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Ray sits at the central hearth on the north end of the comfortable sunken living area. From this perspective, you can see how the interior spaces flow into one another, passing one half-level up into the breakfast nook and kitchen and out from there onto the overgrown hillside. The various built-in furnishings have all been there since the house's construction.

Photographer: Michael Moran

Resident Richard Kim, who works as the head of design at electric car company Faraday Future, tested his know-how with the creation of his own Los Angeles home, a curvilinear structure clad in Cor-Ten steel and black-stained cedar.

Front Yard View of Villa

Just because your kitchen is on the smaller side doesn’t mean you can’t make it as efficient and effective as possible.

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.

After searching in vain for an empty lot to build on, architect Brian White settled for a nondescript 1960s ranch that nobody else wanted—and proved that building from the ground up doesn’t always start on the ground.

An artist by trade, and gardener by passion, Allison Paschke commissioned Providence-based architecture firm 3SIXØ to build a modest cottage that would allow her to reconnect with nature. She landscaped the home’s lush gardens herself.

Architect Sven Matt mixed basic shapes with rich details in this Austrian home. The lattice shell was hewn from silver fir sourced from a nearby forest. Eternit shingles clad the roof.

Residents enter the house from the street through the upper level, which contains the bedrooms. The rafters were removed to create additional loft space.

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

Roger and Mary Downey’s 3,200-square-foot rammed-earth home seems to float next to the forest along the Rio Grande in Corrales, New Mexico. While the home’s design and materials nod to the neighboring adobe farmhouses and agricultural sheds, architect Efthimios Maniatis of Studio eM Design calls them an amalgam of “modern contemporary regionalism,” governed by Roger’s strict mandate for minimalism.

If you want to stay motivated, focused, and productive through the winter months, here are some tips to help keep your spirits up as you breeze through your tasks at work.