101 Best Modern Cabins
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(This story is composed of photographs from both Dwell and those submitted by community members. All captions are from the original contributor or source story.)
Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.
The house may appear conventional at a glance, but a closer look shows how Oostenbruggen has pushed the boundaries of the traditional gabled typology. It has an asymmetrical roof, with slate shingles that extend down the eastern side to close it off completely.
Though the retreat is clearly meant to afford the solitude writing so often requires, Kathleen reports that "it's very lively. Deer approach, birds bathe. The sun warms my desk and you can hear the rain."
The facade consists of exposed concrete, Galvalume roofing, and cedar or torrefied wood coating. The homes are carefully positioned to keep other structures out of sight.
"There had been two or three primitive cabins on the property in the past, which resulted in a clearing that we utilized for the site," Joseph Herrin says. "This allowed us to avoid any further tree removal for construction, and provided an opportunity to begin to restore that portion of the property with native landscaping."
Set in the lush Wisconsin forest, this neatly stacked cabin was built vertically in order to minimize the amount of grading and landscaping necessary for construction. Photo by: Narayan Mahon
The House for a Musher is all about taking advantage of its hilltop site. The courtyard in the front has vast views and the house itself is oriented toward the surrounding landscape.
Jaanus Orgusaar's NOA cabin in the Virumaa region of northeast Estonia. The structure rests on three feet, so it doesn't require a foundation.
On a sloping site near a defunct rock quarry on the remote lobster-fishing island of Vinalhaven, Maine, a three-part summer home overlooks a framed view of Penobscot Bay. Working around the site’s unique topography, design-build firm GO Logic created each structure at varying elevations.
The roughly 160-square-foot modules, dubbed Mini House 2.0, were built in collaboration with Swedish manufacturer Sommarnöjen, and are delivered flat-packed.
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The site needed a path that would let residents easily ascend from the bank to the house. The architects created one by simply replicating the way they had naturally walked up the site the first time they visited. The result is a meandering trail that directs visitors to the landscape’s different features — whether a majestic Arbutus tree, a private stone beach, or a wildflower clearing.
Anka Lamprecht and Lukas Wezel shared their rustic domicile in a valley in Grotli, Norway. Boasting an enviable view, it’s the first cabin archived in the book’s "Backcountry" category that features homesteads in the wilderness.
The 510 Cabin is one of Leggitt's designs, executed with the help of student apprentices.
Olson Kundig Architects' Delta Shelter, in Mazama, Washington, is a 1,000 square-foot steel box home with a 200 square-foot footprint. Photo by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects/TASCHEN.
Short StackA tiny cabin in the Wisconsin Woods makes a big impact with Johnsen & Schmaling's innovative stacked design. The resulting cozy abode is stylish and durable, with stunning views of the surrounding landscape.
Large sliding glass doors allow daylight to fill the living room. Smaller windows are placed in the kitchen area and the sleeping loft. The exterior is clad in heart pine which needs very little up-keep and is known for its strength and hardness.
Deep eaves prevent the entrance from being buried in snow. The clients can see directly into the valley and mountains below.
A polychrome facade made of salvaged, 100-year-old barnwood gives this small, lofted cottage space its unique character. Its copper roof is also reclaimed, a lucky Craigslist find from a local remodel. Though the structure has a footprint of just 11' x 14', it provides a useful space to entertain, catch up on work, or relax.
Buser and Chapoton blackened the exterior cladding themselves.
The building takes advantage of passive heating and cooling, thanks to Blee and Halligan's strategic design to capture the most sunlight in the winter and provide the most shade in the summer. The above-ground glass facade faces east and draws in the daylight, but when the sun proves too strong, whoever is staying in the structure can close the internal shutters to beat the heat.
Building atop the foundation of a previous greenhouse was a cost-cutting measure; it allowed the project to be considered a renovation and thereby qualify for a temporary tax reduction. Its traditional, gabled form also pays homage to the original structure.
Subtle features incorporated into the design, including an elevated terrace and jetty, help the home float above the island.
A shed provides storage for the owners’ tools as well as wood for the fireplace. It features the same aged pine finish as the main home.
