Extension

Exterior sliding cedar panels seal off the building when it's not in use and for protection against storms.

Built on a tight budget of $120,000, a retirement home in the mountains delivers unexpected contemporary design to a rural township.

When building such a modest structure in a large landscape, designer and client often had to defend their vision to their collaborators. “We knew this house was going to be for Maggie and she would live there alone,” designer Lauren Moffitt says. “But people are always projecting for future resale. Putting in the smallest size of anything—to any subcontractor, it’s just not reasonable.”

"We did our best to tuck the buildings into the site—the goal was to get up high on a perch. It was a matter of setting that elevation and working back down with the topography," says architectural designer Riley Pratt.

Amy Plank and Richard Vaughn linked three 20-foot shipping containers to create a striking and sustainable home in Victoria, Australia. The house is clad with interlocking Colorbond steel panels, accented by windows and doors framed with silvertop ash.

Nestled in the woods of Cairngorms National Park, the Inshriach Bothy inspired the creation of the Artist Bothy series: customizable prefab cabins that can be purchased starting at $36k.

With an internal space of 132 square feet and a 18' x 9.8' footprint, the Artist Bothy is constructed from cross-laminated timber panels clad in Corten corrugated metal and Scottish larch.

The family home that residents Tyler Lepore, Lisa Giroday, builders Hanson Land & Sea, and September Architecture devised in the Sunshine Coast region of British Columbia, Canada, is wrapped with cedar and brick, tying to its wooded surround, which is only a four-minute walk to the ocean. "The house feels like it's part of the setting,

"We spent a long time considering the thresholds between spaces to create a sequence of rooms where you can’t quite tell what is original and what has been altered. At the end of the journey you get the glazed dining area which is heavily influenced by Victorian greenhouses but clearly a modern intervention.

The glass house interior features a timber terrazzo floor made from recycled waste wood for a sense of playfulness, warmth, and harmony with the oak frame.

The frame introduces a pop of green-painted aluminum to differentiate the new glass house from the more traditional spaces inside.