Architects: Kirsten Murray, Tom Kundig

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

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.

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.

Wood from the property’s felled trees was incorporated into every room in the 3,000-square-foot house.

Located in California’s Sugar Bowl neighborhood, this shadowy lair by Mork-Ulnes Architects looks like something out of fairy tale. "We call the house Troll Hus, with a reference to the otherworldly beings in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore that are said to dwell in remote mountains," architect Casper Mork-Ulnes says.

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. “

The material was gathered from soil with high sand content on the property as well as a second site in the vicinity. Certain volumes of the home consist of a concrete structure and brick masonry.

“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.

A sofa from Design Within Reach opposes a Hi Turn chair by Bensen in the living room.

“Consistent with the lakefront cabin charm, the owners liked the idea of accessing much of the house from outdoor porches and walkways,” says architect Ted Flato. Supplies from Dynamic Architectural Windows and Doors bring light in to the home’s covered spaces.

Custom-designed furniture outfits the interior of a bunker-turned-vacation retreat in the Netherlands.

Designed by Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, this house is located in the outer region of the Stockholm archipelago. To keep expenses low, the architects opted for a simple gabled design and simple materials—the sheet metal facade and OSB walls within, for instance.

Architect Bruno Despierre built a deck for outdoor activities from pine wood.

Low-impact materials were also used for the interior design, which is comprised primarily of concrete, glass, stone, wood, and steel. A palette of mostly light and neutral shades puts the attention on the views.

A red print by Cris Gianakos accents a well-lit stairwell leading to a laundry area, library, and rec room on the full basement floor.

The kitchen island, also Douglas fir, showcases the material’s rich striations and color variations. Behind the kitchen are two bedrooms and a single bathroom. A large open air pavilion, built concurrently with the cabin, can be seen from the windows on the right.

When homeowners of an off-the-grid property in the Bay Area needed to add a home office, they added a custom deck to their Studio Shed to take advantage of the landscape.

Two Black Sheds incorporates all the conventional aspects of a weekend retreat in a rather unconventional way.

The exterior timber cladding is coated with black tar, a traditional Norwegian treatment. The finish serves a variety of purposes: solar heat gain, water resistance, and insect repellant.

The simple materials and forms represent continuity with traditional Acadian architecture. The retreat is sheathed in metal sheets.

Architect Jim Garrison of Brooklyn-based Garrison Architects was asked to design a lakeside retreat for visiting families at a boarding school for troubled teens, Star Commonwealth, in Albion, Michigan. To drastically reduce academic interruption and cut site noise, Garrison decided early on to create an 1,100-square-foot modular building dubbed Koby, with two bedrooms on opposite sides of the structure and a common dining area in the middle “as a therapeutic space for families to gather and eat together.”

In realizing their dream to build a country retreat in upstate New York, Sandy Chilewich and Joe Sultan—proprietors of the textiles firm Chilewich|Sultan—eschewed a mountainous view for an understated wooded plot. At 800 square feet, the flat-roofed home is a modest structure for the expansive 10-acre property.

“We sleep in a Murphy bed, but we never close it; it’s like living in a loft.”—Sandy Chilewich, resident

After months of arduous design and construction, Marmol and Becket are thrilled to escape Los Angeles for their idyllic desert retreat.

House in Matosinhos is a minimal home located in Matosinhos, Portugal, created by nu.ma. The lot, where the house is inserted, has a non-regular shape, longitudinal, and perpendicular to the street Nossa Senhora da Conceição. It was important to keep the alignment of the house with the existing buildings in order to avoid formal irregularities within the street development. The interior spatial distribution is separated by function and by floors. Due to the longitudinal nature of the lot, the architects proposed an internal yard at the center of the home to allow for natural light to enter the dining/living room and kitchen.

Located about 12.5 miles outside Cortina d'Ampezzo, guests arrive via snowshoes or snowmobile.

The first floor contains communal rooms (kitchen, living room, etc.) and private sleeping spaces are located above. The dining room table and chairs are from Artek.

While a lengthy building lifespan minimizes environmental impact—for example, the charred cedar will last 80 years—an array of solar panels 50 yards from the house also allows it to operate independently from the electrical grid. A cistern collects fresh water from a nearby natural spring.

Glulam beams keep the interior column free and enable a large skylight that runs the length of the roof.

The interior is climate-controlled and ideal for star watching.

This contemporary retreat built on a four-and-a-half-acre plot of land in Martha's Vineyard was designed by Harvard professor and architect, Toshiko Mori. Photos by: Iwan Baan

The experience, which comes with dinner, will run you about €300 per night.

“The roof terrace accessed from the master bedroom is the sunniest place, naturally,” said Tremblay. A custom-made bed by Boom Town, Tremblay’s firm, is outfitted with linens by Kravet. Outdoor seating is by Jardin de Ville.

The ground floor of the house contains the living and dining areas, as well as four bedrooms. The upper floor contains the master suite with a lake view, as well as two additional bedrooms. The large 'S' sculpture, shaken from a building following the 2001 earthquake in San Salvador, was salvaged and repurposed by designer Gerardo Dumont.

Making our way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this master suite bathroom is nestled within a mountain retreat that sits on five acres of private land. Slabs of Carrera marble line the space while the central window overlooks the Grand Teton national park. Placed at the edge of the bathroom is a 50-square-foot shower with steam capabilities.