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Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

“I’ve loved Moritz Kundig’s work for years,” says designer Josh Hissong, whose home in Spokane, Washington, turned out to be a 1971 work by the architect. Josh and his wife, Shiva, executed a thoughtful revamp of the house, which began with thinning an overgrown stand of pine trees to bring the entryway out of hiding. The exterior is painted Deep Space by Benjamin Moore.

The clients for an existing home in Seattle approached Best Practice Architecture with a need to make space for an aging family member, but the home on-site was already filled to the brim. The firm's answer was to expand the existing detached garage into a gracious and airy living suite. The architects worked with the natural, six-foot slope of the site and built the Granny Pad into the hill to gain the needed interior height. The volume on the right is the original garage footprint, which now houses a kitchen and sitting room. The added volume on the left hosts the bedroom, as well as a bathroom beneath the loft space.

The cabin decks all face either expansive views of the ocean or the magical forest of fir trees.

Perched below the Griffith Observatory and overlooking Hollywood is a lush lot crowned with four towering olive trees and a 1965 home designed by modernist architect Craig Ellwood. When a young couple purchased the home in 2018, it needed substantial work. For a historic restoration, they called on Woods + Dangaran, a local firm fluent in modernist history. The team completed a meticulous restoration of the home while keeping original components like the linear shape, open plan, and expansive windows. One of the most striking features is the original koi pond (a feature deemed so essential that its preservation was a condition of escrow) that is now crossed via a bridge that leads to a new lap pool—perhaps the biggest intervention on the property.

“Metaphorically, the cabin’s exterior is like a cut log,” Lane says. “The black-stained Western red cedar is the bark, and the Douglas fir siding under cover is the exposed wood once the log has been cut.” Beyond the house and native sod gardens, a meadowscape blends into the mature pine forest at the lakefront. “We wanted a woodland garden quality,” landscape architect Soren deNiord says.

This wilderness sauna cabin in the west coast of Finland was built with 112-millimeter thick squrae logs, and has a 1,028-square-foot outdoor terrace.

The bathroom features a spacious walk-in shower lined in charcoal porcelain tiles.

Positioned for optimal views, minimal impact, and privacy, the bespoke suites offer a luxurious and immersive experience in nature.

Site placement was a lengthy process as the architects searched to optimize seclusion and spectacular views. Specialists, including ecologist Mark Wapstra, were brought on board to survey the site and ensure minimal landscape impact.

Nestled within a forest clearing near the Argentinian city of Córdoba, this 2,153-square-foot house named "La Negrita" is designed to exist in harmony with nature. Designed by Córdoba–based Morini Arquitectos, the house first reveals itself as a black corrugated wall in the middle of the woodlands. "The house is totally introverted [and] mysterious towards the street and extroverted towards the interior," says Morini.

The recessed area in the wooden deck can be used for a fire pit or a vegetable garden.

Niko Architect and landscape firm Ecopochva designed a Moscow home that doesn’t play by the rectilinear rules of conventional architecture. Vegetation blankets the home’s concrete form, and its walls sweep upward and outward to become roofs. Molded floor-to-ceiling windows curve to grant panoramic views of the backyard and swimming pool.

Den's A frame house is designed with 1,000 square feet of living space.

Silvano Zamò, third-generation winemaker at Le Vigne di Zamò winery, and his wife Brigitte tasked architecture firm GEZA with a holiday home on a hilltop location in the tiny northern Italian village of Camporosso, not far from the ski resort Monte Lussari.

An adjacent flat-roofed volume holds the garage, entry vestibule, laundry, and wine cellar.