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“The home is quite small, but designed in such a way that you don’t feel it,” Herrin says. Lift-slide openings by Quantum Windows & Doors, which were fabricated fewer than 50 miles from the house, make the main living space seem larger.

Tom Givone’s clients, Rose and Steve Smith, teach overseas and have owned their house for 26 years. They intended to fix it up slowly and retire there. As one problem led to another, they reached a point when they felt their only option, as Rose put it, was to “burn it down.”

Large sliding glass doors allow daylight to fill the living room. Smaller windows are placed in the kitchen area and the sleeping loft. The exterior is clad in heart pine which needs very little up-keep and is known for its strength and hardness.

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Tucked away on the edge of a small lake surrounded by mountains and topped off with a grass-covered roof, this hunting cabin designed by Snøhetta is made with locally sourced stones. The 376-square-foot prefab mountain hut sleeps up to 21 guests around a central fireplace.

"Giulietta Carrelli of Trouble Coffee says, ‘Build your own damn house,’ and I agree wholeheartedly with that," says Mason St. Peter, who crafted his dream surf-inspired cabin in Los Angeles’s Topanga Canyon with his partner, Serena Mitnik-Miller.

A series of horizontal window panes on the rear facade serves as vanes for ventilation and adds a craftsmanlike design come nightfall, when the house is lit up by the flicker of candlelight and gas lamps.

Mid-century designer Jens Risom's A-framed prefab family retreat, located on the northern portion of Block island, is bordered by a low stone wall, an aesthetic element that appears throughout the land.

Architect Tom Kundig’s assignment was simple enough: Build a tiny, Thoreau-like getaway for an Atlanta-based writer who owned ten acres on San Juan Island in Puget Sound. "The idea was not to clutter anybody’s thinking, especially a writer’s," he said. So he designed a 500-square-foot retreat that’s both womblike and open to its surroundings.

“People scold us if we don’t raise the kite,” says Holm (sitting with Kiehl,). From the bench outside, the couple can wave to friends passing in boats and make use of the long summer evenings.

After living on and studying a woodsy acre of land in North Zealand, Denmark, architect Jesper Brask cleared a stand of pine trees and, from the timber, built a getaway open to its surroundings. The house, which Brask shares with his wife, Lene, and sons, Kristian, Jens, and Niels, is used mainly in summer, when the weather is optimal for throwing open the glass doors.