8 Convenient Weekend Retreats

“This is a humanized landscape of meadows, walls, ash, streams, a small-scale landscape, minimal, almost domestic, and where absolutely everything happens in yellow,” the architects wrote in a statement. To that end, the only hint of color on the house’s otherwise natural exterior is a door painted a vibrant lemon-yellow hue.

Even though it is technically within Seattle's city limits, this home on the shores of Fauntleroy Cove feels worlds away from the rest of the Emerald City.

With its storybook-evoking name and leafy location southeast of London, Starvecrow Cottage is an idyllic modernist escape.

With its juxtapositon of ipe siding and steeland-glass windows, this low-key family getaway outside of Austin, Texas, feels, as owner Sandy Youman puts it, "married to the land."

Sævik compares her house to a contemplative hideout. “It’s very quiet,” she says. “You can concentrate and let thoughts fly.” Her favorite summer pastimes include reading, painting, drawing, yoga, and “just sitting and feeling the forest,” she says.

The bank of windows on the rear facade faces a lush hillside. "The prototypical country house wants to look over and out on the land," says Rappe. "This house looks at the slope upward. It makes for a different sense of space." Rappe was very careful to ensure that the house would not be visible from the existing properties and that neighboring houses would not be visible from within his design. "We wanted to do a home that was attractive to our clients but not too obtrusive to neighbors," he adds. "We wanted to be good modernists."

A view of the exterior of the structure, showing the two families' separate living spaces anchored by a single broad porch.