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“The house is kind of crooked, with rough floors, and no fancy finishes—but it has lots of personality,” says architect Francisco Mesquita Moura.

This compact vacation home by TACO—or, Taller de Arquitectura Contextual—is immersed in southeastern Mexico’s wild landscape. The home is designed for a pair of young adults, and the firm’s objective was to achieve a reflective and contemplative place that links the occupants with the surrounding environment. The result is an intuitive, functional, and simple living experience that offers great spatial warmth.

RES4’s modular approach provides a Brooklyn family with a beautiful weatherproof retreat on Long Island. Designed as a hybrid between a double-wide and a courtyard house, the 1,650-square-foot North Fork Bay House was prefabricated off-site as two modules. In addition to time and cost savings, prefabrication helped address the restricted building site, which has a very long and narrow footprint limited by FEMA setback regulations and zoning laws.

Johnsen Schmaling Architects designed the modest Stacked Cabin in a remote Wisconsin forest. Working with a tight budget, they kept the structure simple and minimized the footprint by going vertical and carving into the sloped site.

Shaped like a cross, this four-cornered villa offers four different views of its location on an island in Finland. Avanto Architects created a black exterior, dotted with large windows, to make it invisible from the nearby lake.

Built as a live/work space for a sculptor, Indigo by Dutch practice Woonpioniers is an eco-friendly, prefabricated cabin with bent wooden walls.