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The remote studio/office that Robert Swatt of Swatt Miers Architects designed for a Healdsburg, California, property is marked by glass walls that provide the feeling of working in nature.

Just outside the studio, Ground Studio Landscape Architecture created a natural courtyard with a meadow and an edgeless pool that mimics a pond.

The studio is furnished with a massive wood table, a sofa, and built-in Western Red Cedar shelves.

At the basement level, the home opens to a sunken courtyard that makes space for reading and contemplation.

"A matching bench extends into the open shower where accordion corner windows can open entirely,

Vince and Adrienne Murphy’s rural retreat is clad in gray shingles and gray-stained pine. “They wanted the cottage to meld into the woods and be visually quiet,” says architect Kelly Doran, who worked with Portico Timber Frames to build the 2,500-square-foot home.

A perpendicular wing houses the garage. The house has no air conditioning, relying on lake breezes and cross-ventilation for cooling. Each bedroom has a screened door that opens to the deck and an adjustable transom above the hallway door to encourage the circulation of air.

The cottage stretches for more than 110 feet, with a Muskoka room, or screened-in porch, at the northwestern end.

The heated pool is filled with saltwater, as opposed to the typical chlorine.

Inside the mirrored “box” is a rectangular bathroom measuring only 2.2 feet by 4.4 feet. It contains a green tiled shower and toilet facing each other, and a skylight providing natural light during the daytime. The sink has been strategically placed outside the bathroom.

The architect removed the clunky addition enclosing the front door and reinstated the original door and sidelites. New and restored board-and-batten siding is painted Roycroft Bronze Green by Sherwin Williams.

Before: This house in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Austin, Texas was originally designed by architect George L. Walling and built in 1950.

Compact apartment with versatile furniture made from custom carpentry.

The ground-floor bedrooms overlook the internal courtyard.

A curved, timber-clad wall in the center of the house hides a staircase to the second story.