After renting in San Francisco for a decade, DIY couple Molly Fiffer and Jeff Waldman bought 10 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the pair and their friends built a cabin compound complete with sheds, tree decks, a pavilion, a wood-fired hot tub, an outhouse, and an outdoor shower. The cabin is made from locally sourced, rough-sawn redwood, which the couple stained with nontoxic Eco Wood Treatment to give the panels an aged appearance and a dark patina.
"Having the additional office with a standalone entrance on the ADU is such a nice feature,
“Everyone who comes over wants to sit in the nook,” says Natalie, especially teenagers. “It’s quiet. They can whisper there.” The ceiling light is Urban Electric Form.
Floor Plan of Siosi House by Siosi
Though Blend Projects can customize any part of the home excepting the underlying structure, they also offer standardized designs that range from one-story, 400-square-foot garden suites to the two-story, 1800-square foot home shown here.
After more than 15 years spent in construction, high school friends Simon Fyall and Richard Egli started to imagine an architecture that blended in with the landscape of British Columbia better than industry-standard buildings. Soon after, the pair founded Blend Projects to build their vision: crisp gabled homes strung together from eight-foot-long cedar-sided glulam sections.
The primary suite has a pivot door made with optical glass that makes it “our little vitamin D hub,” says Andrew.
The children’s reading area off their bedroom, affectionately called the book nook, has an eave skylight that Andrew made from a reclaimed piece of safety glass. The aperture opposite the skylight looks down into the living area.
An opening off the children’s bedroom (top right) brings in light and functions like a window looking over a courtyard, allowing the family to communicate easily from different levels.
The house was designed to minimally interfere with the hilltop vegetation, which is what attracted the family to the site.
On the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, a 110-mile sliver of land known for its pink-sand beaches and laid-back vibe, an off-the-grid cabin serves as a getaway for Mark and Kate Ingraham and their 13-year-old daughter.
In the living room, a new wall of glass connects the house to its landscape, while a family-heirlume Persian rug adds softness to the new ceramic tile floor.
After addressing foundation and roof disrepair, the renovation focused on adding glass.
Additional outdoor dining and leisure spaces make Scott's home perfect for hosting gatherings year round.
The screened porch provides a covered outdoor space that is still open to the elements. Scott built many of the furnishings himself, including the coffee table and integrated bench.
Replacing a door, the new bookshelf window provides storage while still allowing daylight to enter the office.
Capturing a 1970s West Texas sunroom vibe, the new dining room combines reclaimed wood and brick with custom painted steel windows for a seamless integration of old and new. "Our north star was to use a modern sensibility to create something that looked like it had always been here,
All the Shackup cabins also come with private, wood-fired hot tubs.
A Bouticcelli Corian stone bathtub beckons guests in the downstairs bathroom.
“We decided it was a fun moment to have no white in the space and use the fireplace as a kind of accent,” says Paula.
The rule of working with standard material sizes required the architects to be both rigid and flexible. “If you know what’s out there, you can start working with those measurements, but you have to be flexible and adapt your living requirements you think you have in your head,” says Marambio. “At the same time, you have to work within the constraints. You don’t get one more meter.”
The triangular shape creates a volume that feels simultaneously cozy and open.
The Alerce shingles change color when it rains, moving from red to grey. “It’s alive,” says Marambio.
The clients are a young family with two children who bought a tiny island with a dilapidated house on the waterfront. The island, which is only accessible via boat, is part of an archipelago about an hour south of the Norwegian capital of Oslo. “It has become a very popular area for summer houses over the last century and it is full of buildings from the post-War period,” says architect Line Solgaard.
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