A Seattle family tasked Atmosphere Design Build with creating a sustainable dwelling in Nevada City, California, the matriarch's hometown and a historic mining community. The firm's material-driven approach channels the pioneer spirit of the gold rush, without compromising comfort or high-efficiency standards.

Designer Ismael Medina Manzano stretches the limits of an 861-square-foot flat in San Sebastián with mirrors, curves, and a kitchen island on wheels.

Warwas offset the rear of the ADU to accommodate the power lines running behind the house, and he designed a window in the office/guest room upstairs that meets the roof in the same way that the window off the dining area/kitchen meets the ground.

Studio Becker Xu streamlined the kitchen by building all of the appliances into the millwork. The budget-friendly countertops are a Formica solid surface.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing and a linear skylight help welcome the landscape within the cabin’s small footprint.

A blue checkered Moroccan rug amps up the visual interest in the space, along with a new yellow Togo couch and Herman Miller coffee table. Switching out the mullioned windows for new tilt-and-turn windows from Semko help the space feel larger and increase energy efficiency.

Adair and Kopp commissioned the metal fabricator who did the railings to create the monkey-bar rungs that line the hallway, powder-coated in seafoam green. Rings can attach to the monkey bars to give the boys a different type of challenge.

Simpatico Homes founder Seth Krubiner has lived in the prefab company’s nearly net-zero prototype since it was customized and lifted onsite in 2011.

Components for low-cost prefab homes designed by Habitat for Humanity and the firm Minarc for South Central Los Angeles were trucked in and assembled over three days. Photos by Art Gray.

Rice surfs the net at the built-in desk.

You can set the schedule up to a week in advance, and get push notifications when a fresh pot is ready. It brews at about 205 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can adjust the strength. You can also pause in the middle of the cycle in order to pour a cup.

Drawing power from integrated solar panels, both devices connect to Wi-Fi to relay relevant information about the soil to your phone or tablet. It will even automatically water from the hose using weather forecasts.

The Silent History is an app for your iPhone, a multi-author dystopian sci-fi novel, a mobile storytelling experiment, and a sprawling work of geo-located literature that its makers don't even fully understand. It's out there, man. Buy it! ($2)

A new office sits at the front of the house, and its moody walls and bookshelves contrast the other rooms' mostly light and neutral palette.

Chickens foraging in an enclosed garden with vertical planters.

Completed in May 2018, the Crossfield Street House is the residence of architect Jonathan Pile, his wife Katherine, and their five-year-old son.

In this updated 1950s Portland home, a light gray Neo sofa by Bensen harmonizes with warm wooden walls, ceilings, and floors, as well as a red-and-mustard-yellow vintage rug.

The box-shaped extension plays off the familiar farmhouse typology, creating a series of intriguing contrasts.

A painting by Ginger’s grandmother hangs above a midcentury dining set Ginger found on Craigslist.

A modular shelf system by Alu provides a more sculptural take on the classic bathroom vanity in this Toronto home.

Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, of Taalman Koch Architects, completed work on their glass iT House, a lovely, minimal home that tests the limits of living lightly on the land in the desert near Joshua Tree National Park. The bath and basin in the bathroom are by Duravit, and the orange wall is by Three Form.

Detail of the kitchen

Most impressive of all, a solar array on the roof empowers the residents to produce more energy than they consume on-site.

The couple added the wainscot, installed by Seamus, and painted in Farrow & Ball Red Earth to continue the “color story” from the breakfast room. The white oak built-in has much needed storage behind the cane cabinet fronts and display. The Caitlin couch by Everygirl for Interior Define sits atop a vintage checkered rug with an Anthropologie coffee table and Hay Paper Shade overhead.

The previous homeowners had cultivated a large, Asian-inspired garden. The courtyard centers around this towering, bushy tree.

The superimposed images of the furniture look slightly surreal, as expected, but the ability to furnish a room with multiple items and choose from such a large array of brands makes it superior to the Home Depot’s similar app.

Timer-activated coffee makers have been around for years, so it's almost hard to believe it took this long to make the device smart. Finally, Belkin made one from a partnership with Mr. Coffee, and it goes beyond scheduled brewing.

OfficeIQ, which is iOS and Android compatible, measures how many calories are burned and can sync with third-party fitness apps. Users can also just use a desktop interface if they prefer. The OfficeIQ system sends notifications to your screen when it's time to move from sitting to standing.

Regular intervals of standing reportedly reduce fatigue, minimize injury, and improve long term health. The information collected is aggregated and individual data is anonymous. Part of the goal is to measure healthy habits of an office, which could potentially be used to lower the cost of health insurance for the business.

The Museum of Modern Art added their first app to their collection, Björk's Biophilia app that interacts with the listener.

Seventy percent of smartphone and tablet owners say they'd like to control something in their house remotely from bed, such thermostats, lights, or coffee makers (an appliance 27 percent named specifically).

With its app, Sunn allows users to select any time and location, and the light will track the patterns of the sun accordingly. Trying to ignore the gray weather outside? Users can also select which season they'd like the light to reflect.

To add cards to your Coin, you need to take a photo of the front and back and then use a provided card reader to swipe the card. Once your cards have been synced, you can use the app to manage your library and choose which cards you'd like to use on the physical Coin. Although the accompanying mobile app can store an unlimited number of cards, a Coin card holds no more than eight.

Coin is about the same size as a traditional credit card, and comes in a similar plastic.

Pressing a small buton on the card lets you toggle through the different credit card accounts that you have uploaded to Coin. Currently, Coin only assimilates magnetic stripe cards and has no support for the up-and-coming EMV chip technology.