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Outdoor Hardscapes Grass Trees Wood Patio, Porch, Deck Design Photos and Ideas

Now, an eight-foot sliding door brings light into the kitchen and enables fluid movement between inside and out. The wider steps can serve as seats during a party, and they make for a graceful transition to the yard.

Luciano Kruk perforates a concrete volume with glass walls to fashion a simple yet elegant vacation home in the province of Buenos Aires. On a quiet lot populated with aged pinewood, Luciano Kruk designed a modest vacation home for three sisters and their families. The 807-square-foot, two-level home is ensconced in its forest setting. The firm employed board-formed concrete inside and out to connect the building with its environment. "Pine planks were used to set the formwork so that the partitions, as well as the slabs, would preserve the texture of the wood veins in an attempt to establish a harmonious dialogue with the bark of the local trees," said the firm.

The addition increased the floor area of the single-level house to 2,228 square feet.

Full-height sliding doors blur the boundary between the interior and the garden outside.

Julie and Chris Hill’s home in Austin is built around a pair of massive oak trees, one of which shoots through an ipe deck, past a pair of Loll deck chairs, and into a void in the overhanging roof. “The hole also allows light to penetrate deeper into the house,” notes designer Kevin Alter.

Fashion designer Josie and her husband Ken Natori are big fans of traditional Japanese architecture, so when Brooklyn-based practice Tsao & McKown Architects designed their home in Pound Ridge, New York, they used a heavy, exposed-timber structure, and included Japanese-style gardens and landscaping.

Julie and Chris Hill’s home in Austin is built around a pair of massive oak trees, one of which shoots through an ipe deck, past a Loll deck chair, and into a void in the overhanging roof. “The hole also allows light to penetrate deeper into the house,” notes designer Kevin Alter. A limestone brick wall mirrors the curves of the Western red cedar roof, the edges of which are coated in stucco.