The Lai family—Mayuko, baby Shota on her lap, David, Maya, and Yumi sitting on a cushion on the deck—relaxes in their indoor-outdoor living space, made by opening the glass sliding doors to connect the living room and engawa deck.

The most sustainable element of all is the Lais’ intention to make their first home their last home as well. “Some people have this mentality of getting a starter house, then upgrading from there,” David says. “We just wanted to find a place to live in and then stay there forever.” Eventually they imagine passing the home down to their children.

Corrugated siding usually used for roofing is used for the exterior.

That heat is then transferred to the old stone walls underneath. From there, the stone slowly radiates the warmth into the interior, keeping it around 70°F even as night temperatures drop to 25°F. A wood-burning stove compensates for cloudy days. (For the thermally-savvy, the polycarbonate has a U value of 1.1 W/m²K).

The house has a small environmental footprint. SHED built it using advanced framing, a technique that cuts down on the use of lumber by 30 percent. Another benefit of the method is that it prevents heat from escaping the home, making it more energy-efficient. Additionally, the architects installed a high-efficiency boiler that preheats water with rooftop solar panels; a heat recovery ventilation system that efficiently controls the climate; and a rainwater retention tank that conserves water.

Architects Alice Fung and Michael Blatt designed their own home in Los Angeles, complete with a modern fireplace design clad in galvanized steel.

Moore has been using the so-called beetle-kill pine in his projects for years. In the Damianos’ house, he lined the floors, ceiling, cabinetry, and walls of the second-story living area, white-washing the planks “to let a little more sunlight bounce around the room.”

On all three aboveground levels of the house, outdoor spaces feature as prominently as indoor ones. The backyard is lined with tiered concrete boxes for planting vegetables; the modest top floor—which houses the master bedroom—has a deck wrapping three sides; and in the middle, a 770-square-foot green roof extends off the living area. Don't miss a word of Dwell! Download our FREE app from iTunes, friend us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!

A deck is located off the dining area.

Flywheel Energy Storage Flywheels are discs or cylinders that spin on an axis in a frictionless enclosure to store power in the form of kinetic energy. When demand for power rises, the spinning can be slowed to release energy to the grid. The advantages of flywheel storage include long life and low maintenance.

If energy from renewables can be stored and dispatched to the grid during periods of peak demand, solar and wind would become more cost-effective and simpler to scale.

A rocket scientest named Thomas Povey applied fins and grooves along the exterior of his new Flare Pans in order to direct the flame to cover more of the pot’s surface area, saving heat energy. The idea of using fins isn’t new — the casing on air-cooled motorcycle engines are coated with grooves to get the surrounding airflow to hit more surface area. Dr. Povey used his knowledge of working on jet engines to apply the same principles to the pots.

The pots are oven-safe up to 401 degrees Fahrenheit for stovetop steak cooking. They will not, however, work as effectively as advertised on an electric stove.

The pots are made from cast aluminum with stainless steel handles. The interior is coated with a non-stick treatment.

There are conventional cookware alternatives to the Flare pans, like the chef-favorite All-Clads or the standby cast iron pans from Lodge Logic, but none of them will have the futuristic feel of the Lakelands.

The Damianos’ house, located in Denver’s Highland neighborhood, runs completely on solar energy.

The home’s custom woodwork—including the movable furniture—was made by Orana Joinery and finished with plywood. Chemisys Group supplied the timber door and window finishes, as well as the timber deck outside.

The downstairs area is floored in polished concrete, and flanked on the north side by huge full-height windows through which passive heat is gathered. The majority of the winter heating, however, is from a ground source heat pump that uses the latent energy in the earth — a relatively new solution in New Zealand.

“The physics are well known: You move mass against the force of gravity and with the force of gravity to either store or release energy.”—Jim Kelly

Advanced Rail Energy Storage Based in Santa Barbara, California, Advanced Rail Energy Storage has devised a system that draws energy from the grid to push a train of weighted cars uphill. When demand spikes, the cars are sent downhill, sending power back to the grid by using the turning power of the wheels on each car to generate electricity.

Water-saving dishwasher In the kitchen, the dishwasher is the largest source of water use, and dishwashers made before 1994 waste more than 10 gallons of water per cycle. Energy Star certified dishwashers employ soil sensors and more efficient jets to maximize cleaning while minimizing water use.

Dulkinys uses the remote-controlled mountaineer’s harness to peruse the two-story bookshelf.

Jimena makes use of a giant chalkboard just outside.

“With Passive Houses we talk about the energy consumption during use. But energy use goes from the birth of the house to its death,” she says. “Japanese timber houses had great energy performance during construction because they used local wood. Bamboo, paper, thatch, and earth are absolutely carbon neutral, and traditional designs such as wind paths and window overhangs are as important as an airtight skin. I want to combine these two aspects of energy efficiency.”

My favorite detail in the kitchen.

Plants found in the surrounding landscape were used to obscure the lines between designed and natural worlds.

Rose sourced the green marble for an upcoming Park Avenue apartment from the same quarry used by Mies for the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion.

You might not think a sparsely populated world with the merest suggestion of depth would be a compelling one to live in. But the longer you look through Toronto-based My Shadowplay, the closer you'll become to a convert to Minimalism. Follow along at @my_shadowplay.

My BrooklynIn My Brooklyn, Kelly Anderson and Allison Dean address gentrification in downtown Brooklyn. Watch the trailer here:

Ineke Hans, My Storage, 2011.

The Whole Home Energy Boost Box.

This is the world's first designer energy-saving lightbulb—a sculptural piece so lovely, you’ll be reluctant to use a shade. Check out this product here.

Dunlop demonstrates the deck’s secondary use: as a launching pad into the concrete plunge pool on the first floor.

The rest of the building is insulated with recycled cotton—4.75 inches in the walls, almost 8 inches in the roof—to keep the interior temperature stabilized.