Prefab

The large pocket doors of Mandeville Canyon House open up the corner of the living room to the concrete terrace and lawn beyond. This house, designed by Dutton Architects, is perfect for informal living and taking advantage of the southern California climate.

Danish architect and designer Sigurd Larsen teamed up with Raus to create a 193-square-foot cabin in Berlin, Germany, that lets city dwellers escape the hustle and bustle of urban life and connect with nature.

The original owners of the 1969 glass house had converted an existing barn on site into an art studio. The new homeowners wanted to update it to function as a guest house and at-home work studio.

, wood bumps out to allow space for stove.

Best Practice added a new roof but kept the existing siding. A fresh coat of paint helps the casita pop, and a new window opening next to the entrance frames a new kitchenette inside.

The three arms of the Apfel House stretch out to catch the best views of Ranco Lake and the Andes Mountains.

“There’s something about it that feels very contextual to where it is—on a little teeny hill, looking out over the Dry Creek Valley, and there’s nothing else artful around,” says Louis.

The stilts, or pilotis, helped reduce the construction impact on the land. From within, the elevated house looks out to the middle of the surrounding trees.

First light

"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," says architectural designer Riley Pratt.

This wilderness sauna cabin in the west coast of Finland was built with 112-millimeter thick squrae logs, and has a 1,028-square-foot outdoor terrace.

The 1969 summer house needed a gut remodel—so Carisa Salerno and Aaron Levin rebuilt it piece by piece: “In the end, we feel like we built a sculpture, not a house.”

The timber-clad cabins at Find Sanctuary in Big Bear, California, were devised to help urban professionals manage stress anxiety.

A Chicago-based firm known for preserving cultural landmarks builds a refined weekend home on Lake Michigan’s southern shore.

Composed of overlapping cubes of different sizes, the Gjøvik house by Danish firm Norm Architects gracefully embraces its hillside terrain—naturally blending in with its stunning surroundings near Mjøsa Lake an hour north of Oslo.

The home is perched lightly on the site and the landscape has been integrated into the architecture through a sympathetic form and materiality, and the expansive windows. “We long for this untouched nature,” says architect Line Solgaard of the site. “It brings us calmness and maybe even helps us be more in touch with ourselves.”