stacking two small houses and offsetting as necessary. Has anyone tried this?

I think you are asking a bit too much of the prefab market. Hillsides can be at varying angles and it's very hard to design something that will generically fit well on any hill. I think the best you could hope for is a house on stilts that hangs out from the hillside or a house that has a big tall base that you could sink into the hillside. There are plenty of those about, however I think you are looking for a build that will blend into the hillside on multiple levels rather than one that kinda sticks out so you may have trouble buying one off of the shelf. I think your best bet would be to find a build you like and then get it customised by the original creator to fit the hillside in question. It will be allot cheaper than getting a custom build from scratch and most prefab sellers will customise/adapt their prefabs for a price.

Gaurentee someone will pop up with a link to "hillside prefabs" now as I am having a 'being wrong allot' sort of day

Agree with Porky.

Hillsides are too variable to make for anything other than a supported or deep foundation property as a prefab.

Though going back to drawing board to consider making prefabs designed for various inclines .... Sounds like alot of work for a limited market, I'll leave that for someone else.

Hi Bodhi

I'll point out that probably the BEST L$-making, and most FUN challenges, are taking on wide-open markets, which have been considered "too difficult" or "too niche" for anyone else to take on.

I think you're on to something though: rather than try to design a complete build, that would fit a specific slope or hill-shape, instead to try to design different "levels" that can chosen from a variety, and then offset appropriately. Each level would likely have one wall with no windows (the "hill-facing" side).

My personal preference in multi-level homes is NOT to have "TP's" between levels, so I would definitely be looking towards some way to "connect" the two, or more, levels via external stairs / ramps. Internal would be nicer, but likely even more challenging, given the variation in slopes and offsets.

One place to start might be to figure out the simple problem: "with any given constant slope hill (a good simple starting point), staying within the confines of +/- 4 meter mainland terraforming, how far "inset" into a hill can I place a level, without having ground pop up into the living room?"

I personally LOVE terrain. As you might have noticed, Bodhi, both Linji and Peronaut sims have a LOT of terrain, as well as water. I actually scripted my Land Scanner specifically to check out upcoming sims in mainland auction, and ONLY looked at the ones which had interesting terrain, and some access to water.

So, if there were a line of MOD / COPY / NO TRANSFER hill-side builds, I'd buy a copy of each, for sure.

Ace Albion has some pre-fabs that have a "back-side windowless wall" that work well for mountain homes.

Look for Books on California Architecture, you will find many designs that make excellent use of terrain and View. The whole problem with building for a Hillside is No two hillsides are exactly the same, so the build pretty much has to be Cusom, Unless one can obtain some sort of modular Building System.

Angel.

I once made a 'solid stone cliff' jutting out of the ground, uneven rocks, and put a short runway for flying my plane (into a void sim) off of. Unless you cammed or knew, you wouldn't have guessed there was a secret door and stairway into the 'rock' where I built a 6 room house, the interior just like a normal house (ah the joys of select texture).

Perhaps making your home seem like a part of the hill and living INSIDE the 'rocks' might make for an interesting new fashion for you?

I've seen some fantastic builds built on mountain sides and hilltops and done a couple of custom builds myself on steeply angled terrain . I really enjoyed the chalenge of creating a build around the enviroment and I ended up creating something very different to my usual style and certainly nothing like anything in my prefab range. If you have build skills then you should try and build it yourself as it's most rewarding getting a good build to work in an area where most people would fail.

I'm on a hill. I chickened out of the 'build a house' scenario and went for one of the popular freebie timber houses. I've terraced my land to take it but always in the back of my mind I wanted to do a proper hobbit house.
One day, when RL really lets go enough I'll do it .... mebbe

just stick a 32x32x40 prim on your 1024 hillside and make it flat land

thats what i did with my 6144 mountain top land, 6 prims and flat green land is mine!

