Why the best villas have no corridors

Walk through a great villa and count the corridors. In the best houses on our list, the answer is zero. Rooms hand you to the next room; courtyards do the connecting; the route from bedroom to breakfast passes a garden, not a wall of doors.

This is not a stylistic preference. Corridor-free plans are how architecture manufactures the feeling buyers describe as 'calm' — every transition happens in daylight, and the house never reminds you of a hotel.

When we assess a residence for the Architectural Icons collection, the plan is the first drawing we ask for. The photographs come second.