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The back patio and fire-pit area are central entertaining spaces. When the weather is nice, homeowner Joan and Ken wheel their dining room table outside for parties and dinners with friends. The fire pit was built using a steel cut-off from a natural gas tank.

Designer Bryan Boyer and lawyer Laura Lewis bought their townhouse in Lafayette Park in 2015, the same year the storied co-op joined the National Register of Historic Places. Their restoration included laying slate floor tiles the same size as the original linoleum squares, hanging modular Dieter Rams wall shelving, and adding appliances by Fisher & Paykel.

The Mutual Housing Association Site Office, used by the original architects and engineers for nearly a decade, was later renovated into a home after a brief stint as the community’s arts building. In 2000, after architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts moved in, it was established as Historic-Cultural Monument number 680 by the city of Los Angeles.

The owners built the house as a place to gather with their three adult children on Loon Lake, where they had vacationed at the husband’s family home for years. The modern Adirondack chairs are by Loll Designs.

Bayne chose the "Little Diamond

Jeff Waldman and Molly Fiffer built this 200-square-foot cabin on the site of their 10-acre property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Their previous cabin, which they also built by hand, was destroyed in a forest fire in 2020.

A view of the sauna building before the patio and seating were constructed on the other side. The log cabins were constructed by a specialist company, and another builder helped with the interior walls. Jussi-Pekka and his father did all the other building and landscaping work, apart from the electrical and plumbing—often working 12-hour days.

For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house “was very crisp and clean,” he says. “This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi.”

This pristine 1966 home opens to its wooded site with a series of patios, balconies, and outdoor entertaining areas.