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One of the concrete supports rises from a steep hillside and stands among surrounding trees.

The entire design team worked with the clients and their children to populate the green roof with mosses and grasses harvested from nearby, which they planted with groupings of sedums and other native plants.

The stone wall was designed to look as though it had been there as long as the original rock formation.

The addition was designed with overhangs—and foot-thick insulation—to keep the interiors naturally cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

The rock outcropping in the backyard of this house in Victoria, British Columbia, influenced the design of the home’s addition.

Though he rents his Williamsburg, Brooklyn, apartment, Taylor Dow had enough room to install an above-ground pool. His advice for would-be bathers: Work with the space you have. For example, consider whether your outdoor oasis is better suited to an aboveground pool or a bathtub-like stock tank.

High Reflective White by Sherwin Williams was chosen for the baseboards, walls and ceiling. “My usual is Dunn Edwards: 3560,” Augustin says, “but on this project I strayed off script.” Two skylights, costing a total of $600, bring in natural light from above.

The 750-square-foot accessory dwelling unit (ADU) that Bo Sundius and Hisako Ichiki of BunchADU designed in Los Angeles’s Atwater Village is filled with bright colors that help to designate the spaces within the small backyard home.

A timber staircase accesses the loft-like office and is wider at the bottom, where it doubles as shelving.

White oak flooring keeps the open-concept space feeling light and bright.

The couple spent six months designing their 1,178-square-foot, two-story home. Its compact size was informed by the existing garage’s 20-foot-by-30-foot footprint and L.A.’s ADU size limit of 1,200 square feet. "We had always planned on designing a compact house, however, having a hard limit to its size was definitely a challenge,

Thompson, a founding principal of Assembledge+, had recently participated in a Los Angeles Magazine project to imagine solutions for those who lack housing in the city. Their notion was for public agencies to subsidize building ADUs in backyards along alleyways, dovetailing with existing alley revitalization initiatives

The thermally treated ash deck will patina and become a silvery grey tone that blends with the tree trunks in the backyard.

The steel structure is suspended two feet above the roof of the existing bungalow, supported by four steel columns, one of which screens utility lines running from the Perch to the house below.

The screening room and living area is off the kitchen, and opens to the garden.

The emphasis on wood finishes continues inside, where the skylit atrium bifurcates the house. On the second floor, the primary bedroom and a pair of smaller bedrooms straddle the stairwell.

Sunshine flows through a large gridded skylight to illuminate an atrium at the heart of the home.