Exterior

Building with Cor-Ten steel—weathering steel's nom de plume—is a bit like watching a painting slowly come to life over time. Exposure to the elements adds textured hues of red and orange to the material until it steps into a character completely its own. From the Dwell archive, we bring you nine Cor-Ten steel homes with facades that will continue to shift through shades of ochre, amber, rust, and sienna.

For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they 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.”

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.

Surrounded by 1.2 acres of flat land, the contemporary residence is designed to frame a unique, long view of Los Angeles—as well as the mountains beyond.

Located two hours from the clients' home in Santiago, the House in El Peumo is set on a sandy plateau surrounded by pines and cypresses.

In 1926, Lloyd Wright, son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, completed a 5,600-square-foot Mayan Revival house in Hollywood for John and Ruth Sowden, an artistic couple with a flair for the theatrical. It would be, according to the New York Times, "a bohemian playhouse for aspiring actors and Hollywood bons vivants."

The outdoors are part of the cohesive design, embracing the vegetation, sites, and sunlight.

From a different perspective, the home appears more transparent and open to the water.

Dark timber cladding gives way to airy interiors at this compact holiday home near the Lakes of Vinkeveen in the Netherlands.

The simple, timber-clad masses of Tiny Holiday Home delicately settle into the surrounding foliage.

This Southern Californian home by architect Sebastian Mariscal has a wabi-sabi spirit, and is built with shou sugi ban timber, has a koi pond, wand a protective overhang, and a tertiary space known in in traditional Japanese homes as the

Set on a a repurposed foundation just over 20 square feet, this boxy residence clad in oxidized black cedar makes up for its small footprint by embracing the expansive outdoors with large, glazed openings. The two-story cabin houses the bedrooms in the upper level while an open-plan living room, dining area, and kitchen occupy the ground floor. The home also opens up to an outdoor ipe deck and patio.

With doors open, Shino and Ken pull an Eames LCW chair for Herman Miller outside to enjoy the space.

One portion of the roof arches.

The roofs’ concave and convex forms are elegantly layered and integrated into the home's forested setting.

Viewed from above, the home wraps around itself and is folded around a small central courtyard. The roof sections overlap in an organic way, giving the home its name: Four Leaves.