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Clients can customize the cabin's exterior paint color, and this one shows a black shade that blends into the woods.

The walnut-framed bay window is a favorite spot for the children. “My eldest son, the moment he arrives at home after school, makes a beeline for that pop out,” says Bonnie. “He wants to eat his lunch right there build his Legos in that space.”

Keep it light and airy in the bedroom—and make sure to vacuum under the bed.

Pink marble is unexpected, but adds the touch of warmth every kitchen needs.

In this Palm Springs duplex, for cabinet doors, the architect owner designed aqua blue plywood sliders that park at specific positions, fitting together like puzzle pieces. Contractor Franklin Pineda custom-built these cabinets using Baltic birch plywood from Anderson Plywood.

One of the first Dwell Houses, built by Abodu, was installed at Leslie Scharf’s vineyard home in Healdsburg, California. Norm Architects led the design of the 540-square-foot prefab, which is wrapped in Real Cedar siding.

In 2011, clients Brent Habig and Ana Ecclesthe surveyed the property with architect Jim Cutler, planting stakes at a number of sites. Cutler drew up a different house for each, recalling from his youth the region’s vernacular—especially the crisp white barns nestled into lush green landscapes. They would inspire the form of the couple’s new 2,800-square-foot home. It is designed to capture natural light, but also to cool interiors on hot summer days, using tall, sliding shutters that can cover the two-story home’s windows from floor to ceiling.

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This thatch-roofed brick cottage in Nieby, Germany, was originally built by tenant farmers or crofters from a nearby estate in the late 1800s. It stands on a small triangular plot of land surrounded by barley fields and faces toward the Geltinger Birk nature reserve. The home’s street-facing facade was preserved and restored with only a minimal, black-steel dormer window belying the more substantial alterations which open onto the private rear yard. A subtle black-framed addition containing an oak-lined living space is tucked under the thatched roof and opens onto a sunken timber terrace while large picture windows are cut into the historic brick volume in areas which had been damaged from the previous additions.

"Curled into a natural amphitheatre, this gentle timber house turns to face the sun rather than the sea. Responding to the landform, its simple semicircle creates north-facing spaces sheltered from onshore winds. One corner braves the sea cliff, facing the salt and spray, but most of the house is surrounded by bush and orients towards a small valley—the ocean all the more present for being ignored formally."

"The 1970s houses of Whangamatā were the design source for this new beach bach—the simple gables, lean-tos, decks and yards. ‘The clients and I walked the neighbourhood to have a look at the existing character,’ says architect Paul Clarke. ‘They wanted to build sympathetically in the form and size of the building, so we’ve reused elements we know well, but combined them in a new way to put together something different.’"

"Set in splendid isolation in a small, surf-battered bay on the north coast of Horomaka Banks Peninsula, this rustic style dwelling is luxury accommodation at Annandale, a 4000-hectare beef and sheep farm. The bay is nature in the raw. Seals and penguins frequent the dense kelp beds offshore, whales and dolphins travel the coastline, and piled on the beach are tangles of bleaching driftwood. Faced with such an uncompromising location, architect Andrew Patterson eschewed a modern or abstracted path—which, he reasons, 'would have fought the timeless nature of the bay’—in favour of a rural vernacular form, albeit on a monumental scale.

Nestled within a forest clearing near the Argentinian city of Córdoba, this 2,153-square-foot house named "La Negrita" is designed to exist in harmony with nature. Designed by Córdoba–based Morini Arquitectos, the house first reveals itself as a black corrugated wall in the middle of the woodlands. "The house is totally introverted [and] mysterious towards the street and extroverted towards the interior," says Morini.

The crumbling stone walls of a 17th-century farmhouse in the remote countryside of Dumfries, Scotland, presented a unique renovation opportunity for Lily Jencks Studio and Nathanael Dorent Architecture, the teams behind this project. Rather than demolish the old walls, they inserted a crisp, modern home within them, so as to emphasize the site's history and passage of time.

"It only cost about $48,000 to build, which was incredibly cheap," says Turner of the Stealth Barn. "We got the Timber Frame Company to supply the shell, then we clad it and fitted out the interior and windows ourselves. The idea was to take the archetypal black tar-painted agricultural building and make an almost childlike icon of that."

The reclaimed hickory facade of the Micro Cabin by BC-OA is punctured by windows that overlook National Forest Service land.