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Fully integrated with nature, the four homes that comprise Las Rocas complement rather than compete with nature. "We spent a week sitting there discussing if this project had to be super light and floating or heavy," says architect Ignaciou Urquiza. "And we decided to go heavy to generate lightness at the very end—trying to make the volumes floating."

At one end of the L-shaped terrace, interior designer Martine Brisson included room for a full outdoor kitchen so the family could prepare meals without stepping inside during the warmer months.

A massive slab of cypress perched atop sawhorses provides storage for pots and utensils.

Slide Hill offers an interactive platform for play that includes a universally accessible path and the longest sliding board in the city.

The guesthouse is located in a private reserve in the Waterberg, a mountainous region about three hours from Johannesburg.

entrance path

The Chilmark House exterior is clad in shou sugi ban siding and roofed with zinc.

Aaron Schiller provided the shou sugi ban louvers that enclose the dining space and create privacy from the entry path.

On a lot studded with old-growth oaks and redwoods and crossed by a creek, Ian and Krista Johnson asked Field Architecture to design a house that would defer to its natural surroundings.

Says Krista, “We needed to know that whatever we built would not take away from the landscape.”

The architects used cedar slats to enclose a steel-and-concrete staircase that leads to the master bedroom upstairs.

A gravel path leads from the dining area to a bridge across the restored creek that runs along one side of the house.

The three accommodation buildings face into a shared courtyard. The garage is further down the path.

At Chris and Sally Candee’s secluded home in eastern Wisconsin, a concrete retaining wall runs parallel to the driveway. Set flush with the walls around it and clad in the same prefinished cedar siding as the rest of the house, it practically disappears.