With one side of the house closed off, views are directed through the glazed south and west facades to the grassy clearing beyond. "We planted tens of thousands of blue bells and lots of rhododendrons," Oostenbruggen says of the green space. "The setting developed over time."
Sebastian Heise’s wooden structure, seemingly atilt, overlooks a green valley in Oberwiesenthal, Germany. The two horizontal windows on the side and the front porch give the home its own unique sense of balance.
Estate Bungalow in Matugama, Sri Lanka, by Narein Perera as published in Cabins (Taschen, 2014).
The facade is clad with beveled siding, stained dark to meld into the forest.
The charred cedar exterior gently basks in the Alaskan sun.
Rolling Huts (Winthrop, United States)A series of six modernist huts created by Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects, the Rolling Huts look like rustic case study homes, a herd of designer cabins that just may exemplify the term 'glamping.' Elevated on stilts, the 200-square-foot structures offer another level of outdoor accommodation. Photos by Chad Kirkpatrick
Choosing not to make a big to-do of itself, this cottage blends in with its surroundings. A wall of glass on one end allows a merger of the outdoors with the interiors, while white trim leaves the appearance of a snow-kissed façade year-round. Berlin, Germany. By Atelier st Gesellschaft von Architekten mbHfrom the book Rock the Shack, Copyright Gestalten 2013.
Updating the A-frame of yore, this home’s liberal use of windows makes the most of panoramic views spanning two valleys. Catalonia, Spain. Cadaval & Sola-Morales from the book Rock the Shack, Copyright Gestalten 2013.
Cement panels painted a plum hue clad Jason Gordon’s 1,157-square-foot cabin in the Ozark Mountains. Architect German Brun and partner Lizmarie Esparza originally specified wood, but opted for the much less expensive material from James Hardie after contractor Damian Fitzpatrick recommended it. "It was an exercise in cost engineering," Brun says.
Anna Hoover, founder of the non-profit First Light Alaska, sought a "thought refuge, a room with a view to sit and contemplate future projects and reflect on recent travels and interactions, plenty of ‘headspace’—tall ceilings—and the ability to host other artists for studio time," she says. A longtime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Hoover was familiar with the work of Olson Kundig and contacted the Seattle-based firm to design her abode.
Cabin Nordmarka, 2006.
A cantilevered cabin designed by R D Gentzler blends into the forest, even as it hovers above a 20-foot drop-off. Its south face is almost entirely glass, but a roof canopy limits solar gain. "We sit on the deck all afternoon watching the trees, and the time just flies by," says resident Maricela Salas.
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At night, the interior lighting casts the geometric window framing in silhouette.
The cabin’s exterior walls and roof are clad in overlapping stone plates that mimic the look of traditional wood paneling found in Western Norway. "It provides an affinity with the cabins nearby," partner and architect Nils Ole Bae Brandtzæg explains. Solar panels cover the chimney pipe, lighting LED lamps inside.
The sleeping cabin perches on a rocky rise near the Floating House; Meredith imagines these two as a start of a string of buildings that will wrap around the island.
According to Remijnse, since the only direction they could build on the small site was up, they decided to add height with a gabled roof.
Transformer or beach hut? Positioned in a coastal erosion zone, this holiday retreat for a family of five is completely capable of being relocated. An oversized shutter allows for protection from the elements when not in use and opens to allow sun in during the winter or provide shade on hot summer days. Waikato, New Zealand. By Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects, from the book Rock the Shack, Copyright Gestalten 2013.
While it was tempting to embed the cabin into the hillside, Balance Associates sought a smarter solution. By elevating the project on two concrete walls, the clients could avoid a costly foundation, improve their view of the landscape, and stay above the thick winter snowfall.
Renzo Piano's Diogene cabin on the Vitra campus in Switzerland, as published in Cabins (Taschen, 2014).
At the end of a steep driveway, off a road less graveled, await the happy innkeepers: Chris Brown, Sarah Johnson, and Michael and Joshua, two of their three sons.
"The overall design is influenced by the use of traditional, locally available, and/or low-maintenance materials such as corrugated metal roofing, cement board lap-siding, heavy timber construction, and indigenous wood species," Brun says.
