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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.

Reilly, pictured here, deleted the original front door in order to create an expanse of uninterrupted wall in the living room. The existing slider is now the main entry point. She clad the exterior with planks marketed as a shou sugi ban product that reads as burned, knotty cedar. A new, corrugated metal roof replaced asphalt shingles.

Designer Peter Steere took down the pitched roof and wrapped the home in metal cladding reminiscent of rural barns.

Architect Ana Smud’s residence in the Vicente López suburb of Buenos Aires is surrounded by gardens and wrapped in timber, concrete, and glass.

This Swedish prefab cabin by

Self-described small-house advocates Ryan and Maddie Chandler are living up to that title with the home they made for their family in Napa Valley, an ADU that joins a primary home they purchased and rent out.

The home, positioned on empty yard space next to the lot’s primary residence, is largely made from secondhand scraps. “Reclaiming materials makes financial sense, and it makes environmental sense—for us, that’s huge,” Maddie says, referencing the metal, wood, and more bits and pieces they repurposed to build the ADU.

Architect Jai Kumaran and his partner, Lindsay Merkle, transformed a badly neglected ridgetop property in Scappoose, Oregon, into a retreat, completing a 3,000-square-foot prefabricated workshop and studio suite as the first phase of a larger planned creative compound where they could live, work, and gather with family and friends.

Warwas offset the rear of the ADU to accommodate the power lines running behind the house, and he designed a window in the office/guest room upstairs that meets the roof in the same way that the window off the dining area/kitchen meets the ground.

Keep founders Austin and Kotono Watanabe revived a compact home in Minneapolis with a dazzling kitchen, an all-electric upgrade, and a clerestory “scoop.”

“The name 'Unfinished House' refers to an aesthetic attitude…. Self-finishing materials were selected to reduce resources and reveal the building’s construction. Tile and plywood are the only added ‘finishes’; They cover areas with wiring and plumbing,” the architects tell us. “The building is an all-timber structure with cellulose and wood fiber board insulation. Many of the materials were locally-produced including the wood framing, plywood, corrugated metal, and wood cladding.”

A structure built in a Polish ROD cannot be permanent, nor can it exceed 375 square feet.