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In the middle courtyard, the Jacks landscaped a small grass mound for Sadie, five, to play on. The house is topped with corrugated steel. “It’s essentially the cheapest material you can get for roofing in New Zealand,” says Beer.

The kitchen is completely open to the main living area and features a custom birch pegboard wall. Eames dining chairs accent the space.

Walls throughout the house, including in the ground-floor hall, are finished with veneer plaster. A custom mix of base and finish coats, tinted with bright-white titanium dioxide, allowed for two textures and three shades of white, all of which Andrew modulated during the troweling.

Cedar windows and details add to the natural warmth and texture of the interiors.

Red bricks from central Mexico are used throughout the outdoor areas as a colorful patio material.

The exterior materials, including board-formed concrete and Hardi Panel, comply with strict building codes that required noncombustible materials in the narrow setbacks. “The exterior cladding to me lay against the house in the same way a record lays against the wall above the stereo,” says Darren.

In a 4,000-person village known for epic windsurfing vacations, Atelier Branco builds a striking courtyard home.

Replacement of the garage and dining room created view corridors and a kind of courtyard between the renovated dwelling and the new guesthouse.

Higgins and Gibson, a Footwear Designer at Nike, applied several coats of “the brightest generic factory white (basically primer),” says Higgins, to lighten up the interior considerably, and left the wood window trim in their natural state to draw the eye towards the river view.

Dyer's renovation of a kitchen in Portland's Burlingame neighborhood opens up walls and reconfigures counter space. The floor is a striking terrazzo from Ann Sack's Renata line.

A nighttime view reveals the glow of the pink interior and the entrance open to the backyard.

A side view of the sleeping porch-turned-master bath as it sits above the kitchen.

The home is defined by a simple gable form clad in asphalt shingles and larch weatherboards. With a combination of passive house measures and structural insulated panels, virtually no additional energy is required to maintain a consistent level of thermal comfort against the backdrop of the unforgiving New Zealand alpine climate.