Sited on a lake near Bracebridge, Ontario, this small-footprint family cottage was designed by Toronto firm superkül to integrate with its natural surroundings and minimize its environmental impact. The clients, a married couple, had mixed feelings about going completely modern with their cabin's aesthetic, so the architects created a sculptural wood form to bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary. Photo by Shai Gil.
Every year Marlboro College, which is located in rural Vermont, hosts the Marlboro Music Festival in which 80 of the most prominent classical musicians join together and work to hone their craft. For seven weeks, they work, live, and rehearse together and also host select public performances. Since its inception in 1951, the program has steadily welcomed more people to participate, outgrowing its accommodations. Enter architects Joan Soranno and John Cook of HGA who developed five site-specific cabins that tread lightly on the land and respect the festival's roots. Soranno and Cook created deceptively simple-looking structures that update the regional vernacular. "In Marlboro, you get a different way of not only looking at the world, but also looking at life," stated Mitsuko Uchida, the festival's current artistic director, in a release. "If you spend weeks together, day in and day out, eating meals together, chatting and sitting around, you begin to get the basic outline of what it means to be a musician. Ultimately Marlboro is about the concept of time. We have time to rehearse and time simply to think."
The family retreat abuts a rocky cliff in Herfell, Norway. The central cabin provides communal living spaces, while the two cabins that flank it are used as private sleeping quarters.
Wheelhaus Founder and CEO Jamie Mackay creates prefabs with the same quality and durability of the log cabins he grew up with, while incorporating his values of green production and modern design.
Perched over a cliff face, the hooded deck of the Gambier Residence reads like a ship’s prow over Howe Sound, the scenic waters near Vancouver.
Those seeking isolation and inspiration to tackle their work need look no further. A minimalist cube set against a picturesque background form a studio free of distraction, except maybe that view! Newfoundland, Canada. By Saunders Architecture from the book Rock the Shack, Copyright Gestalten 2013.
Livable sculpture at its finest. Created for the Zermatt Festival, an annual festival of chamber music, this structure (designed by a team of second-year architecture students!) maximizes the beauty of its surroundings with its 720-degree spiral composition. Valais, Switzerland. By Alice Studio/Atelier de la Conception de l’ Espace from the book Rock the Shack, Copyright Gestalten 2013.
One of the most astounding views from the house extends all the way to Mt. McKinley, the highest point in North America at over 20,000 feet.
Designed by Jensen & Skovdin, the Juvet's first-generation cabins are built on stilts in order to impact the environment as little as possible. Despite the modernist aesthetic, the buildings were built by local craftsmen using traditional materials and techniques.
Architect Bill Yudchitz asked his son, Daniel, to help him create a self-sustaining multi-level family cabin in Bayfield, Wisconsin.
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Cabins from around the world
A Norwegian boathouse. Photo Courtesy of Pasi Aalto / TASCHEN #cabin #boathouse
A standing-seam steel roofing panel clads a portion of the exterior, while the aluminum pipes also serve as the railing for the roof deck. The family cooks all their meals at the fire pit outside.
Those costs were partially recouped by using knotted pine planks for the exterior.
The jagged edges of the roof are meant to resemble the surrounding peaks of the Cascades. The exterior HardiePanel vertical siding is painted "dark pewter" by Benjamin Moore.
At just 350 square feet, this remote cabin with a view for the Sol Duc River sits on stilts to protect it from flooding and the dampness of the northwestern rainforest. Its shutters can be operated manually by custom steel rods.
The Outward Bound cabins' steel frames lift the structures above a three-foot snowpack while supporting corrugated-steel "snow roofs."
Nice modern cabin
"I wanted more of a skeletal look for this house, and less of a chunky, log-cabin look," says Panton, who added stark steel bracing across the entire length of the porch’s roof structure.
This 191-square-foot cabin near Vancouver and its glass facades "forces you to engage with the bigger landscape," architect Tom Kundig says, but it seals up tight when its owner is away. The unfinished steel cladding slides over the windows, turning it into a protected bunker. Read the full story here.
