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A sheer curtain screens the living room from the outside.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Located in Montreal, Tuan Vu and Jean François's sleek modern home is designed to balance the need for privacy while maximizing natural daylight. The exterior is clad in a single material to maintain a unified aesthetic. "We wanted to keep the house light and we wanted to emphasize its overall form instead of its different elements so we found a metal cladding that could work on both the roof and walls," says Thomas Balaban, the architect who designed the structure. "It was very important for us that it be the same material for both. Where we did change material around the entry and the windows, we matched the color of the metal cladding so as not to disturb the reading of the uniform shape."

A defining green feature is the on-site stormwater infiltration system. The architect explains, “To comply with local regulations protecting the creek and beach, the house has an infiltration system that collects all the water from the roofs in the two large concrete rain-gardens, the stormwater is then filtered before soaking into the sandy soil.” The gutters channel rainwater from the roof down to an underground system.

The simple materials and forms represent continuity with traditional Acadian architecture. The retreat is sheathed in metal sheets.

At the lower left, polycarbonate panels glow under the cantilevered, vertically-seamed sheet-metal facade. Photo credit: Dale Christopher Lang PhD AIAP

A 1.4-kW solar array by Sharp and propane-powered in-floor radiant heating from Radiantec obviate any need to connect to municipal power.

The two-tone corrugated metal cladding helps the sheds blend into the landscape, along with windows custom-colored by the manufacturer to match.

The metal cladding, inspired by a nearby zinc mine, continues seamlessly onto the house’s roof for a minimalist shed effect. “The drip edge turns to make the wall,” explains architect Brandon Pace, “but changes above the window to accommodate a downspout. Any place where the metal contacts glass, or where you walk underneath, we have an internal gutter.”

The Andersen Architectural Collection’s Eagle windows and doors provide the panes and passageways of the home.

Three’s Company Inspired by the minimal color scheme of a hotel they stayed at in Bali, Winterhalder and Ehlers decided to limit their palette to three colors: anthracite black, concrete gray, and a light larch wood. The first move was to paint the backyard wall gray. Next up for a coat of dark paint was the villa’s old-fashioned wooden staircase, which the couple didn’t like but didn’t have the budget to replace. The consistency works to unite the different styles found in the house. “Somehow,” says Winterhalder, “it all fits.”

“We did our best to tuck the buildings into the site—the goal was to get up high on a perch. It was a matter of setting that elevation and working back down with the topography.”—Riley Pratt, architectural designer

The owners’ goal was to transform the 19th-century building into a bold single-family residence. Historical architectural details were made modern with a striking black facade, while inside, a flexible living space that opens into an exterior garden enables a simplified lifestyle.

Terunobu Fujimori's original Charred Cedar House is an example the respected architect’s ecologically sensitive and energy-efficient approach to architecture. “As an architect, I deal with the visual effects. Energy conservation is an engineer’s work. My intention is to visibly and harmoniously connect two worlds—the built world that mankind creates with the nature God created,” says Fujimori.

While located on the beach, this home offers enough functionality to act as a second family home any time of the year.

“I’ve loved Moritz Kundig’s work for years,” says designer Josh Hissong, whose home in Spokane, Washington, turned out to be a 1971 work by the architect. Josh and his wife, Shiva, executed a thoughtful revamp of the house, which began with thinning an overgrown stand of pine trees to bring the entryway out of hiding. The exterior is painted Deep Space by Benjamin Moore.

Marjon Helder cleans an upper level window, while Martin Blakendaal and architect Chris Collaris converse on the first level.

Completed in May 2018, the Crossfield Street House is the residence of architect Jonathan Pile, his wife Katherine, and their five-year-old son.

One-way mirrored glass wraps around a portion of the home. "We wanted it to reflect like glass so that when you sit on the terrace, you see trees or the view in all directions—including when you look towards the house," says Larsen. The mirror effect is slightly distorted, and no birds have flown into the glass.