Designers Christopher Robertson and Vivi Nguyen-Robertson conceived their house as an unfolding sequence of simple geometric forms: a low concrete wall, a concrete cube, and a boxclad in Siberian larch.
Pictured is Dual House 1, part of a duplex designed for two families of close friends.
Teeland Architects designed this modern home on Australia’s Sunshine Coast in order to maximize views of the Pacific Ocean to the east as well as the surrounding forest to the north.
Busick refreshed the house’s east-facing façade by painting the trim a bold black that echoes the steel addition at the rear.
Fields of native grasses connect the main residence, situated at the top of the slope, to the new structures scattered below. A pergola extends from the post-and-beam structure that was maintained during the remodel of the midcentury home.
During the daytime, the house is completely illuminated by natural light. Other energy-efficient features come in the form of the house's super thick building envelope, radiant floor heating, and cross-ventilation.
Inside, the flooring follows the terrain to create three levels as well as different ceiling heights when paired with the consistent plane of the roof. All of the living spaces circle the atrium: an outdoor area that offers a sheltered space to relax.
Stone walls, a pine tree exploding out of a deep overhang, iroko decking, outdoor rooms, a glassy swimming pool, and endless views of the sea make this home a paragon of indoor-outdoor living.
The Harris family rests easy on their new back patio abutting the Belvedere lagoon. The first order of business for this green remodel was to reconnect the house with its surroundings.
On a sandy cul-de-sac in Stinson Beach, California, architects Matthew Peek and Renata Ancona built an elevated modern structure beside a modest 1940s bungalow.
The facade achieves a notable sense of verticality for such a stout structure, with its stained-timber cladding aimed straight up toward the sky. The heavy, horizontal brick-work of the neighboring Georgian houses seems to imply aesthetic controversy, but in fact, during its short planning review, Reeve's house received letters of support from no fewer than five neighbors. The front gate opens onto a driveway, which in turn leads to a private patio around back.
When renovating a house in McAllen, Texas, for his brother-in-law’s family, architect Luis López designed an overhang with concrete beams that protects the front entrance from the area’s frequent rain. A large front window was inserted to provide views through the house to the backyard.
Transforming shipping containers into habitable spaces is a growingly popular subset of prefab. Just off the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, Martha Moseley and Bill Mathesius adapted an unused concrete foundation to create a home made from 11 stacked shipping containers. "We were inspired by the site, and our desire to have something cool and different," says Moseley.
A long low response to the rugged landscape, Doug Paton and Stacey Chapman Paton’s house is a linear white exercise
in modern entertaining.
The rear of the house looks onto a lush backyard. The rough, industrial prefabricated concrete panels by the German manufacturer Syspro are the building blocks of the home.
Renovated from a 1940s ranch-style home, with many of the original materials used in the reconstruction, the homeowners love the self-reliance afforded by generating thermal energy and their rooftop garden.
Photo: John Clark
The house that Fleetwood Fernandez Architects designed for contractor Mehran Taslimi and his wife, Laila, embraces its surroundings. “They wanted doors that they could just throw open,” designer Hunter Fleetwood says of the retractable wall system from Vitrocsa.
Antonio Citterio, who began designing for Axor in 2000, has debuted his latest collections, Axor Citterio E and Axor Universal Accessories. Among the 37 products in the first is a single-hole faucet with lever handle. With his signature slender, geometrically minimal forms that feel elegant to the touch, Citterio aims to implicitly evoke the value and scarcity of water itself.