Shope and his wife carefully designed an eco-friendly landscape: For instance, they did not fell any tree with holes that could support an owl’s nest. They also planted flower species that feed hummingbirds and monarch butterflies. Shope laid out the pathway of reclaimed granite slabs that leads toward the Hudson River below.

A door next to the bed drops down, opening the room to its surroundings. "It's a fantastic way to ventilate the space, but also makes sleeping in the loft feel like camping when it's down," Eerkes says.

"Beauty," Olafur Eliasson, 1993. In this work, a spotlight shines through a layer of mist to create a rainbow that's only visible from certain angles.

“It’s a great house for a young family—playful, practical and different,” Tribe says. “You can sit on the windowsill in the sun and feed the baby, kids can climb in and out, often through the windows, and you can see everything that is going on.”

A panorama of sylvan hills and ocean views surrounds artist Richard Brothers’s environmentally minded Orcas Island, Washington, home.

Stucco walls, a galvanized-metal roof, and concrete floors all contribute to the passive design of the hacienda-inspired Courtyard House. Window-walls and thermal chimney skylights take advantage of western breezes to create natural air-conditioning.

1993, Pierluigi Cerri.

A concrete wall between the garage and the main house is fortified with external insulation and covered with wood cladding and plaster. The additional protection prevents heat transfer between the concrete floor and heated living space.

Look no further than online shop Rodale's for a well-edited selection of eco-friendly items. Products span clothing to kitchenware to bedding, all selected because they're manufactured in a responsible manner. Rodale publishes some of the world's best-known lifestyle magazines, including Runner's World, Bicycling, Running Times, and Organic Gardening, and its e-commerce venture fits with its mission to promote healthy living. We've gathered a handful of items from the site to give you an idea of the wealth of designs available. Vintage Patchwork Blanket ($625–675)

A photo of Verner Panton from 1993. © Panton Design, Basel

Given Langka's directive that "the people who live around us have to see our roof and I don't want them to see anything but grass," topped the house with a green roof.

A simple design was key to keeping the Casa Cuatro environmentally friendly. "You can go a long way to make a house sustainable in the early parts of the design process instead of throwing a lot of expensive technology at it later," Foster says.

Dogfish Head Brewery (Milton, Delaware: 2009) What’s more off-centered than a steampunk treehouse? When the eccentric craft brewery needed a quick expansion, DIGSAU delivered a playful design, filled with tilted angles and expressive geometry. Salvaged materials, LED lighting, and daylight modeling give the new space its green credentials, and the treehouse conference space adds a fitting outdoor touch. Photo by Halkin/Mason Architectural Photography

Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 1993

Outside the three daughters' separate bedrooms, natural light cascades through a ceiling of skylights. Aluminum louvers diffuse indirect sunlight to create a soothing glow in the afternoons and a refreshing wake-up call each morning.

Perched high in the Spanish Pyrenees, this old stone building needed major changes to become habitable again. Originally built in 1900 as a hostel of sorts, its strucutre was not incredibly robust: for instance, its windows couldn't be expanded for risk of weakening the wall. But architect Josep Bunyesc still saw a chance to turn it into a model of energy efficiency.

Bunyesc was asked by a family of four—a couple with two young children, aged 1 and 2—to transform this aged structure into a modern home. The architect wanted something energy-efficient, and while he had several renovations under his belt, he turned to an unusual material to harness the sun's energy: polycarbonate, a rugged plastic common to industrial architecture, sheds, and other lightweight construction.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of the project was trying to pack so many energy efficient features in under a budget. Not only does the bathroom feature NuHeat radiant floor mats but all water is heated with a GE Hybrid Heat Pump Water Heater, saving on heating expenses by around 67%.

The residents requested in the project brief that the home revolve around family spaces. To that end, the outdoor area, with its green courtyards, is meant to recall a campground experience.

Having lived in, and loved, a modern house built in 1954 in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood since buying it in 1996, architect Karen Braitmayer and her husband, marine mechanic David Erskine, recently came to realize that the house was overdue for some modifications. Braitmayer, whose firm, Studio Pacifica, specializes in universal access space planning and ADA compliance for commercial and residential projects, is a wheelchair user, as is her and Erskine’s teenage daughter. With its open layout and single-floor plan, the house worked fairly well for many years, but, as Braitmayer says, "It was really my daughter growing up that spurred us to make some changes. Her disability is a little bit different from mine, and some of the things I was able to work around for a long time weren’t going to work for her." Braitmayer called in another architect, Carol Sundstrom of Seattle-based Röm Architecture Studio, who specializes in single-family remodels and with whom Braitmayer has collaborated on many projects.

The design team used 3/4-inch PureBond Maple plywood from Columbia Forest Products, featuring formaldehyde-free, soy-based assembly.

The eco-friendly Ann Arbor home of Tom McMurtrie, Genia Service, and their son Gary features a brilliant reflective steel cladding.

The girls' bedrooms are partitioned by sliding screen panels, which can be opened for access or shut for for privacy. Each room enjoys a stunning wall-to-wall exterior view.

The Waterloo International Terminal, 1993, in London. Image courtesy Jo Reid/John Peck.

The common space stretches nearly the length of the home, from the edge of the master bedroom to the wall of a guest bedroom. A “family stage” sits at the center of the home between the kitchen and bedrooms. There, the children entertain their parents and guests with a violin ensemble during the holidays.

TOTO’s Axiom faucet is from the EcoPower line—the world’s first faucet series powered by water. It creates their own electricity every time water spins an small internal turbine. Stored in a series of rechargeable capacitors, this auto-generated electricity powers the faucets' operation.

Eco-friendly by Choi Si Yuong, Photo by Sergio Pirrone

Kellogg spent five years working on the house, and the structure was completed in 1993.

Stretching the length of the family space are more skylights, which lessen the residents' reliance on electric lighting throughout the day. In the living and dining room areas, walls of sliding glass panels open to two courtyards.

The exterior features cedar tongue and groove siding and James Hardie panels. Due in part to smart material choices, the house is 51% more efficient than the standard newly constructed home and 61% more efficient than a typical existing home.

As Greenfab explains, “Each bedroom is equipped with a wall-mounted, thermostat controlled, convection heater that intakes the ambient air in the room, warms it up and re-diffuses it throughout the room in a silent and consistent way. By using the existing heat in the room to maintain a comfortable temperature, energy and money is saved through this heating method.”

“The homeowners are not afraid of bold color, so it was fun to highlight pops of color throughout the spaces,” says the architect. Here, Silestone and LG Hi-Macs countertops help brighten up the kitchen.

The home incorporates ductless mini-split heating/cooling units—one in every room—that use inverter-driven compressors to provide exact control 100% of the time. This means each unit can target the rooms being used and not empty ones. Overall, this system can cut heating and cooling costs by 30% compared to traditional systems.

Clad in cedar, this 2,600 square-foot prefabricated home was constructed in a mere two weeks. The home's southern facade, seen here, keeps the home comfortable year-round: in colder months, the low winter sun easily streams though floor-to-ceiling windows to warm the interior. In the summer, when the sun is higher in the sky, the overhaning balcony keeps the interior shaded and cool. The architects also turned the repetitive architectural style of the neighborhood's homes—in this case, the classic gabled house—to their advantage by devising an open, seemingly-unfinished roof framework. While that shape maintains the visual continuity of this modern design with its traditional surroundings, it also has environmental benefits.

Since Dwell’s first visit in 2006, Gary—now 14 years old—has outgrown the swing, and the home has seen a few final updates: The second-floor deck is now covered in reused barn wood, and the terraces have been finished with railings, awnings, and recycled plastic decking.