I recently stumbled on a gallery that featured the winners of the World Architecture Festival, which took place in Singapore in early October, and which awarded the best architectural projects of the world that took place between January 2012 and June 2013. The projects didn’t need to be built in order to compete.

A Lebanese project, as I’ve found out, was chosen as the best house among future projects. Designed by MZ architects, the meditation house looks quite odd and definitely not anything we’re used to as Lebanese. It’s made as something that blends into its surrounding hills and mountains, doesn’t challenge the location it’s in and provides its owner a means for him to feel closer to God.

The house also has a room which is dug vertically into a nearby cliff. The house itself, it seems, satisfies the requirements of Islam without it being anything typically Muslim. The vertical room is akin to a minaret. Its location, overlooking its surroundings and the seaside, can be considered to be a dome and the direction towards Mecca is conserved.

You can check out more information about the meanings behind the house here.

Check out the following renderings of what the house will look like. I personally wouldn’t want my house to be like this and I’m definitely not an architect in order to appreciate the work that has gone into it. But at least this is a ranking that matters.