exteriors

Dappled sunlight and reclaimed-wood floors and walls give the master bedroom a warm, peaceful feel. Giant sliding doors open onto a wraparound deck peppered with potted plants from the couple’s vacations in Brazil, Uruguay, the Netherlands, and Italy.

In the outdoor dining room, wire chairs by Harry Bertoia for Knoll surround a mango wood table made by a local carpenter, Diego Madrazo.

Designer Monica Berdin—who is married to architect Clinton Cuddington—worked with Aloe Designs to cover two sides of their backyard studio in drought-tolerant flora. A sheltered deck features a custom fire pit and a pair of turquoise Condesa chairs.

The street-facing facade leans into the landscape with a three-foot-deep cantilever and toward a pathway of hexagonal concrete pavers.

In a family’s pint-size lake retreat in Austin, Texas, ipe siding and decking meet concrete floors and steeland-glass windows. Stained cyprus was used for the ceiling and soffit. The custom barn-style sliding door conceals the family’s collection of giant inner tubes and other boating equipment. Photo by: Kimberly Davis

Landscape architect Tait Moring installed pavers around the structure’s perimeter and kept the tree cover intact. Photo by: Kimberly Davis

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.

Sheets of unframed glass fill the spaces between the building’s operable windows and the sloping eave of the roof, giving the house, as architect Alan Organschi puts it, “the feel of coming apart at the seams—of surfaces unhinged.”

In Vancouver’s Strathcona district, two side-by-side lots now hold seven residences—thanks to a thoughtful renovation of a pair Edwardian houses and the addition of a laneway, or alley, building by Shape Architecture. The team salvaged as much 120-year-old siding as they could for use on the street-facing facades.

Resident Misha Bukowski plays with young Zachary in the walkway between the renovated buildings. The new units are clad in stained local cedar.

Sun Volt With the roof angled at 43 degrees, the architects lined the southern slant of the house with solar panels to collect as many rays as possible. Karanesheva and Witzmann started with four, but then added 23 more, all by Systaïc; the company gave them a deal since theirs was its first installation in France. The panels now collect far more energy than the home actually needs, a precious resource that the pair sells back to the power company. systaic.com

Passive ProgressiveStunning bamboo covers this house in Bessancourt, France, on all four sides, its lattice making up a striking set of adjustable screens that allow the residents to modify the facade to suit the weather. Photo by: Nicholas Calcott

Transforming shipping containers into habitable spaces is a growingly popular subset of prefab. Just off the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, Martha Moseley and Bill Mathesius adapted an unused concrete foundation to create a home made from 11 stacked shipping containers. "We were inspired by the site, and our desire to have something cool and different," says Moseley.

The exterior of a renovated 19th-century building in Braga, Portugal.

Large paver patios make excellent walkways.

"How would a kid draw a house?" architect Per Franson asked himself when designing the Olivero-Reinius family home. The simple prefab structure’s unusual color comes from a traditional source: falu rödfärg, the historic mineral paint that gives the region’s famous barns their red color.