Modern in Montana: a Flathead Lake cabin that's a grownup version of a treehouse.
Delta Shelter, a cabin getaway on the same property as the Rolling Huts. We visited the owner and his wife during one of our visits to get an in-person reference for Tanner Construction. It was wonderful to see the house in person after drooling over it in the pages of Tom Kundig: Houses. Photo by Tim Bies.
Architect Charlie Lazor opted for a wash of black on the prefab cabin he designed on Madeline Island, Wisconsin.
For the Butterfly cabin, which is part of the Post Ranch Inn, Muennig chose materials that age gracefully when exposed to the elements. He regularly uses Cor-Ten steel, a group of steel alloys that form a stable rust-like appearance when battered by wind and rain.
This quaint cabin is located on Ragged Island, 20 miles off the coast of Maine. Photo by: Eirik Johnson
Rough-sawn plywood and standing-seam metal siding clad the house. "In cabins, we like to use undressed materials, which lend themselves to the simplicity of the structure," says architect Tom Lenchek.
San Francisco firm Lundberg Design built this cabin out of reclaimed materials, including the exterior redwood, which has aged into an elegant, ashen gray. In a past life, the pool acted as a water tank for livestock.
This 1,000 square-foot weekend cabin in Mazama, Washington, is essentially a "steel box on stilts," according to the firm. The three-story structure, which includes a living room and kitchen, can be completely shuttered when the owner is away.
In the shadow of the newly renamed mountain Denali, amid Alaska’s meadows and icy streams, a former teacher and a four-time Iditarod winner built a modernist cabin as expansive as the Last Frontier.
The father of architect Greg Dutton wished to build a cabin on the family farm, located within Appalachian Ohio and home to 400 heads of cattle. Dutton, of Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio-based Midland Architecture, presented this design as his father’s birthday present in 2012. Finished in 2014, the 900-square-foot cabin operates entirely off-the-grid.
Cedar slats mark the facade of Floating House, Doug and Becca Worple's lake house in Ontario. The architects, MOS, chose materials and shapes that wouldn’t stand out. "They’re really simple, almost Platonic forms," principal Michael Meredith says. The modest cabin has boat, a gabled roof and a cladding of untreated cedar, a material that shows up on docks and homes along Georgian Bay. "Allowing the buildings to weather seems the right thing to do," Sample says. And it’s ready for winter: Sliding barn doors seal the place up as an impenetrable box.
A Rolling Hut. Photo by Tim Bies, Olson Kundig Architects.
Rolling Huts by Olson KundigThere are a lot reasons to follow Olson Kundig on Instagram. One of them is their seminal Rolling Huts project.
HotBox: Michaela MacLeod and Nicholas Croft (Toronto)A mysterious monolith on the landscape, this warming hut, a cubic room wrapped in rubber and egg shell crate foam, provides a space for socialization.
The steel-clad Rolling Huts designed by Olson Kundig Architects in Manzama, Washington, sit lightly on the land thanks to wheels that allow the tiny residences to "hover" above the site, optimizing views of the landscape. Photo by Derek Pirozzi.
Joussard, Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta, 2011
A wooden home nestled amongst a cluster of Japanese larch trees offers a perfect sanctuary from nearby Tokyo. Chubu, Japan. By Koji Tsutsui & Associates from the book Rock the Shack, Copyright Gestalten 2013.
The solar panels on the roof often get covered in a heavy layer of snow, but with periodic clearing, they are as effective during the sunny days of winter as they are during fairer weather.
Here's the cover image in all its glory. Van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is the essential glass house (sorry Philip J) and looks pretty spectacular in the snow. One wonders if those windows are double-paned though. Photo by Jason Schmidt.
In the winter, instead of floating over the pond, the hut sits lightly above the snow. "It's protected and serene but alive with subtle energy," Poss says. Photo by Phillip Kalantzis-Cope.Don't miss a word of Dwell! Download our FREE app from iTunes, friend us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!
Poteet describes the space as "unbearably hot" before he used spray-foam insulation between the exterior walls and the interior bamboo. "Now it’s the equivalent of a steel ice chest," he says.
