The containers are fused side-by-side, giving each apartment a 16-foot width. They are then stacked in four pairs with wrought, industrial-style exterior staircases in-between. To spare living space and installation headaches, a cinder block core houses utilities and a bathroom for each unit.

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

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.

Kate’s father predicted they would never use the crow’s nest–like tower, which is reached by climbing a narrow staircase.

The wall beneath the stairs holds hidden storage, including an Enomatic wine dispenser and Sub-Zero refrigerated drawers.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Resident Peter Østergaard (with Maja, 6, and Carl, 20 months) and architect and photographer Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen have been best friends since they were 13, which makes for easy collaboration. Says Bjerre-Poulsen: “There are always a lot of challenges in a renovation, but Peter and Åsa trusted my judgment and gave me a completely free hand. Usually it’s hard to push people into unconventional solutions, but Peter has all these wild and crazy ideas.” One such idea was to embed a transparent glass-and-iron door in the floor, operated by a hydraulic pump, which allows access to the subterranean wine cellar. At night, the lit-up cellar glows, lending the compact living room an increased sense of verticality.

The stairs lead to a sleeping loft outfitted with a mechanical skylight.

"How would a kid draw a house?" architect Per Franson asked himself when designing the Olivero-Reinius family home. The simple prefab structure’s unusual color comes from a traditional source: falu rödfärg, the historic mineral paint that gives the region’s famous barns their red color.

The large windows let in fresh breezes and provide an opportunity for the owners to jump out of the house and into the water.

The inspiration for this prefabricated, modular family home on Fishers Island, New York, were the views that Tanney and Luntz saw from a 12-foot stepladder, which was balancing on the bed of a pickup truck when they first visited the site.

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 architect chose granite for the house’s base, zinc for its roof, and Scandinavian pinewood for cladding—all materials that complement the nearby gray stone building.

Six staircases, many open to outside light, serve as pathways between the private interior spaces.

Architect Paul Hinkin and his partner, Chrissy Pearce, bought and restored a 538-square-foot Deckhouse at Emsworth Yacht Harbour in Hampshire, England.

The upper level of the 5,300-square-foot space is accessed via a slender stair with reclaimed-wood treads.

"We composed the house to have its highest, brightest space in the middle," says Paul Raff. Warm wood stairs lead to the second floor, which houses guest bedrooms, bath, and a kitchenette for the family's frequent visitors.

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

With the help of builder Peter Watts, the couple returned the house to its original early-1970s glory, utilizing the space beneath for both boat and car.

A staircase forms the core of the 1,800-square-foot home, with a symmetrical alcove on either side. The steps, hardwood floors, and slatted bridge on the second floor are made of white oak, providing a rich contrast with its white walls.

The staircase’s steel guardrail and the custom black bookshelf create a link between the kitchen, the living space, and the entryway.

The sculptural staircase is a centerpiece of the open-plan kitchen and living room.

A Simple Plan A Marmol Radziner–designed prefab house, trucked onto a remote Northern California site, takes the pain out of the construction process.

The Floating Farmhouse’s semitransparent addition has a roofline that matches the pitch of the original 1820s farmhouse. A porch, tucked under the side eaves, is cantilevered over a stream that runs through the property. Ikea loungers are illuminated from the interior by commercial gymnasium lights repurposed as pendant lamps.

The exterior features vertical, untreated cedar panels. “We tried to use materials that are beautiful in their natural state without excessive treatment or finishing,” Pavonetti says.

Architect Sven Matt mixed basic shapes with rich details in this Austrian home. The lattice shell was hewn from silver fir sourced from a nearby forest. Eternit shingles clad the roof.

This wooden staircase doubles as kitchen shelving in the English designer's home. Tyler hired David Restorick, a furniture maker and friend, to build a staircase that doubles as display space for Tyler's vast collection of colorful cookware.