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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A 24-by24-foot Cor-ten-clad pavilion tops the three-story addition.

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

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

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.

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.

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 architect Jorge Gracia sits on his handiwork, an unusual custom-made Cor-Ten stair leading from the courtyard to the guesthouse.

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.

Melanie Maher sunbathes beneath the lattice of a pool house, which is clad in Cor-Ten steel.

The fire-resistant structure is clad in corrugated Cor-Ten steel that has been left to rust for easy maintenance. Instead of fussy landscaping, the family spread seed for native grasses and wildflowers that they let fill in naturally.

Corrugated Cor-Ten steel clads the entryway that connects the two cedar-clad wings.

The cabins and sauna that architect Zane Tetere-Sulce designed for the Ziedlejas Wellness Resort are clad with Cor-Ten steel and glass.

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.

Cor-Ten steel shutters give the Little Space more security during long periods when the occupants are traveling.

The front garden area is terraced with custom Cor-Ten steel retaining walls with an oxidized patina. The plantings are inspired by the couple’s love for Palm Springs.

The Belgian firm Gijs Van Vaerenbergh constructed a see-through steepled chapel in Cor-Ten steel in 2011.

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

A Cor-Ten steel "sleeping volume" seemingly floats atop a predominantly glass "living volume." Intersecting these two stacked volumes is a double-height, timber box which houses the multipurpose spaces.

Ridge Mountain Residence was designed to blend into the existing Palm Springs landscape. Cor-Ten steel cladding provides a naturally weathering material, while the concrete structure and flagstone terrace complement the light tones of the surrounding mountains.

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.

A small door lets cooks and hungry interns into the Cor-Ten steel and corrugated polycarbonate tube.

Cor-Ten steel doors open to the gravel path that meanders through a flowering meadow to the cemetery.

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

For the Butterfly cabin, which is part of the Post Ranch Inn, Muennig chose materials that age gracefully when exposed to the elements. He regularly uses Cor-Ten steel, a group of steel alloys that form a stable rust-like appearance when battered by wind and rain.

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."

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.

“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.

Cor-ten steel planter