For a cost-conscious 2,000-square-foot renovation located 30 minutes outside of Austin, Texas, architect Nick Deaver took a look around for inspiration. He spied galvanized metal cladding on the region’s sheds and co-opted the inexpensive, resilient material for his own design.

The home’s metal cladding is Pac-Clad, a material typically used for roofs.

The architect covered the exterior in Pac-Clad, a metal roofing material, because it's "cost-effective, durable, maintenance-free, and comes in various colors," says Church.

The metal cladding, inspired by a nearby zinc mine, continues seamlessly onto the house’s roof for a minimalist shed effect. “The drip edge turns to make the wall,” explains architect Brandon Pace, “but changes above the window to accommodate a downspout. Any place where the metal contacts glass, or where you walk underneath, we have an internal gutter.”

Thanks to passive solar and radiant floors, the metal-clad home is comfortable year-round.

“Durability drove the selection of metal panels,” Schaer says of the home’s industrial exterior. Manufactured by AEP SPAN from corrugated cladding, it looks like zinc but costs significantly less. It also contrasts nicely with the natural siding and trim. “All of the wood inside and out is Douglas Fir, the predominant wood species in the northwest,” Schaer explains.

“The house turns its back to the street while opening up to the views to the northeast through a large glazed corner window system,” Hutchison says. One-by-four and one-by-six inch cedar siding, which were pre-stained in Cabot Semi-Transparent Black, were placed vertically and horizontally on the exterior as a subtle detail.

Architect Andrew Simpson and the owners wanted to keep the design simple and grounded with “a sense of modest honesty.” In terms of the exterior, “as much of the existing cedar cladding as possible was retained and reused.”

The two-tone corrugated metal cladding helps the sheds blend into the landscape, along with windows custom-colored by the manufacturer to match.

When the Casali family gave Michael Krus and Prishram Jain of TACT Architecture free rein to work with unconventional materials, the architects responded by creating a geometric 4,300-square-foot smart home encased in aluminum panels by Agway Metals. The front facade features Cor-Ten steel fabricated by Praxy Cladding.

The home, clad in natural Australian timber, enjoys a sense of lightness thanks to slender columns that let it float over the dunes. The driveway and entry, at the rear of the building, have an understated design to build to the interior's magnificent ocean views. Firm director Phil Snowdon explains, “By creating an architectural form that draws your eye and leads you up the steep driveway, we could engage new visitors in a welcoming process that first reveals the object and then slowly reveals the main event, being the view."

Marco V. Morelli says his Studio Shed is the perfect refuge. “It’s changed my life for the better,” he says. “I’ve gotten so much more work done, and I think my marital relations are much better because I have a place of my own.”

Public front, private back, with a view of the garage. Photo credit: Dale Christopher Lang PhD AIAP

Architect Jesse Garlick’s rural Washington vacation home references its rugged surroundings. The steel cladding has developed a patina similar to the ochre-red color of bedrock found in the area.

A narrow building next to the main structure houses storage and an outdoor kitchen.

Reinforced concrete stands behind the stone facade to provide insulation. Vanotti wanted to focus this project on the simple materials of concrete, natural larch, iron, and wood.

“Considering all of the foot traffic around their property, [the owners] made it very clear that they wanted to find a way to maintain as much privacy in the home as possible,” architect Chad Mitchell says of this Denver home. “Thus, the main floor of the home is elevated from the sidewalk by about six feet.” The exterior siding is red cedar with a custom Sherwin-Williams stain.

Along with its durability, concrete requires very little maintenance.

Designers Christopher Robertson and Vivi Nguyen-Robertson conceived their house as an unfolding sequence of simple geometric forms: a low concrete wall, a concrete cube, and a boxclad in Siberian larch.

“I suppose you could consider me part of a subculture who lived in various inner-city spaces,” says Simpson, whose previous homes include ad hoc spaces in industrial warehouses, floors of office buildings, and units above shops and bars. In designing his Island Bay home completely from scratch, he retained his experimental spirit: “We wanted a house that responded to our wider social, environmental, and economic concerns rather than something that blindly followed convention,” he says. Unassuming in sight, the home’s corrugated-metal cladding (above) recalls the tin shed, a vernacular housing type in the region.

The space is also adorned with timber cladding, as seen on the entry door.

Christopher: Olalla, Washington, is a small rural community on the Kitsap Peninsula accessible to Seattle via ferry, or a long drive through Tacoma. We're about one mile from Puget Sound, one mile from a freshwater lake and a few miles from a popular sailing harbor. We're Olympic Peninsula adjacent, and, most importantly, we are less than 45 minutes from Amy's favorite oyster farm in the Hood Canal, Hama Hama. In addition to a family of deer, dozens of birds, and hundreds of frogs, our property is also home to occasional wandering coyotes and a very strange-looking creature that Amy has convinced herself is a chupacabra. There are cougars and black bears in the area as well, but thank God we haven't eyeballed them yet. Amy: For us, the primary driver for us to move from Los Angeles and abandon our urban existence was our love of the property.

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

Made of black anodized aluminum with stainless steel hinges, the home’s warehouse-style windows are designed to withstand corrosion. No wood was used on the exterior except for the dock, called a finger pier, which allows access to the front door and the couple’s boat. The home looks out onto downtown San Francisco, with AT&T Park visible from the main deck.

Architect Alfredo Vanotti sourced the home's stone exterior from the woods behind the property. “I believe that mountain architecture is an emblematic example of sustainable architecture,” he says.

A view of the sauna building before the patio and seating were constructed on the other side. The log cabins were constructed by a specialist company, and another builder helped with the interior walls. Jussi-Pekka and his father did all the other building and landscaping work, apart from the electrical and plumbing—often working 12-hour days.

If you’re traveling to Puglia in Italy, one of the most iconic sights are trulli (trullo is the singular), an ancient hut that's specific to the Itria Valley in the Apulia region of Southern Italy. Made with dry stone, trulli date back to medieval times.

Inspired by the small scale of Japanese residences—in particular, Makoto Masuzawa’s 1952 Minimum House—architect Andrew Simpson designed his own economical 538-square-foot home set into a wooded site in Island Bay, a coastal suburb outside Wellington, New Zealand.

The exterior of Jayna Cooper's house in Los Angeles. "As I was designing my house I kept in mind standard lumber and plywood sizes so that there would be minimal waste," she says. "When choosing materials, I did basic research on cost per square foot and picked out some of the least expensive materials in the building industry. Basic, inexpensive stuff like corrugated sheet metal, stucco, and drywall can look really great if it’s incorporated into the design in a modern and well-thought-out way."

The trip from garage to first floor is through a wood-clad spiral staircase that resembles a giant slatted barrel.

Looking back to the rear of the sauna and guest bedroom from the field. The large windows not only invite the view inside, but also reflect the landscape and allow the built forms to dissolve.

Black-painted window and door frames contrast with the white-painted steel siding and offer a crisp, clean aesthetic for the exterior of the cottage.

Madison points out that the pod concept would make it easy to add an extension if necessary. “We see it as a house that can grow with us—and that we can pay for as we go along.”

“This way you have a sequence,” Lynch explains. “The stair is a circulator, and after you take off your coat, you can go downstairs to the powder room or up to the living floor.” On the other side of the millwork, he devised built-in storage and niches for display, as shown in the master bedroom, located on the second floor.

Floors are sealed and waxed concrete. The 4,200-square-foot home is clad in stained local tongue-in-groove cypress.