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SHED converted the side door into the front door, adding a new entry sequence with a patio, landscaping, stairs, and a metal awning to protect the porch. Wide stairs and a patio lead down to new sliding glass door in the basement, which now has utility spaces and a media room/office. Many of the original window openings were kept on this façade and given new Andersen E-Series units. Two smaller openings were bricked in.

Perched quietly on the dunes of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, Hut on Sleds serves as a small, sustainable beach retreat for a family of five.

The couple journeyed to Denmark to

"My goal was to carry on the client’s family legacy by creating a very special place that took inspiration from the landscape,” explains architect Tom Kundig.

The Lofthouse is built one of the many hills separating it from the couple’s main residence. "Excavation was a challenge, as we wanted to maintain as much of the existing landscape as possible, but needed to clear out trees for the foundation," says Tarah.

“I wanted something bold and fresh,” Augustin says of the unit’s citrus-inspired front door, painted Tangerine Dream by Dunn Edwards. The door is flanked by horizontal Redwood slats and gray acrylic stucco.

The corner is the family’s favorite gathering spot—“a contemporary cave for three,” says Serge. Luisa’s module, with its cactus-lined terrace, is visible through the glass wall.

Lauren and Brittan Ellingson, the owners of Notice Snowboards, a custom snowboard and wakesurf company in Whitefish, Montana, approached Workaday Design and builder Mindful Designs to concoct a new lake home for their family. The brief was, perhaps unsurprisingly, focused on getting the family outdoors as much as possible.

Top 9 Gardens of 2020: The verdant spaces nominated for the Dwell Design Awards help enliven their biophilic homes.

The two new buildings create a courtyard-like feel in the small urban backyard.

Furniture designer Tom Deacon teamed up with pal and architect Andrew Jones to renovate his Toronto townhouse. “Architects tend to think of the building first, the interiors second, and last, the furniture. Our approach was the opposite,” Jones says.

The original fireplace was kept, as was the interior clerestory windows that divide the main living area from the hall and master suite. The floors were replaced with red oak to align with preserved red oak flooring in the bedroom.

“From anywhere in the house, you have a sense of the outdoors,” says Melonie, “and yet it’s very private.” Ikegami agrees. “The building was really about the landscape—it can dissolve into the background,” he says. In the master bedroom, Japanese Tansu chests from the couple’s previous home flank a Duxiana bed. The full-height windows and swing door are from Western Window Systems.

In Darby, Montana, just steps from the Bitterroot River, John Shoemaker and Greg Case built a home base for their fly-fishing group vacations.

With its emphasis on the outdoors, the petite shelter in Normandy offers room to roam.