Rock Solid: 5 Concrete Houses We Love

The couple do their outdoor lolling on Willy Guhl's concrete Loop chair (near grating) and Superieur's Divan lounge (near the table), both Swiss products.

Gregory and Caryn Katz are dwarfed beneath the cantilevered concrete overhang, which houses the bedroom on the upper level. The stackable glass doors that run beneath allow the house to open completely to the yard and swimming pool, soften the severity of the concrete, and blur the boundary between indoors and out.

At Sea Ranch, a half-century-old enclave of rugged modernist houses on the Northern California coast, a new home captures the spirit of its surroundings. The client, a couple, were guided by the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. Lovers of Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, the architects made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house "was very crisp and clean," he says. "This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi." Together, the Cor-Ten steel and board-form concrete give the exterior a weathered look.

Kiyoko Loh relaxes inside a concrete structure, one of three original buildings that occupied the San Francisco property she and her husband, Elliot Loh, purchased in 2012. Working with architect Todd Davis, the couple decided to cut the bunker-like edifice in half and use it as an outdoor dining area that opens to a courtyard.