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Every room can be directly accessed from the garden. The house has six entrances in total.

“Every part of the house can ‘do’ more than one thing,” explains the design studio. “The stairs are not just a staircase. They are a laundry room, a bathroom, a bookshelf and workplace.”

In the summer, the kitchen counter transforms into an indoor/outdoor kitchen island. The outdoor dining room is located between two whitebeam trees.

To minimize the home's energy footprint, the floor and foundation are made from cast concrete. Large openings allow for natural ventilation, while surrounding trees help create a cool microclimate. The house is powered by geothermal energy.

The interior is finished with the same materials and colors as the exterior. In winter, when Hamra is used as a one-bedroom residence, only the private part of the house (delineated by the timber surfaces) is heated.

When artist Birgitta Burling and her husband Staffan decided to build a house on the idyllic Swedish island of Gotland, they set their ambitions high. "The brief was to make a house that can do several things…to create a house with very little boundaries and infinite possibilities," says French architecture and landscape firm Collectif Encore.

Located on the Swedish island of Gotland, the house is designed to look like a large boulder to blend in with the landscape. “It is a stone among other stones,” the designers say.

In addition to a three-car garage, Sandcastle also comes with multiple outdoor spaces, including a covered deck, brick patio, and lawn—all of which present vantage points for striking sunset views.

Perched at the top of the primary suite is a private meditation space overlooking the ocean.

The kitchen, located steps from the main living area, comes with a circular island, fireplace, tile countertops, and stained-glass lunettes fitted into the beams overhead.

Perched just a few feet from the Malibu coastline, the home is named after its roofline, which was inspired by a sandcastle. The property includes 122 feet of private beachfront.

Sliding glass doors in the living room extends the interiors with the European-inspired yard.

Hand-built by visionary architect (and surfer) Harry Gesner in 1974, the Sandcastle on the Malibu coast is listed for a steep $22.5M.

In the living room, the slanted, open-joist ceiling rises to almost 10 ½ feet. A fusuma door leads to the dining room. The torso sculptures are by Janice Trimpe.

In the dining room, the sliding-panel cedar cabinets feature a glass display case reminiscent of the tokonoma found in traditional Japanese architecture, to which Girard professed a “profound debt.” In the kitchen, original pale orange Formica counters were replaced with crisp white ones.

A Michigan couple find out they own the last of a little-known, thought-to-be-extinct breed—a midcentury modern house by Alexander Girard.