Yard

Midwest: Hoerr Schaudt Knitting the designed spaces into the greater wilderness beyond was paramount for the ten-acre landscape Douglas Hoerr devised in northern Michigan. “The idea is once you’re there, you can’t tell what we did,” he says. Instead of building formal gardens right to the property line, Hoerr added a meadow planted with mature trees and indigenous grasses to buffer the yard. Naturalistic plantings ebb and flow around the 110-foot-long saltwater lap pool.

A private courtyard extends the space outward.

Custom Bioretention Planter (Landscape Architecture by CampionHruby)

“We pulled apart one volume and staggered it along the buildable area of the property,” says architect Matthew Ahlberg of Portland firm Barrett Made. The home is clad in unfinished cedar, meant to weather over time.

An uplifting palette of warm pinks, lilacs, mauves and golden tones intersperses the natural green of the wild grasses.

Extra-wide concrete pillars help to support the studio at its core.

The house has nine portals in total, each consisting of two structural walls that create a threshold. The portals also double as openings between the spaces, creating the vertical connections that the original house lacked.

Walker left the site in its natural state, but added grasses along the path to the entrance. For more ways to use grass in your home.

Sporting a handsome black facade, the multi-level home pops against its lush green lawn.

The remote studio/office that Robert Swatt of Swatt Miers Architects designed for a Healdsburg, California, property is marked by glass walls that provide the feeling of working in nature.

Accoya pre-finished wood by ReSawn Timber Co. was used for the siding of the home, which sits on 100 acres and overlooks a pond.

The charred wood siding is from Blackwood Siding, while the standing-seam metal cladding is from Agway Metals, installed by Novak Cladding. All of the structure's windows and doors are from Tiltco Architectural and Velux.

The exterior sconces are from Performance in Lighting.

Techo-Bloc’s Aquastorm pavers are designed to allow grass to grow between them, creating a unique play between the softness of grass and the functionality of concrete. They’re also anti-flood and permeable, making them as functional as they are beautiful.

A vast terrace overlooks a nearby park, while the ground floor patio (connected to Vanbesien’s office) opens up to a garden.

A textured concrete wall surrounds the remote property, creating a modern-day fortress.