In the land of large mountain lodge wannabes, two California natives tuck Utah’s first LEED for Homes–rated house onto the side of Emigration Canyon. Photo by Dustin Aksland
"This was really a parameter-driven project," explains Lukasz Kos, a Toronto-based designer and cofounder of the architecture firm Testroom. "That is, I had to let the trees decide how the tree house would be."What the trees decided, apparently, was that they wanted a gracefully slender, Blade Runner–like elevator lodged between them. They also decided they didn’t want to be too mutilated in the process. Kos responded to their needs with the low-impact 4Treehouse, a lattice-frame structure that levitates above the forest floor of Lake Muskoka, Ontario, under the spell of some witchy architectural magic.He created this effect by suspending the two-ton, 410-square-foot tree house 20 feet above the ground with steel airline cables. With only one puncture hole in each of the four trunks into which the cable is anchored, the trees get away almost entirely unscathed, and the structure attains the visual effect of being suspended weightlessly in midair. At the base of the tree, a staircase rolls on casters upon two stone slabs, allowing occupants to enter and exit regardless of how much the tree house may be swaying or rocking in the wind. Solid plywood walls punctuated by a floor of red PVC constitute the "opaque" base story, which is largely protected from the outside elements. "The idea was to have the tree house open up as it gained elevation," explains Kos. The second story is surrounded by a vertical lattice frame, allowing for breezes, air, and light to filter softly through walls while still establishing a visual perimeter between outside and inside space. At top, the tree house is completely penned in, a suspended patio with a ceiling of sky. br> br>Photo by Lukasz Kos.
Debbi Gibbs loved the seeming wilderness of the area, especially considering its relative proximity to her New York apartment. She bought a ramshackle cabin with plans to tear it down and start fresh, then bided her time until she found just the right architects. Enter Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz of Resolution: 4 Architecture, who granted her wish for an open prefabricated structure with custom design touches.
A shark-skinning shack.
"From the street, it appears as a rectangular building with sloping shed roofs, but this is actually an illusion," Hutchison notes. "The floor plan is actually U-shaped, wrapping around an entry courtyard that is contained by the continuous west facade." A standing seam metal roof by Custom Bilt Metals blends in with the cedar siding.
This dwelling joins a number of structures—such as a boathouse and guesthouse—owned by one family and used for vacations. They needed a new house to accommodate new generations at the reatreat.
Construction during Lake Tahoe’s snowy season posed the biggest building challenge. "We shrink-wrapped the building, so the contractor could continue working through the cold of winter, sparing the expense of continuous snow removal, and limiting traces of the process on the landscape. Snowmobiles and sledges were used to bring workers and construction materials to the site." Casper says.
Wood from the property’s felled trees was incorporated into every room in the 3,000-square-foot house.
Erin Moore of FLOAT Architectural Research and Design, based in Tucson, Arizona, designed a 70-square-foot writer’s retreat in Wren, Oregon, for her mother, Kathleen Dean Moore, a nature writer and professor of philosophy at nearby Oregon State University. The elder Moore wanted a small studio in which to work and observe the delicate wetland ecosystem on the banks of the Marys River. Enlisting her daughter’s design expertise, her professor husband’s carpentry savoir faire, the aid of friends, and a front loader, Kathleen and her crew erected the structure in September 2007. Photo by Gary Tarleton. Totally off the grid—–Kathleen forgoes the computer and writes by hand when there—–the Watershed was designed to tread as lightly on the fragile ecosystem as the wild turkeys and Western pond turtles that live nearby. "
One of the main goals of the construction was to do as little harm as possible to the existing environment, which includes waterways that salmon depend upon. Herrin and his team created a garden roof that covers the full extent of the home to meet this objective. "This helps control storm water runoff and also replaces lost insect habitat—insects being a critical food source for juvenile salmon," he says.
Cho’s recently completed vacation retreat, the Concrete Box House, was inspired by the use of raw materials. Cho decided on grape vines as an unusual landscape element.
Mid-century designer Jens Risom's A-framed prefab family retreat, located on the northern portion of Block island, is bordered by a low stone wall, an aesthetic element that appears throughout the land.
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