Contemporary

Imagine waking up in a room with a stunning view, eating your breakfast on a terrace, walking to a secluded beach for a short dip in the ocean, then drinking wine near a private pool while watching the sunset. That is exactly what Casa Tiny offers to its guests, who can now rent it through Boutique Homes. The cozy house is located on the Oaxaca Coast in Mexico near Casa Wabi, an artists’ retreat founded by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi.

“What often happens in our relationship is I come to Funn with an idea and he makes it into something livable.” —Vincent Kartheiser

Sou Fujimoto works in a former factory in Tokyo. Since many of his ideas start out as 3-D concepts, hand-built models are one of the fastest ways for him to visualize and modify his ideas.

Designed by American architect and Frank Lloyd Wright protégé John Lautner, the Elrod House was built in 1968 for interior designer Arthur Elrod. The house is set on a craggy ridge in Palm Springs that affords it panoramic views of the San Jacinto Mountains. In fact, the ridge is actually incorporated into the home, with giant boulders kept in their original place and acting as walls and room dividers within the house, bringing nature inside.

The weeHouse exteriors are clad in corrugated Cor-Ten, but with a custom pattern of folds to create an organic randomness. The foundations were designed with a shallow recess around the top to make the modules look like they’re hovering. After they bought the property in early 2014, the Siegels camped there for two summers while they saved up money and planned a permanent structure. In his research, BJ came across this design, a customizable prefab house by Alchemy Architects. "Of all the things that I found, I was drawn to that one because it was absolutely the simplest and cleanest," he says.

Resident Richard Kim, who works as the head of design at electric car company Faraday Future, tested his know-how with the creation of his own Los Angeles home, a curvilinear structure clad in Cor-Ten steel and black-stained cedar.

When the Casali family gave Michael Krus and Prishram Jain of TACT Architecture free rein to work with unconventional materials, the architects responded by creating a geometric 4,300-square-foot smart home encased in aluminum panels by Agway Metals. The front facade features Cor-Ten steel fabricated by Praxy Cladding.

Seeking an escape from bustling city life, a Manhattan couple embarks on a renovation in the verdant Hudson Valley.

John Campbell’s Leisure House, Mill Valley , California, 1953 / Photo Courtesy of Princeton Architectural Press Spawned by postwar affluence, A-frame cabins became the quintessential American vacation home of the 1950s and 60s. A look at what made these icons of middle-class leisure immensely popular then, and what it is like to remodel and live in one today.

Located in Los Altos, California, Curt Cline's modern house seeks to respect the neighborhood fabric. By keeping the abode low-slung, using a few simple geometries, and the leaving the facade spare, Cline helped the structure blend in with the 1940s and 1950s structures around it. The materials—board-formed concrete and cedar slats—instill a contemporary California aesthetic.

The tension between old and new is easy to see in Prague, where Art Deco housing butts up uncomfortably with utilitarian tower blocks left behind after the Soviet invasion of 1968. Even the homeowners’ attitude reflects this. “I’m used to that antique style and always thought I would live like that,” Johana Ru˚žičková explains. “I know that conflict.”

Architect Chris Pardo designed the Element 1 model for prefab builder Method Homes, cladding it in Cor-Ten steel and cedar. Pardo’s design “is the definition of simple, elegant, straightforward building,” resident Karen Kiest says.

The house opens to the rear deck, which the original architects projected into the setback to maximize the outdoor space. All the doors are from Western Window Systems. As in his own home in Venice, Dimster added a clear railingto the roof deck, so nothing would obstruct the view. He also designed the sun shades.

Nearly 200 anodized aluminum fins—each one uniquely shaped—serve as a screen that shields the concrete walls from the wind and snow. The roof extends beyond the house at its southern end, shading the living room and a terrace. At night, a cutaway frames views of the star-filled sky.