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“The home is quite small, but designed in such a way that you don’t feel it,” Herrin says. Lift-slide openings by Quantum Windows & Doors, which were fabricated fewer than 50 miles from the house, make the main living space seem larger.

Slatted wooden screens afford privacy and break the short but driving rains that blast the house from the southwest.

The area includes a Wally planter from Woolly Pocket near the custom steel-and-glass doors.

Kartheiser’s private courtyard includes a covered seating area and fire pit, designed by Roberts.

The living and dining room look out to the central courtyard, promoting indoor/outdoor living. Here, five doors slide into a pocket in the wall to create a nearly 23-foot-wide opening on one side looking into the garden. Another set on the opposite side enhances cross ventilation.

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

The house rises to nearly the height of the neighboring structure. The plantings on the bridge, which connects the guest pavilion with the master bedroom and media room pavilion, will eventually grow in to create a privacy screen. Photo by Coral von Zumwalt.

The knotty cedar cladding from Crenshaw Lumber was pretreated with an ebony stain from Timber Pro UV—twice on both sides—prior to being brought to the site, where it was left for eight weeks so that it could adjust to the moist seaside air before installation. “Cedar siding swells or shrinks when it gains or loses moisture while it reaches equilibrium with the content of the surrounding air,” says Michael. Photo by Coral von Zumwalt.

After entering through the front door, visitors pass over the large koi pond on a cast-concrete footbridge chiseled to look like stone.

A series of charred modern boxes, the home Petra Sattler-Smith and Klaus Mayer designed for Martin Buser and Kathy Chapoton, is organized around views of the Alaskan landscape.

Parson Russell terriers Pepper and Trixie get a glimpse of the large courtyard through a glassy expanse by Marvin Windows and Doors.

The Birch Pavilion sits atop a 14-by-26-foot platform composed of hemlock and pressure-treated timbers. Photo courtesy of Moskow Linn Architects.

A maple tree grows through an ipe deck in this garden that Mary Barensfeld designed for a family in Berkeley, California. A reflecting pool separates it from a granite patio, which is furnished with a Petal dining table by Richard Schultz and chairs by Mario Bellini. The 1,150-square-foot garden serves as an elegant transition from the couple’s 1964 Japanese-style town house to a small, elevated terrace with views of San Francisco Bay. Filigreed Cor-Ten steel fence screens—perforated with a water-jet cutter to cast dappled shadows on a bench and the ground below—and zigzagging board-formed concrete retaining walls are examples.

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

The horizontal detailing for the rain screen reinterprets the clapboard cladding of the old house.