Exterior spaces

After adding layers of exterior insulation and new windows for an energy retrofit, the team replaced the siding with open-gap cedar cladding and COR-TEN accents.

Off the bedroom wing sits a small hillside garden.

“This time around, we have a house that was actually built for its surroundings,” Buttons says.

The front courtyard is flanked by Japanese maple trees—against the better judgment of Jørgensen. “They scare the hell out of me, to be honest,” he says. “They’re so flammable.” But similar ones stood next to the Bartons’ former house, he explains, and Buttons wanted to include them as a connection to the past.

The dark steel gives way to a pale interior with reclaimed maple floors and marine-grade Russian birch walls and ceilings.

In October 2017, the catastrophic Nuns fire incinerated the ’70s-era A-frame in Napa County, California, that had served as a family retreat for 20 years and that the owners, who are mostly retired, were in the process of turning into their permanent home. (When the fire hit, the couple had already brought nearly all their family keepsakes and heirlooms, making the loss especially poignant.) Working with architectural designer Brandon Jørgensen, the couple turned the loss into a chance to build what is now their permanent home with fire resistance baked into the design.

Sheathed in dark bronze corrugated steel, Buttons and Ridgie Barton’s boldly geometric home in California’s Napa Valley rises on the footprint of the retreat they lost to a wildfire in October 2017. Working with architectural designer Brandon Jørgensen, the couple turned the loss into a chance to build what is now their permanent home with fire resistance baked into the design. A narrow path (below) leads to the recessed entrance.

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.”

The multi-purpose room opens to the courtyard and looks over a small reflecting pool to the Puget Sound beyond.

Seattle firm Wittman Estes designed this compact cabin floating above a meadow on Whidbey Island.

For more than 70 years, claims have persisted, without much evidence, that a home in Portland, Oregon, is a lost work by Frank Lloyd Wright. Regardless of authorship, the structure—a flat-roofed, cedar and glass ranch—endures as a sterling example of postwar American architecture. Its recessed entryway features panes of translucent glass.

The home nestles comfortably into its surroundings, rather than feeling perched awkwardly atop the sloped landscape.

The architects design for the backyard showcases an outdoor deck, bleacher seating, a lush grass area, and a deck with seating and a fire pit.

The rebuilt “Idea House,” designed by Holly Freres and David Horning of JHL design. The driveway is permeable to encourage good drainage: crushed granite gravel is installed over a stabilization mat. James Hardie exterior siding is painted in Benjamin Moore ‘White Dove,’ with reclaimed wood used for the entry and garage.