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Almost everything about Bob Butler’s Nashville home is unexpected. Its sunken living room, open beams, and carport hark back to the 1950s, yet it’s barely more than a year old. The breezy, rectilinear residence transports visitors to midcentury Hollywood Hills or Palm Springs, though it’s located in a city known for Craftsman bungalows and the rococo mansions of country stars. Most surprising of all, Bob designed and built it himself, with only a few years experience under his belt and no formal training, and on a budget that would get the attention of many area residents: $115 per square foot.

A pared-down cabin on Eleuthera island was designed as an off-the-grid retreat for Mark and Kate Ingraham and their daughter. Envisioning "a simple box resting lightly on the land,

From a distance, Peter and Turkey Stremmel’s hyper-angular home in Reno, Nevada, resembles nothing so much as a mountain made of metal, but upon closer inspection, it reveals itself as a structure that is deeply influenced by its surroundings. Its fragmented forms, designed by architecture firm OPA, are inspired by the irregular geometries in nature.