Gaffney's cousin lives in the house just in front. To give a bit of perspective, this photo was likely taken just feet in front of the waist-high wall that runs between the two houses's yards.

The rear facade.

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The majority of windows are on the south facade to optimize solar gain.

Light illuminates the back of the home at night. The Vicenza flamed basalt exterior and floor-to-ceiling windows are a bold counterpoint to the house's more traditional neighbors.

“The house is a piece of origami made out of triangular shapes, which we then draped over the landscape,” says Arbel.

Rear facade

Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton behind their London home.

The rear facade, like the top-floor addition, is faced in rectangular panels of black rainscreen Richlite over exterior mineral wool insulation.

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The bungalow had beautiful bones but some major problems, including a poorly designed addition to the back that had to be removed. In its place, Tribe Studio designed a gray brick box that connects directly to the garden. “The owners love the fact that the extension is compatible with the old part of the house, and is completely different from many renovations of this type, which simply open up the back in a single move,” Tribe says.

Rudolph Schindler’s Bubeshko Apartments in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Designed in 1960, the house was originally a lodge to accommodate horse trails. Throughout the years, the house has expanded with various additions and renovations.

The rear facade of the winery.

Clad in Western red cedar siding and punctuated with floor-to-ceiling windows, this minimalist two-bedroom home boasts sunrise views over the Sonoma hills.

When not in use during winter, the tub is hidden from the home’s view. The entrance has a sheltered overhang for car parking.

On a trip to Naoshima, Japan, the Houston newlyweds behind Robertson Design fell in love with Tadao Ando’s concrete-composed museums. This led the couple to create a residence of their own comprised of a low concrete wall, concrete cube, and box clad in Siberian larch. The indoors are rounded out with white oak, marble, and leather-finished granite.

The building takes advantage of passive heating and cooling, thanks to Blee and Halligan's strategic design to capture the most sunlight in the winter and provide the most shade in the summer. The above-ground glass facade faces east and draws in the daylight, but when the sun proves too strong, whoever is staying in the structure can close the internal shutters to beat the heat.

Architect Jesse Garlick’s rural Washington vacation home references its rugged surroundings. The steel cladding has developed a patina similar to the ochre-red color of bedrock found in the area.

Seen in the architectural context of its London neighborhood, the house is all the more extraordinary: compact, materially innovative, and easy on the eyes.

A narrow building next to the main structure houses storage and an outdoor kitchen.

Margarita McGrath and Scott Oliver of Noroof Architects termed the 1,650-square-foot house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, “Pushmi-Pullyu,” in reference to the interior-exterior flow they created. Resident Jill Magid, pictured on her front steps with son Linus, is a conceptual artist; she fabricated the neon house numbers.

Claire and Ken Stevens approached architect Ko Wibowo to create a modern addition to their 1970s home in Tacoma, Washington. The couple’s needs had changed since Ken was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago.

The 1968 house’s shape—a rounded triangle topped with a sweeping concrete roofline that suggests a helmet as it rises above huge banks of windows—lends itself totally to Kukkapuro’s philosophy. “It is a structure in waiting, prone to change as the landscape around it—not yet a form, rather a possibility,” he says. “It changes in harmony with the seasons and the moods of its inhabitants.”

The house comprises a series of modules, with the main living areas occupying the center and the master bedroom on the right. A large deck juts off the living room.

The rear facade. A system of sliding glass windows and doors underscore the indoor/outdoor nature of the house.

Designers Christopher Robertson and Vivi Nguyen-Robertson conceived their house as an unfolding sequence of simple geometric forms: a low concrete wall, a concrete cube, and a boxclad in Siberian larch.

At the rear of the house, exterior steel cladding by Vicwest updates the look of the facade, while a steel footbridge connects the garden to the main floor of the house

The exterior is clad in Siberian larch, which doesn’t require paint and will develop a gray patina.

Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

Arba, the architecture firm founded by Jean-Baptiste Barache and Sihem Lamine, designed a 1,786-square-foot residence for Dominique Jacquot 45 minutes outside Paris. The house is her sanctuary from city life.

Tall and surprisingly open, the Tel Aviv Town House by Pitsou Kedem Architects continues in the tradition of its Bauhaus-inspired neighbors with a white facade and black window frames.

“The house was designed to complement the challenging triangular corner site and its context.” —George Bradley, architect.

Perched above a lake on Australia’s verdant Mornington Peninsula, James and Imogen Tutton’s teak-clad house was designed by Karen Alcock of Melbourne-based MA Architects.

“We sought to create a house that would not damage the environment and not be too visible,” says architect Tina Gregorič. A single zigzagging roof stretches over 5,380 square feet, doubling the area of the interior spaces and serving as an ideal spot for sunset cocktails and whale-watching.