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On the neighboring property, kYodai House brings to mind the horizontal lines that were hallmarks of Wright's designs.

The counters are by Caesarstone and the backsplash tile is Fireclay. The appliances are from Fisher Paykel.

Before: A portrait of architect Chip Detweiler in his Honolulu home.

The seating area in front of the guest bedroom doubles as a perfect spot for cooling down during sauna sessions. The large decks were all built by Jussi-Pekka and his father.

A view of the sauna building before the patio and seating were constructed on the other side. The log cabins were constructed by a specialist company, and another builder helped with the interior walls. Jussi-Pekka and his father did all the other building and landscaping work, apart from the electrical and plumbing—often working 12-hour days.

The house itself is about 520 square feet, and there’s a separate sauna building with a guest bedroom, which is under 200 square feet. "I kept the buildings really small to keep costs down,

mökki and sauna were built

Occidental Residence

An outdoor shower provides a place to wash off sand after summer trips to the beach.

Clear Alaskan yellow cedar vertical siding clads the exterior. Ryan designed a hidden gutter system, which he perfected after an ice storm hit the house when construction finished.

The single-volume home has been designed to appear to float over the lot on its deck. Ryan upgraded the existing foundation to support its passive design. "Originally, I wanted to make the whole house powered with wood pellets," he says. "But I decided against shoveling pellets in the snow. I'll get weird in a little bit less of a cold climate."

River side view of house at sunset

Solar panels clip on easily to the steel roof, and rainwater runs off smoothly into collecting barrels. The reflectivity of the material also helps bounce the heat off.

With windows facing the lake, Donna and Oliver have a front-row seat to the action every day. "It’s water that you just want to look at every day because even though it's a vast plane it changes all the time," says Lolley.

The Pine wood-clad cabin sits atop an elevated platform left behind by a previous builder in a failed first construction attempt, and overlooks the Cautín River. "

The whole project comprised only three months of design, two months of production (some 90 percent of which was completed at a Buenos Aires factory), one day of assembly, and five days of adjustments. The structure consists of just four 9-foot-8-inch-by-19-foot-7-inch modules supported by a foundation plate. “If we want to move it, we can,” says Teresa. “We could get a crane and disassemble it and then reassemble it on the coast.”

"The home is about 1,500 square feet, but I knew I wanted to devote a lot of that to a large kitchen and living space,