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The climb to the Coal House tea room is purposely precarious. Fujimori wants visitors to “be a little afraid” on their way up; it’s “a device to make you feel and think differently in this space.”

“One of the goals of Zenkaya was to create employment in a country crippled by [an unemployment rate of over 25 percent],” explains the architect, who likes to call himself a social entrepreneur.

This home in a former Chicago church fully utilizes an original stained-glass window in its light-filled kitchen.

Situated on 25 acres of rolling fields just outside the village of Bioul, Belgium, the charming home was renovated and designed by architect Stéphane Lebrun of Kyo-co Atelier. The interiors were designed and photographed by Jean-Luc Laloux. What makes the property so unique is that the old out-of-service train tracks still wind throughout the property and have created a playground where kids and parents alike can push each other around on little makeshift cars.

An opening in a Cor-Ten steel—clad wall on the terrace frames the Paola Lenti chaise longue.

2206 Parklands Lane, Saint Louis Park, MN 55416

Even in ever-gray and gloomy Seattle, the 24-by-10-foot front window lets in enough light that the couple rarely needs to turn on any lamps inside the house.

London-based practice De Rosee Sa’s self-built lakeside cabin recaptures the magic of childhood fairytales. A labor of love, the 377-square-foot Woodland Cabin is a design/build project completed over multiple trips to the lakeside lot in the village of Nouvelles in southern Belgium. The architects built the cabin using locally-sourced, storm-felled timber to deepen their understanding of materials and construction. By taking construction into their own hands and using locally-sourced materials, the team kept within the relatively tight budget of £25,000 ($32,872). Simple yet elegant, De Rosee Sa’s self-described

The living room is furnished with vintage items, including a leather-and-chrome chair by Suekichi Uchida and a stacking stool by Florence Knoll.

The sloped roof of Carlton’s art studio grows a colorful mix of sedum species.

The house that Fleetwood Fernandez Architects designed for contractor Mehran Taslimi and his wife, Laila, embraces its surroundings. “They wanted doors that they could just throw open,” designer Hunter Fleetwood says of the retractable wall system from Vitrocsa.

Taking inspiration from Arlberg Valley, Austria to classic Nordic materials, the Troll Hus certainly adds a European touch to the California landscape. “The inspiring concept is that of a treehouse that, as if suspended between treetops, seamlessly and ingeniously blends with its surroundings.” Casper says.

Located in California’s Sugar Bowl neighborhood, this shadowy lair by Mork-Ulnes Architects looks like something out of fairy tale. "We call the house Troll Hus, with a reference to the otherworldly beings in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore that are said to dwell in remote mountains," architect Casper Mork-Ulnes says.

Don’t let its traditional silhouette fool you: this home features a grid-tied solar photovoltaic array just south of the property, which supplies the family’s annual average powers usage. Large steel beams and columns flank the patio, framing views of the landscape.

The home’s geometric silhouette echoes the classic typology of the region’s gable roof barns. “We took our inspiration from this vernacular architecture and re-interpreted it with a contemporary twist,” Dworkind says.