Waechter Architecture reimagined a traditional gabled home in southeast Portland without significantly altering the original building. A simple coat of red paint abstracts the century-old structure, creating a residential work of art.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

Corporate high-flyers and admitted neat freaks Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton couldn’t handle the chaos anymore. Read more about this Victorian terrace in London here.

Home Renovation Tip: Get an Understanding of What’s Already Around

Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

The Desert House located in Desert Hot Springs is a steel structure designed with large expansive windows, and concrete flooring.

Composed of primarily steel, this prefab home has sufficient outdoor space. Photo by: Daniel Hennessy

London based photographer, Ed Reeve used dark cedar to achieve his lifelong goal: to build his own house on a perfect plot of land located in De Beauvoir Town. Photos by: Ed Reeve

The Shayan House takes full advantage of its canyon site.

Various groupings of succulents were planted to accent and obscure the home's relationship to its surrounding environment. Photo by: Daniel Hennessy

On the opposite side of the abstract front elevation, the home opens up and presents an entirely different viewing experience. “Like a flower leaning [towards the] sunlight, the architectural volumes pull and open up towards the views of the lake,” says Miller. A stacked timber retaining wall serves both structural and aesthetic functions; in addition to holding back the earth the home has been buried into, it visually defines the its perimeter.

As the home is approached from the street, the white aluminum facade projects out from the earth in an abstract composition of forms and volumes. There are no doors or windows at the entrance from the road, a calculated decision by the design team to avoid a structure that would read as manmade against the natural landscape. “We wanted it to feel ‘non-architectural’ in a way so that the natural view of the lake was not walled off by a privatized notion of someone’s home,” says Miller.

Thomas and Laura Hyland's house sits adjacent to the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. The home maintains the land's natural vegetation and rocky surface. Photo by: Dean Kaufman

Torontonians Dan and Diane Molenaar head north to Drag Lake when they need a weekend away from urban life—though they brought some of the city with them. The mirrored windows that circle the cottage were recycled from two office towers in Toronto.

Kayak in hand, Tom and Will make a break for the beach.

“Sustainability is very important to us,” lead architect Heather Dubbeldam says. “It is easy to design with passive systems, to use passive sustainable principles to influence the design and layout of the house.” Her team reduced the need for air conditioning and artificial lighting through carefully positioned doors and windows that draw in natural light and breeze. New insulation, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and low-energy lighting also minimize the homeowners’ dependence on utilities.

“So many houses seem like they’re completely still and heavy,” says Dencity architect Staffan Svenson. Inspired by his client’s role in the airline industry, Svenson relished the chance to create a home that evokes motion and lightness.

Nestled in a forest, the residence consists of three volumes. The patio, enhanced by a German-made beer garden table, is an extension of the living room floor, creating an indoor-outdoor living space. “It’s one way a small space can be made to feel larger,” says architect Jason W. Hart. All of the exterior doors are painted marigold, providing a friendly pop of color.

The iT House offers cross-ventilation through its wide, expansive doors and windows, which naturally help cool down the home's interior temperature. Photo by: Gregg Segal

Though the house is a conversation piece in the more traditional neighborhood, its natural materials nicely complement its surroundings.

"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.

Sævik compares her house to a contemplative hideout. “It’s very quiet,” she says. “You can concentrate and let thoughts fly.” Her favorite summer pastimes include reading, painting, drawing, yoga, and “just sitting and feeling the forest,” she says.

At the base of Echo Mountain in Phoenix, a geometric home by Wendell Burnette opens up to the surrounding desert landscape. Photo by Dean Kaufman.

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.

Architect Michelle Linden worked with Brothers to create a minimalist house. Inspired by the inward-looking approach of Cistercian abbeys, Linden oriented the U-shaped structure around a courtyard.

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.

The 40-foot-long containers hang 16 feet over the ground. The deep balcony, Gooden says, offers solar protection, keeping strong sunlight out but letting natural light in. The home has three bedrooms, a den, and three and half baths.

Crump played with the traditional gable roof form common to Australian farmhouses and transformed it into something entirely modern. The house’s three distinct ridgelines follow each other in succession, their simple contours conjuring a cartoon lightning bolt. The wood cladding covering the exterior also lends the house an impenetrable feel, heightening the surprise visitors experience upon entering and seeing its open, seaside views.

A path leads past glazing and gravel to the front door.

The home, a half-sunk diamond, is experienced very differently from each of its sides. Using BIM software, the firm designed modular prefabricated wooden panels that make up each of the home’s facades. Western red cedar was chosen for the panels, while tropical Bilinga was selected for the edge beam.

“In consideration of the context, the design aimed to reinterpret the traditional beach shack vernacular in a contemporary way by embracing traditional materials, including corrugated metal, fiber cement sheeting, and timber elements,” Rathmayr says.

The architects’ inventive use of resources helped keep costs down. “We gave the facade’s ribbed metal cladding, commonly used in neighboring beach shacks, a metallic finish that provided a cost-effective solution and an upscale appearance,” Rathmayr says.

The house is a simple cement and steel box with elements that fold outwards to create privacy screens where needed. A perforated aluminum fence unravels from the building down toward the street. The material was selected to deter local graffiti artists from leaving their mark. Instead, a recycled brick wall serves as an appropriate canvas for street art.

With a construction budget of less than $200 per square foot, architect Les Eerkes (with the mentorship of Tom Kunding) looked for ways to build the structure efficiently. He specified glulam—glued laminated timber—for the structure and spanned the skeleton with structurally insulated floor and roof panels. The structure is stationed atop a six-column foundation. "The 'six-footed' solution was balanced against a spread footing and stem wall approach," Eerkes says. "Cost analysis led us in the direction of the column footing approach because it minimized excavation and form work costs."

Gerald designed the bach to feel as casual as possible, hence the lack of a paved driveway and garage.