Steel and concrete hybrid structures have limited applications for building construction in seismic areas as for example compared to steel and concrete composite structures. However, steel and concrete hybrid structures might have very promising uses in seismic areas provided that suitable structural schemes and proper design method are identified and investigated. While the deformation demands for the steel and concrete components in composite structures are in the same range since concrete and steel are part of the same structural member, hybrid structures allow a more efficient design of the reinforced concrete structural elements as well as of the steel structural elements. In fact the deformation demands may be tailored to the capacity of the relevant materials. Thus, it becomes interesting to define innovative steel and reinforced concrete hybrid systems for the construction of feasible and easy repairable earthquake-proof buildings through the full exploitation of the properties of both steel and concrete constructions. In this paper attention is focused on an innovative hybrid coupled shear wall (HCSW) system obtained coupling a reinforced concrete wall with two side steel columns connected by means of steel links at each floor. In this system a significant part of the overturning moment is resisted by an axial compression - tension couple developed by two side steel columns while almost all the horizontal shear and only a fraction of the overturning moment are resisted by the wall. The reinforced concrete wall should remain in the elastic or should undergo limited damages and the steel links connected to the wall are the only dissipative elements and can be easily replaceable. Such hybrid systems might represent a cost- and time-effective type of construction since simple beam-to-column connections could be used for the steel frame constituting the gravity-resisting part and traditional and well-known building techniques are required for the reinforced concrete and steel components. The problems encountered in the preliminary design of this innovative HCSW system using the recommendations currently available in the Eurocodes are discussed using selected case studies. Afterwards, a specific design method conceived as an extension of the current Eurocodes is presented and applied to the design of realistic examples. Finally, nonlinear static and dynamic incremental analyses are performed to assess the behavior of the proposed innovative structural system in seismic areas and validate the proposed design procedure.