Back in Black

Fujimori has an affinity for building structures that appear to be perched precariously: His charred cedar-clad Guest House seems to balance on a sliver of a wall.

The striking black facade of Pieter Weijnen's new home is the result of the Japanese practice of charring wood. Weijnen, an architect at the Amsterdam firm Faro, first discovered charred wood through the work of Terunobu Fujimori and later traveled to the Japanese island of Naoshima to observe the traditional technique.

A family in Hamburg, Germany, turned a kitschy turn-of-the-century villa into a high-design home with a few exterior tricks, including sheathing the exterior in one-dimensional, murdered-out black.

David Baker's Edwardian is painted the same slightly sparkly micaceous iron-oxide paint as the Sydney Harbor Bridge; the color is Quarry. Glass vitrines fronting his art studio are curated at whim to the enjoyment of passersby. The ipe gate to the right opens to a passageway that once led to the stables.

Juliet Gray, Mathias Kolehmainen, and their sons Cooper and Cyrus have a new favorite hangout: the wide back steps on the addition, which double as theater seating. (They project movies from the second-floor balcony onto an out-building across the yard.)

The black facade of the Yatabes’ house may turn a darkly futuristic face to its suburban block, but behind it the house is full of light. In Saitama, a tightly packed neighborhood near Tokyo, the black metal screen affords the family privacy without sacrificing outdoor space.

The Sunken House, so-named for its excavated site, is a dark, cedar-clad cube in a stuffy part of town. Read more about this perfect London plot here.

“The clients asked for a ‘different-looking’ home,” says the architect. “They also asked for a loft-style interior.” To fulfill the first requirement, the architects opted for a perforated and expanded aluminum facade. Enticingly tactile, it attracts attention, while screening much of the interior from view.

The street-facing facade is relatively unchanged except for the new black paint and white accents.

Two Black Sheds incorporates all the conventional aspects of a weekend retreat in a rather unconventional way.

Architect Charlie Lazor opted for a wash of black on the prefab cabin he designed on Madeline Island, Wisconsin.