Angela Brooks and son Calder revel in the benefits of free solar energy, cheerfully opening the living room’s big glass doors when it’s time to play.

Keep the Home Fires Burning Using wood for heat and energy keeps the Wadhams’ environmental footprint small and helps avoid the use of coal- or nuclear-powered electricity. Come winter, the couple relies on an Esse wood-burning stove for cooking, heating, and feeding a set of small radiators. In summer, they use the stove’s electric component, which is powered by solar energy.

The bottom floor contains the kitchen and the dining area; the lounge is upstairs. The cabinets are from Ikea, as are the table and chairs, and the child’s Tripp Trapp chair is from Stokke.

Designer Sue Macintosh chose the Farrow & Ball Off-Black paint for the master bedroom.

Setsumasa and Hideaki toss on the rain fly. The solar panel in the foreground supplies daytime electricity.

A 1.4-kW solar array by Sharp and propane-powered in-floor radiant heating from Radiantec obviate any need to connect to municipal power.

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

Cor-Ten steel from a ship building yard clads the new structure, which connects via a glass “bridge” to a rebuilt stone farmhouse containing the bedrooms.

McAvoy worked with builder Stephen Campbell on structural elements such as the glass floor and walls.

Architect Andrew McAvoy created an earth-sheltered house in Scotland for Gavin and Angelique Robb and children Scarlett and Gus.

The glass balustrade and floor were sourced in Germany and installed by James Aiken. Angelique, the founder of Papillon Designs and Landscaping, clustered plantings around the exterior glass addition.

Surprisingly, this cozy and partially earth-sheltered family home—which is, according to Gavin, "one step away from Passive House standards"—started life as a series of derelict and semi- derelict farmstead buildings in raw and rural Aberdeenshire, in the hinterland of Scotland’s northeast coast. For the new structure, Grace & Webb fabricated a laser-cut steel balcony.

The lounge, with maple flooring from an old school in nearby Aberdeen, has a Togo sofa by Michel Ducaroy for Ligne Roset.

Reclaimed oak beams dominate the upstairs lounge, which leads to the guest bedroom.

Marcus Veerman, founder and CEO of Playgound Ideas, an organization that has given 250,000 children access to playspaces, highlights Freiburg, Germany. "Freiburg is a community in southwest Germany that is striving toward complete sustainability," he writes. "It has a whole suburb built on sustainable principles. It was created out of a movement supported by all levels of government and community." For more ideas, purchase a a copy of Designed for the Future.

Henkel North American Consumer Products Headquarters (Scottsdale, Arizona: 2010) Building in the Sonoran desert doesn’t immediately bring the word “sustainable” to mind. This 348,000-square-foot Scottsdale office space for Henkel, a German consumer goods company, is a stylish rejoinder to that impression. Here, nature is put to work. The roof is covered in a 1.5-acre garden of native plants, with solar panels that power the building’s banks of washers and dryers, a substantial green gesture for a company that makes laundry detergent. And the exterior, designed by CH2M Hill and Will Bruder + Partners, features custom glass etched in a pattern that reduces the intensity of the sunlight and a breathable skylight over the central atrium. Turning down the heat only seems fitting for the makers of a successful line of deodorants. Photo by Henkel

Thanks to passive solar and radiant floors, the metal-clad home is comfortable year-round.

Among the first Passive Houses in France, this bamboo-clad farmhouse by the Parisian firm Karawitz Architecture only uses a tenth of the energy a conventionally constructed home does. Photo by Nicholas Calcott.

A panorama of sylvan hills and ocean views surrounds artist Richard Brothers’s environmentally minded Orcas Island, Washington, home.

Porches are a beloved element of the Southern vernacular and lifestyle, traditionally serving as an extension of the indoors—a shady place to gather, socialize, or share a meal. So when the students of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, entered the Solar Decathlon, a biennial energy-efficient residential design competition, the iconic space figured prominently in their concept. Here, a canopy of bifacial solar panels covers the porch and provides energy for the home.

Arango's 1,000-square-foot home in Amherst, Massachusetts is run entirely by solar power. He uses the home as an example in the class he teaches on renewable energy.

The entire cabin is powered by the rooftop solar system from Solarwinds Northernlights. "I still can't get over the fact that I can get an ice cube from the sun," Bruce says.

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.

A Woolly Pocket planter hangs on the steel beam above a polished-concrete floor warmed by radiant heat.

Solar power cells on top of the building collect energy that’s used for both water systems and electricity.

Here's what you need to know before undergoing a building project with a contractor but no architect.

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

In Scarpa and Brook' own house, they’ve mounted luminous solar panels in a rusted-steel-beam grid to form a modernist canopy that frames the façade. This imaginative “solar umbrella” hides the household power plant in plain sight, part of an artful composition that includes a hanging screen tied with bristles of industrial brooms.

Power Pod Convenience and functionality blend into elegant design with Coalesse’s PowerPod. Designed by Scott Wilson and MINIMAL, PowerPod delivers two functions in one. When needed, the PowerPod houses six power outlets with built-in surge-suppression. When not needed, the outlet is converted to a sleek pencil organizer and accessory tray. Energy-saving on/off switch reduces vampire power consumption.

A Kitchen B Dining Room C Lounge D Master Bedroom E Bedroom F Bathroom G Bridge

Like the other buildings onsite, John Hix designed Casa Solaris to take advantage of the natural forces here in Vieques; wind, sun and rain. By creating open spaces, where basically the fourth wall is missing, John created a space that takes advantage of the trade winds that flow through the Vieques hills. By placing the open wall towards the trade winds (to the East), the room is constantly cooled, leaving no need for air conditioning. Photo by Michael Grimm.

Escape made a splash by launching a property in Tampa Bay filled with its trailers. But you don’t have to live there to own one.

Using technology to design a home as energy-efficient as possible was a priority for Hague, both from a financial and philosophical standpoint. Along with Passive House certification for the main house, a solar array on the roof of the barn keeps energy use near zero. In fact, the entire property was Net Zero before the addition of the pool, and it may soon generate an energy surplus with the addition of a second solar array at the main house.

Just outside their home, residents get to track net energy usage on the solar power meter.