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Exterior Cabin Metal Siding Material Design Photos and Ideas

The house is partially off-grid, with all water collected on site and all sewage treated and disposed of on site.
Arriving at the cabin is now a joyous ritual. “Every time we push the gates back and see the view it’s this sense of ‘we’ve arrived’,” Matt says.
The cabin hovers over the site on stilts, giving it a floating effect.
A worm filter system to treat all black water, producing fertilizer to regenerate the soil.
A worm filter system treats all of the home’s black water, producing fertilizer to regenerate the soil.
Floor-to-ceiling glazing and a linear skylight help welcome the landscape within the cabin’s small footprint.
The exterior’s concrete walls pick up on the tones of the rocks that emerge from the surrounding hillside.
In the midst of the pandemic, a family leverages industry connections and modular construction to quickly rebuild a cliffside getaway on a fire-ravaged site in the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve.
A simple floor plan emphasizes the rugged materiality of this elongated, cabin-style home designed by <span style="font-family: Theinhardt, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, sans-serif;">Augusto Fernández Mas of K+A Diseño and Mauricio Miranda of MM Desarrollos</span><span style="font-family: Theinhardt, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, sans-serif;"> in Valle de Bravo.</span>
Fifteen years ago, the “rickety” cabins that the family had built over the years on their lakeside property were reassessed as lakeshore homes, and the family’s taxes soared. They decided to subdivide the lots—they sold two, and three of her brothers took lakeside lots, while Diane and another brother took back lots. The old boxcar has been preserved and encased in one of her brother’s lake homes. “I didn’t want to build a lake house,” she says. “I wanted to give my grandchildren the old boxcar experience of freedom and simplicity. I wanted them to be able to hear the wind, feel the rain, and be one step from nature.”
The tiny cabin currently sits on a friend’s property, but it’s designed to be mobile, should the couple need to move it. “It can be dragged away with nothing more than a tractor,” says Nathalie.
The preserved grove of Redwoods is just past the house. “They loved the house that was there so much that, it was important to create something that wasn't trying to replace it, but would function for them in a different way,” says Boyer. Thus, this cabin reconnects the couple to the land, and gives them “that place of refuge” they need in nature.
The cabin has charcoal-colored metal siding and a punchy yellow-green front door for contrast.
Boyer first visited the site in 2018 for the redesign. Having grown up in the area, it was awful to see the devastating effects of the fire, but there were also signs of regrowth just a year later. “The redwoods had started to grow a little fuzzy green against the charred black [bark],” says Boyer. “It was kind-of promising. It felt hopeful that nature was coming back so quickly.”
Nestled into a grassy hillside, the cabins overlook ponds and oak, birch, and linden trees that grow on the property.
The hardy exterior cladding needed to cope with cows grazing in the paddock around the hut.
The baths are exposed to the north-east, which offers a well-protected position—aside from the occasional storm. As a result, it's comfortable to have an outdoor bath most of the year.
The retreat sits on an exposed high point giving it views of the forest, Bay of Plenty coastline, and city lights of Tauranga in the distance. "This exposure is part of what causes   strong winds to buffet it,
“The cabin’s shape is in humble dialogue with the surrounding nature,” says Lüer, who collaborated on the final design with  Alejandro Otero. “It is like a tree that only uses what is available to live.”
Located in southern Chile’s Lake District at San Agustín, ZeroCabin Krul backs into a forest and faces an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. The cabin is also close to the Andes mountains and the Patagonian fjords.
Designed by ZJJZ Atelier, the shingle-clad pods—known as The Seeds—provide an off-grid retreat in a lush area in Jiangxi, China.
"Like the roots of a plant, the reflective cladding anchors each cabin to the earth, while the pine shingles allow the structures to blend into the surrounding nature," explains ZJJZ Atelier.
"My goal was to carry on the client’s family legacy by creating a very special place that took inspiration from the landscape,” explains architect Tom Kundig.
Located on owner Lucas Steyn’s family farm in Botrivier, South Africa—about 90 minutes from Cape Town—Copia is an eco-retreat comprised of two shipping container cabins.
3. "Can I afford the payment on the home?"

"Although lenders are not handing out money as easily as they did in 2006, it's very important to know that you can afford your house payment and live your life in other areas,” states Hoffman.
