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.

Steel allowed Kunding to be playful with the staircase’s form.

Architect Chris Pardo designed the Element 1 model for prefab builder Method Homes, cladding it in Cor-Ten steel and cedar. Pardo’s design “is the definition of simple, elegant, straightforward building,” resident Karen Kiest says.

Alex Gil and Claudia DeSimio created a duplex in an apartment building where they’d been renting for years in Brooklyn, New York, and set to work gutting the interior and adding a new rooftop addition clad in panels of Cor-Ten steel.

At Sea Ranch, a half-century-old enclave of rugged modernist houses on the Northern California coast, a new home captures the spirit of its surroundings. The client, a couple, were guided by the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. Lovers of Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, the architects made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house "was very crisp and clean," he says. "This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi." Together, the Cor-Ten steel and board-form concrete give the exterior a weathered look.

For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house “was very crisp and clean,” he says. “This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi.”

Typography guru Erik Spiekermann and his wife, designer Susanna Dulkinys, hate clutter. That’s why they love the super-sleek Berlin domicile they constructed to have just the right lines—and a host of energy-saving features behind the scenes. The stainless-steel Bulthaup kitchen "cost as much as a small house," said Spiekermann, though he did get a discount: Bulthaup is one of his clients.

Surprisingly, this cozy and partially earth-sheltered family home—which is, according to Gavin, "one step away from Passive House standards"—started life as a series of derelict and semi- derelict farmstead buildings in raw and rural Aberdeenshire, in the hinterland of Scotland’s northeast coast. For the new structure, Grace & Webb fabricated a laser-cut steel balcony.

Staircase Viewed from Exterior

The steel canopy protects the residents from Seattle’s notoriously rainy weather as they walk from the entry gate to the front door.

The front facade features Cor-Ten steel fabricated by Praxy Cladding.

Julie Torres Moskovitz, who designed New York’s first certified Passive House, recently finished her first book, The Greenest Home (Princeton Architectural Press), about the first wave of ultragreen homes in the United States (following the 40,000 already constructed in Europe). The title hits shelves in May 2013. Here, a custom stainless steel stair with treads of perforated steel replaces the old wood staircase in the rehabbed Park Slope brownstone.

Wooten asked Massie to incorporate a 1960s steel screen by Don Drumm into the house; Massie placed it on a central pivot so it acts as a gate, a privacy barrier, and an architectural gesture. “We actually changed the whole roofline of the porch to accommodate the screen being able to pivot,” says Massie. “The screen also allowed the building to have an immediate history.” dondrummstudios.com

A connection to the elements was crucial to Merer, who describes his design philosophy as "looking for the perfect union of object and environment."

The house features a concrete rainscreen painted gray and Cor-Ten steel paneling around the exterior of the bedrooms. The horizontal louver theme around the dining room windows mimics the vocabulary established on the street-facing facade.

Homeowner Simon Doonan stands next to the front door. "We have flamboyance, and we’re not inhibited about anything. [Architect] Gray Organschi gave [the house] that intellectual rigor needed to make it beautiful. We were well matched."

The geometric front facade of the home is made of Cor-Ten steel, segregated into eight vertical panels. Juxtaposed with its lush natural environment, the front elevation is a minimal and abstract counterpoint to its surroundings. An exterior pool meets the facade at its base.

“I made a very conscious decision, when I realized that the house with nothing in it was such a fantastic work of art,” says Greg Wooten, “to go out of my way to pull back and only select pieces that complemented the architecture and would allow both the house and the furniture to breathe.” The place is furnished minimally with vintage finds he chose for the rooms over time.

Landscape architect and artist Mikyoung Kim created a Cor-ten steel fence to enclose a three-acre site in Lincoln, Massachusetts. “The entire fence is made using just seven lengths of modular, precut Cor-Ten steel bars, with widths being anywhere from two to five bars thick," explains the designer. "Depending on the angle from which you see it, the fence can appear transparent or opaque.” Read the full article here.

Aidlin Darling's design for a three-story, Cor-Ten steel addition to a beachfront house in San Francisco was featured in the September 2007 edition of Dwell. Photo by Robert Schlatter.

Building with Cor-Ten steel—weathering steel's nom de plume—is a bit like watching a painting slowly come to life over time. Exposure to the elements adds textured hues of red and orange to the material until it steps into a character completely its own. From the Dwell archive, we bring you nine Cor-Ten steel homes with facades that will continue to shift through shades of ochre, amber, rust, and sienna.

“We took away a very thick, heavy staircase that led to the loft, and designed one that had a much lighter look,” Wåhlin says. “The new one, made of steel, looks simple and indeed light—but is in fact super heavy and was a real challenge to construct.”

The Helios Fire Bowl Set from Skagerak is a portable outdoor fireplace that is ideal for a back patio. It can be used as a fire pit, or with the Helios Steel Grille and some charcoal to create an outdoor grill for hotdogs, vegetables, or shish kebabs.

A steel spiral staircase efficiently links all three floors. With no interior doors, Yurika can keep an ear on the shop from upstairs while maintaining the privacy of her home with the help of the vertical distance.

Carport doors swing open to the alley outside of the studio, where the property extends enough for additional landscaping. The corrugated steel siding comes from a surplus from a nearby apartment building. “There’s a lot of urban infill potential in Seattle’s neighborhoods,” Wittman remarks. “We’re catching up to older, denser cities in this regard.”

The staircase leading to the master suite features aluminum treads supported on stainless steel tubes. "We wanted something that would allow the resin panels behind it to reflect the light from the windows at the top of the stair," Slade says.

A mix of vintage finds and pieces designed by Mathesius, including a Cor-Ten steel fire pit on the second-floor deck, furnish a majority of the home.

The 925-square-foot house Maggie Treanor calls home blends into the landscape somewhat; with a galvanized steel shed roof and siding, it looks like a high-design little brother to the barns on the surrounding farms.

Inspired by the Sydney Opera House, architects Andrew Maynard and Mark Austin paid careful attention to the extension’s “fifth elevation"—the way it’s seen from the sky. Its tiny houses, clustered at the southern end of the property, are clad in white steel panels and western red cedar shingles, contrasting materials that emphasize their geometric forms.

“There’s a presence to that place—it’s vast, and constantly shifting,” Moffitt says. “It was clear that this house should be an observation shed for the changing landscape beyond.”

The same materials palette continues throughout the entire home. A cohesive marriage of Cor-Ten steel, handcrafted bricks, and marble floors come together at the home’s perimeter. The thick exterior walls were designed to act as an insulating barrier, shielding interior spaces against thermal loss.

Conceived as a glass wall or window that could swing open rather than a typical door, the resulting glass-and-metal piece is so heavy that it required its own foundation! Thanks to clever engineering by Sand Studios, even seven-year-old Macy can operate the 2,000-pound door.

Indoor pool with the corten ceilling

Houston-based designer Barbara Hill is known for a stripped-down aesthetic that blends art-world cachet with Texas modernism. Vitra’s Slow chair sits in front of a powder-coated-steel bookcase made by Hill’s go-to fabricator, George Sacaris; it was originally built for the Houston house.