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In Hanna Bui’s Sausalito houseboat, designed by architect Craig Steely, sea creatures seen through an enormous back window animate bay views.

The experience is designed to be a total immersion with nature, a place of respite and wellbeing, silence and solitude. There is no cell service and no Wi-Fi -- and that is part of its appeal. “That gives it its serenity,” says Shenk. “You’re definitely by yourself out there.”

Interior designer Ginger Lunt revives a 1954 residence that she fell in love with as a young girl growing up in the tropical forests of Mount Tantalus.

Cristián created slots in the rear facade so that each home’s primary bedroom could have three exposures. The voids also allowed him to install skylights that illuminate the ground floor. The detailing of the ribbed exterior was adapted from a large institutional building designed by his father—“really almost a cut and paste,” says Cristián. The overhang at the rear of the building offers partial cover for the private walled patio that each family enjoys.

“I envision people writing their books, music, refuelling their creative flow,” says Castillero. He should know about its energizing power more than anyone, really: it brought him back to his love of architecture, after all. “It’s truly my new happy place.”

Kele Dobrinski and Christina Valencia, of Sacramento, California-based Colossus Mfg., revamped a 2008 Starstream Starcraft camper that allows their family of five to comfortably explore nature in different landscapes for weeks at a time.

Built in 1946 by a photographer/curator couple, the recently updated home has a backyard studio and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto a large, greenery-filled lot.

Geoff and Joanna Mouming’s compact modern farmhouse is the first permanent structure at Yum Yum Farm in Wellman, Iowa. On the field that stretches out before it, organic vegetables will soon make attentive farmers of the Moumings. The benches on their entry porch were built by Geoff using a design plan by Aldo Leopold, the pioneering Iowa-born conservationist and writer whose spirit and thoughts seem to preside over the house.

When OSSO Architecture first began renovating this loft in a Brooklyn paper factory, it hadn’t been touched since the 1980s. Owner Malik Ashiru says the project achieved his goal of “a big, open space where people could come in and not feel cramped.” The formerly constrained spaces in the 1,400-square-foot, two-story apartment have been reconfigured into an open-plan living space with an office on the first floor and a loft guest bedroom above. On the second floor, the primary bedroom and bath open up to a rooftop terrace. Level changes delineate different spaces in the open-plan first floor, which is stylishly furnished with Ashiru’s midcentury furniture and artwork collected from his travels around the world.

The 1949 Haver Home at 6534 N. 13th Street is located in Kensington Terrace, a Phoenix neighborhood with a cul-de-sac of 12 homes designed by the renowned local architect.

Frolic establishes co-ops with homeowners who are interested in reinvesting in their communities by redeveloping their land into higher density housing arrangements.

Up-and-coming Argentinian architect Florencia Rissotti’s first built-from-scratch residence is an homage to simple living.

Located on a windswept site, this one-bedroom retreat is built to withstand the rigors of rural life, and it can be adapted to sleep up to six guests.