Container house

Sweet’s renovation scheme included recreating the couple’s backyard as a natural extension of their living room.

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Photo by Leo Mieles

Photo by Tom Bies

This 191-square-foot cabin near Vancouver and its glass facades "forces you to engage with the bigger landscape," architect Tom Kundig says, but it seals up tight when its owner is away. The unfinished steel cladding slides over the windows, turning it into a protected bunker. Read the full story here.

In realizing their dream to build a country retreat in upstate New York, Sandy Chilewich and Joe Sultan—proprietors of the textiles firm Chilewich|Sultan—eschewed a mountainous view for an understated wooded plot. At 800 square feet, the flat-roofed home is a modest structure for the expansive 10-acre property.

The bed is from Design Within Reach.

Architect Michelle Linden worked with Brothers to create a minimalist house. Inspired by the inward-looking approach of Cistercian abbeys, Linden oriented the U-shaped structure around a courtyard.

The living room is furnished with a Tolomeo Mega floor lamp by Artemide, a Milo Baughman Recliner 74, a Morsø 7648 wood stove, and a Hampton rug by Capel Rugs.

A bridge spans the home’s steep site for street access.

For a Jones house nearby, Buckner took on the restoration, while landscape designer Jay Griffith honored the architecture with understated, low-water landscaping.

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

The sculpture on the wall is by artist Peter Dudek, a friend of the family, and the pendants are by Glashütte Limburg. Baumann made a point to integrate industrial materials throughout, exposing steel beams and setting the floor in concrete.

On Vashon Island, about 20 miles southwest of Seattle, architect Seth Grizzle designed a 440-square-foot multiuse structure for his clients Bill and Ruth True.

At night, subtle light fixtures provide soft ambient light. The lights “as discrete as possible, and aimed at the surfaces of the house, defining space and creating the kind of three dimensional modeling that is easy for the eye to interpret,” Snyder says. “It is relaxing, calming, provides plenty of light to live, and as much as possible eliminates visible bright hot spots or illuminated fixtures that call attention to themselves.”

Exterior walls are clad in an sealed, unpainted western red cedar to mirror the colors of the site’s tawny meadows. As the wood ages naturally, it appears as though it emerged organically from the earth.

"I think an architect’s job is to celebrate what people really care about and simplify and streamline the rest.” —Page Goolrick

Burnham and Dolce picked up a petite but deep bathtub, which fits perfectly in the modest master bathroom upstairs.

This sleek kitchen in the renovated Dolce and Burnham Residence hits warm notes with red lacquered cabinetry, cypress woodwork, and a leafy backyard vista.