Fed up with flashy, environmentally insensitive beach homes, architect Gerald Parsonson and his wife, Kate, designed a humble hideaway nestled behind sand dunes along the New Zealand coastline. Crafted in the image of a modest Kiwi bach, their 1,670-square-foot retreat consists of a group of small buildings clad in black-stained pine weatherboards and fiber-cement sheets.

The family spends summers and school vacations at the bach. New Zealand's relatively mild winters mean they use the house year-round.

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

Using natural materials is one way of bringing nature indoors. Oiled white ash floors and ceilings, along with Italian poplar and Lawson cypress joinery, are found throughout architect Andrew Simpson’s 538-square-foot home outside Wellington, New Zealand.

Located in New Zealand, this compact prefab vacation home in the seaside community of Onemana Beach was a collaboration with architecture students from Auckland’s Unitec Institute of Technology.

The sunny side of the home is clad in cedar weatherboards and features sleeping quarters on the upper level with living spaces below.

The outdoor room is backed by a gabion wall made of stone. Rainwater runs off the roofs into a channel before being funneled through pipes concealed within it to an underground concrete tank.

Open enclosures and connections to adjacent living spaces keep the home inviting and airy rather than densely packed—a key feature for an owner of two dogs: Ben, a whippet, and Flynn, an Irish gypsy dog.

Oriented to absorb the afternoon sun, floor-to-ceiling doors comprise two-thirds of the home’s west-facing walls, which open to an elevated deck overlooking Island Bay. Combined with extra-thick building insulation, this passive element provides sufficient heating for the home, even during winter months—a true feat given the region’s cold seasonal winds.

Architect Bergendy Cooke, who worked for Zaha Hadid and Peter Marino before returning to her home country in 2007, is an admirer of the strong, sculptural architectural forms that appear in Japanese and Spanish architecture. Outside Queenstown, she put her ideas into practice in a home that would be the benchmark for bc+a studio, her own venture. The combination bunk bed and playhouse is a whimsical gesture the architect designed specifically for her two daughters. The spaces are organized in such a way that they can play independently or together.

The house's angled placement on the site, as well as its narrow footprint, provide effortless cross ventilation and abundant natural sunlight.

In this kitchen and dining room, architect Bergendy Cooke rethought traditional wood panelling using black pigment-stained veneer. The kitchen has expansive surfaces, including a long, wood-topped kitchen island where the couple cook and entertain, and where the children eat and play. "All of the materials were selected for their integrity and longevity," says Bergendy.

For now, one-year-old Awa is small enough to sleep in the hammock that hangs from the ceiling.

Manning House by Jack Manning (1960)

The house that Henri Sayes designed for himself and his wife, Nicole Stock, is distinguished by a cutaway in the cedar cladding that mirrors the angular double-height space within. In the yard, a grassy berm, fashioned from earth excavated for the foundation, takes the place of a fence.

Ballantyne House by Warren & Mahoney (1959)

Simpson runs his practice, WireDog Architecture, from his home study, where custom bookshelves line the perimeter of the mezzanine for a storage solution that doubles as railing.

The home also extends into outdoor panoramas, even—and especially—from the ground floor, where a westward-facing deck cantilevers out into the lush landscape.

“I suppose you could consider me part of a subculture who lived in various inner-city spaces,” says Simpson, whose previous homes include ad hoc spaces in industrial warehouses, floors of office buildings, and units above shops and bars. In designing his Island Bay home completely from scratch, he retained his experimental spirit: “We wanted a house that responded to our wider social, environmental, and economic concerns rather than something that blindly followed convention,” he says. Unassuming in sight, the home’s corrugated-metal cladding (above) recalls the tin shed, a vernacular housing type in the region.

Cooke clad the building in a black-stained, sustainably-grown Canadian cedar, a durable choice that ages well and requires little maintenance. The dark glazing was chosen so windows appear seamless, accentuating the form of the building.

The architect specifically chose a palette of natural finishes, including the polished concrete floor that flows the length and breadth of the ground level. By way of contrast, the couple’s eclectic collection of much-loved vintage furniture, including Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, an Artemide lamp, and this 50-year-old sofa by mid-century Swedish designer Arne Norell, provide color and warmth. “The bookcase also makes use of space to add layers of texture. Books are always a great addition to any interior,” says Cooke. The Beni Ouarain rug was purchased on a trip to Morocco.

To the east, through the kitchen, it captures a luscious view of a green nikau palm grove.

Inspired by the small scale of Japanese residences—in particular, Makoto Masuzawa’s 1952 Minimum House—architect Andrew Simpson designed his own economical 538-square-foot home set into a wooded site in Island Bay, a coastal suburb outside Wellington, New Zealand.

Sayes designed a pegboard screen to hide a bathtub and wash basin in the downstairs bathroom, and used the same shade of salmon-hued paint from Resene on the ceiling in the master bedroom. Sayes fashioned the pendant lamp from common parts, including a ceramic socket and a G125 incandescent lightbulb.

Cooke treated the southern beech in the stairwell with natural oils, rather than polyurethane, to bring out the grain and warmth of the natural materials. To keep the surface visually clean and minimal, the balustrade is set into the wall, so wood wraps the stairwell from ground floor to skylight.

The downstairs area is floored in polished concrete, and flanked on the north side by huge full-height windows through which passive heat is gathered. The majority of the winter heating, however, is from a ground source heat pump that uses the latent energy in the earth — a relatively new solution in New Zealand.

The exterior of the Popadich residence is modeled after boat storage sheds, while the interior is outfitted with industrial concrete and ply.

Stradwick House Plan A Deck B Dining Room C Living Room D Kitchen E Bathroom F Bedroom G Master Bedroom H Study-Office

Bachs, seasonal beach houses that line New Zealand's ample coastlines, are small by nature, but this one in Auckland felt a bit too confined. The residents called in Carolyn Gundy of C Architecture to plot an addition that adds extra living space and a ton of volume.

The double-height addition exaggerates the home's actual size and augments its views, bringing the total footprint to 1,400 square feet. Bedrooms and other key spaces are spread out around the new living room.

No better way to test paint colors than to simply apply them.

Faceture lamps by Phil Cuttance. Though the facets of the New Zealand designer’s pendant lights suggest machine tooling, each unique and handmade object is produced by casting a water-based resin into a mold.

Wood House by Ted Wood (1974)

New Zealand's first passive house, designed by Jessop Architects, is a finalist in the single-family home category.

A water collection system and solar panels keep this home self-sufficient. "This is a retreat that provides shelter, warmth, and comfort to engage with the wilderness and isolation of the remote setting," the architects add.

The inverted trusses subtly establish distinct spaces in the great room, with the bottom edges lending an intimate feel to the living area. A simple rice-paper lamp shade hangs above a kauri wood tabletop that the couple borrowed from Stock’s aunt and uncle and set on a set of Taurus legs from Nils Holger Moormann. A Brit Longue chair by Sintesi isat right.