Awesome photos

Surfers await the perfect wave off Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii’s biggest tourist destination since the 1960s.

At Moanalua Gardens, visitors gape at the giant monkeypod tree, famous in Japan for starring in Hitachi ads.

A short road leads to Maramaratotara Bay.

The property is divided into zones, including a shade garden with a meandering path of staggered concrete pavers flanked by bamboo. As this area is sloped, the designers created a swale effect with permeable river rocks on one side.

“[The kids] are engaged, using the mounds as barricades or inventing other worlds,” says Peterson.

Sited on a long and narrow 40-acre plot, the home opens to expansive views of the river, to the north—and plenty of space for the kids to play.

Tucked away in a corner of Norfolk County, England, this pair of barns—one new, one renovated—sit low in the vast countryside.

"I went on my first trip to Norway in 1996," Schluchtmann says. "The landscape and the light left such a strong impression on me that I decided to give up my law studies and to go to Berlin to become a photographer."

Along the Geiranger-Trollstigen road in western Norway, Oslo-based Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter designed a footpath that traverses rocky terrain before terminating at a scenic overlook. “For me, this is one of the most visionary contemporary architecture projects,” photographer Ken Schluchtmann says. “It doesn’t destroy the landscape, but is instead fitted perfectly into it.”

"The project is a tribute to the majesty of nature and to the people of Norway," says Schluchtmann, "who not only settled on and cultivated this land, but also have the courage and the taste to add something to these special places that puts the crowning touch on the whole thing."

Neighbors can tell the Holm-Kiehls are at home when their boat is tied at the dock and their Japanese koi kite flies over the front door.

The view from the bathroom.

Flowing out of Lake Zurich through the Old Town—–and dividing the iconic Fraumünster and Grossmünster churches—–the Limmat River has figured centrally in Zurich life for centuries. Today, restaurants and bathhouses line its banks, and swimmers and boaters enjoy the clear, glacier-fed water that makes Zurich a nature-lover’s city.

On an 18th-century farmstead in rural Sweden, two Copenhagen designers handcraft a summerhouse that seamlessly melds the modern and the traditional.