Somebody has done an SL version of Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece that was built onto the side of a cliff around an emerging stream and waterfall. (Was offered at one point on SLExchange, probably still is.) That "prefab" is super-expensive and super-primmy, but the builder might be willing to whip up something less resource-challenging for you. He certainly should be able to.

I love the mountains too, and I did some houses for a big plot I had and what you really need is just a tall floor to stick into the ground and a flat balcony on the entrance to level from the door to the highest point available on the hill. this is based on the old part of my home town.

You just need a mod prefab and stretch the floor down and create that entrance balcony. the stretched floor has a couple of tricks, you have to give the wall textures to the sides of the floor so it looks like continuous wall.




This place doesn't exist any more. I only have picture frames of the building in progress for a film I'll eventually get done

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! Since my landlord seduced me off one nice, sloping lot to an even better, larger one I've got to start all over (Hi, Ged!)

Porky and Nowun, I think you're right that the variables are too great in slopes to make viable static prefabs. Or the line would have to include enough variations to cover enough different slope angles to be worthwhile.

Angel, thanks for reminding me of the California styles. I'm semi-recalling seeing photos of some pretty cool houses. I'll have to do some looking around for inspiration.

Bilbo, if I had more time I would SO love to build a proper smial. I did find one Hobbit dwelling one day that I looked around inside (before I knew that was unacceptable behavior!) and thought it was pretty cool. My sculpty prim abilities are pretty much limited to rocks at this point but i can see how something that simple would be useful for bringing the ground over top the rooms.

Ged, maybe we should talk some time about a slope-reading script. Could you imagine a set of houses or house elements boxed up with a script that reads the slope and then rezzes the correct house or combination of modules? That would be so cool. Right now I've been doing a combination of just messing with terrain and throwing down floor prims that I link and take somewhere else to actually build the house. That involves some back and forth between ground and build. Alternately I take some elevation points and rough something out in CAD to get the starting dimensions.

Har, I may have found that Falling Water house you were referring to. It looks more like an "inspired by" rather than a recreation but it's a decent starting point either way. I've been lucky to be around lots of FLW designs so perhaps I'll look some more at those, too.

Dzogchen, that place looks so cool! It's a pity it's no longer around. I was going to ask for a landmark. I found some inexpensive mod prefabs yesterday so maybe I'll pick one up and just see how modifiable it is.

So many options, not near enough time!!

For now I'll probably just throw up a modified version of my previous "Peronaut Limestone Modern" to make the place look lived in. If I didn't have a real life I'd consider doing hillside construction for a living.

I offer a large house called "The Orion" that was originally built for a hillside lot in Azure Islands as a part of an Azure Island promotion. (But not a tremendously steep angle, like I've seen on some mountainsides.)

The box contains two versions - the stilts version for hillside, and a flatland version.

If you're looking for a large house, check that out.

coco

The Orion is beautiful. I had it on a hillside rental property of mine and the renters instantly fell in love.

Bilbo, I trust you've been to Jopsy's Bag End house in Teal?

I'll check that out next time I'm in-world, Coco. Thanks.

Meanwhile here's my cobbled together hillside solution. An internal way to move between floors wasn't workable without giving up a lot of floor space or just make a hole to fly through, hence the long walks between doors. Frankly I just had landmarks set for upstairs or down or just flew.

http://usera.imagecave.com/camandbod/Second-Living/PeronautLimestoneModern.jpg

I made a couple of houses specifically with slopes in mind, but they were just a bit fun and very quirky. Most people want flat, though these days I'd put in thick foundations to allow for some settling into slopes.

Building on sloped sites is fun though, but it is something that needs to be done on the land, for that spot. I enjoy building on "difficult" sites, but it's a luxury, time-wise.

Glad to be of help, I once Build a Multifloor Jazz club up the side of an 80 degree slope. I used a style similar to the "San Francisco Painted Ladies". if you do a google image Search for those houses you will see some beautiful Structures. The southern California coastal Hills also have some Wonderful, and clever structures, but the architecture is more modern. I'm sure you will find something to your tastes.

Angel.

Reminds me of my RL home