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In this sustainable home in Silicon Valley, the primary suite opens to a deck and fern garden with large, sliding glass doors.

Large sliding glass doors suspend the living room within the landscape for family gatherings or larger events.

Color-blocked custom cabinets make for a delightful surprise.

Now, a walk-in shower and soaking tub are tucked under the roof line.

In between the guest suites, there are structures for storage, maintenance and a transit waiting suite, all connected with terraced landscape pockets and courtyards.

With an ultra-temperate climate, one might be tempted to leave the doors open year 'round.

In the 1950s, Ramat HaSharon, close to Tel Aviv, was home to numerous brutalist structures. There, architect Pitsou Kedem, craving the same style for his own family house, built it as two squares of concrete stacked atop each other. Materials like iron, wood, and silicate brick, along with a skylight that runs along the length of the stairwell, imbue it with a welcoming sense of earthiness.

Whereas others might look at a board-formed cement wall in a basement and see, well, a concrete wall, Jess and Jonathan Taylor, the design duo behind the L.A.-based firm Taylor + Taylor, were inspired. The couple had purchased a virtually untouched 1952 house in east L.A. and that concrete wall became the backdrop for a new guest kitchen in the basement. "It was really the starting point of the whole design," says Jess Taylor. "As designers, our goal is to always try to incorporate the existing surroundings whenever possible, utilize them in practical ways, and be inspired by them."

Raising the cabinet height and installing new color-blocked Richlite counters and full-height backsplash help the kitchen feel larger.

A gravel path leads to a guesthouse, where Trainor supplemented an existing garden of yuccas and palm trees with succulent aeoniums and flowering euphorbias.

Their daughters, Annapurna, left, and Siddartha, play with their dog, Anouck, beneath the kangaroo paws in the entry garden courtyard.

“Eichlers aren’t very big—that’s why so much emphasis was on the outside. The house had to look like it extended out.” —Bernard Trainor, landscape designer

Los Angeles–based design firm ORA built this family home in the Mar Vista suburb with two separate buildings: a long, linear home “shaped like a boomerang,” and a bright-red accessory dwelling unit. In the main house, a soothing material palette composed of concrete floors, white walls, and wood is punctuated by spots of color, such as the teal tile backsplash and salmon-toned cabinet in the kitchen, or the sunshine-yellow vanity in one of the bathrooms.

A General Electric stereo cabinet and a 1950s chair are among the vintage pieces in the living room.

An energy-efficient TPO membrane covers the living room’s zigzag roof.

Potted cacti are abundant, both inside and out.

Located in sunny Southern California, The Zen Cottages offers three different models—as well as custom-built tiny homes—that are typically between 16 to 32 feet long and between 8 to 10 feet wide. Although the larger homes aren't ideal for transporting, the smaller Alpine model is built for long hauls and can even travel through rocky terrain. The interiors are light-filled, simple, and efficient, with careful attention to natural materials.