A view of the back of the structure, highlighting both the long entry staircase and solar panels on the straw roof.
A closer look at the retreat’s reflective, polished steel exterior—and the living room’s transparent floor.
Completed in 2020, the Illusion Villa is perched in the Eriksberg Wildlife Park. It offers visitors the opportunity to go off grid and reconnect with nature.
Landscape designer Grits Runis of Landshape designed the area around the cabins, planting a terraced garden that provides herbs for making tea.
The cabins and sauna that architect Zane Tetere-Sulce designed for the Ziedlejas Wellness Resort are clad with Cor-Ten steel and glass.
Tetere-Sulce created a glass facade for the front of the sauna building, which is built into the hillside and overlooks the ponds.
The Monkey House is located in a secondary forest in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest that had been used as a banana plantation decades ago. Brajovic has turned the area, which is located on the border of Bocaina National Park, into an ecological sanctuary called Aldeia Rizoma that’s now home to several eco-friendly homes.
Construction on the Monkey House began in June 2020 after a three-month design period and was completed in November last year.
Inspired by juçara palm roots, the cabin is elevated atop a series of thin concrete pillars that measure 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters each.
Winkelman Architecture delivers grown-up summer-camp vibes with this unassuming retreat on the coast of Maine.
On Bainbridge Island, Jim and Hannah Cutler created a cabin for reading and working. Sited just steps from the main house, it’s a welcoming retreat that the father and daughter share.
A simple floor plan emphasizes the rugged materiality of this elongated, cabin-style home in Valle de Bravo.
David has built a number of screens and fences around the two cabins to increase privacy. "We now have a good feel of rustic isolation," says Diane.
The logs stacked between trees give the cabin a wood supply for the wood burning stove which can heat the whole place in winter and cuts down on electricity. "The guys are out chopping and splitting wood every visit," says Diane.
The breezeway between the main cabin and the summer porch acts as a third living space in the summer and on mild spring and fall days, linking the separate structures. “The walls slanting over the breezeway create an implied arch between the cabin and the summer porch, lending a sense of intimacy to the heart of the house,” says Diane.
“It was very important to me that the cabin be low to the ground,” says Diane. “I love the forest floor and the sway of our huge ponderosas, so I wanted as little disruption of the natural ecosystem as possible—a request which our builder, Trevor, honored admirably.”
Diane Douglas’s family has owned five acres of land by the lake since 1933, and her grandfather had dragged an old boxcar to the side of the lake by tractor. “When we came as kids, we’d turn off the paved road and drive on a dirt track through a ponderosa forest to the lakeshore,” she says. “I couldn’t wait for that first scent of pine.”
The firm wanted the materiality of the cabin to be "in harmony with the site," says Shaw. "So, that over time, the building could weather gracefully and the site around it would change, and they would do so in tandem."
The materials were kept simple: a foundation of board-formed concrete that reveals the wood grain of the boards used to make it, Cor-Ten steel siding that will develop a characterful patina, and rafters made of hemlock, a local species. "In terms of materials, we wanted the full exterior of the building to be something that would weather gracefully, that required very little maintenance, and that had a long life cycle," says Shaw.
Sited on a rock ledge, the Far Cabin’s screened porch cantilevers over the forest floor for a tree house effect.
The Far Cabin by Winkelman Architecture is set on the forested coast of Maine.
GreenSpur and McAllister Architects imagined a cabin sided with Cor-Ten steel, glass, and shou sugi ban–treated cedar for a wooded property outside of Washington, DC.
The exterior of Site Shack is covered in steel panels that are bolted to the framing. Look closely and you won’t see any visible fasteners, as Powers Construction’s welder was fastidious, creating a seamless shell with just steel and glass.
Naturally rusted steel sheathes the cabins that Malek Alqadi built on a 1954 homestead outside Joshua Tree National Park. "I loved the idea of stitching the existing structure back together, reinforcing it, and giving it life again without compromising the beautiful setting it’s in," he says.
The ultimate escape for forest bathing, Denmark’s Løvtag is a tree house hotel that features three cabins that embrace Scandinavian minimalism. With tree trunks intersecting the interior, large windows, and a rooftop deck, these treehouses promise to make you feel at one with nature.
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