Architects David Arkin and Anni Tilt found a balance between passive design strategies—plenty of natural light, maximized winter sun, shaded harsh summer rays, and cross-ventilated breezes—and the latest in green technologies in this Santa Cruz strawbale house. Photo by Gabriela Hasbun. See the house come together in a "bale-raising" gathering here.

Cassidy used the pool as an anchor for an overarching backyard master plan that pulled the parts together.

The clients insisted that none of the trees on the property be disturbed, so Kevin Alter and his team at Alterstudio Architecture built a deck and an overhang around two of them.

Another view of the deck.

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

Alterstudio Architecture of Austin designed this house in the Texas capital for a young family of four.

In consultation with the clients, Alterstudio opted to clad the house in local cypress rather than imported, FSC-certified ipe.

Guess used inexpensive graded pine plywood so that he would get heavy grain patterns on the surfaces. One of the main goals in the kitchen was simplicity. To that end, he opted for a poured-in-place concrete island. "We didn’t know if we could afford to do that, but we found a great subcontractor [Nate Francis of Countertop Creations] here who had never really built anything like that," Guess says. "Because he was interested in giving it a shot and adding it to his portfolio, he didn’t charge an exorbitant amount of money because it was sort of an experiment for him as well." The kitchen features a GE Profile refrigerator and KitchenAid range, microwave, and dishwasher. The sink and faucet are from Kohler. The project's builder was Joe Doherty with Custom Homecrafters of Austin.

The Heath tiles in the bathroom were hand-selected from boxes of factory seconds.

Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton behind their London home.

Straw Dogs “Straw is basically a waste material,” says Tilt. “Farmers used to burn rice straw, but now they’re baling it up to sell, which takes tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.” It’s also a stellar source of insulation, both thermal and acoustic. With the guidance of structural engineer Kevin Donahue, Arkin Tilt, the couple, and a group of their friends and neighbors pitched in for a daylong “bale raising.” To minimize the straw’s volume within the walls (they used 150 bales), the architects tipped the bales on edge, placed them between structural wood I-joists used as posts, and finished them off with welded wire mesh and lime plaster.

Bassam (left, with Fellows) hung redwood garage doors that match the house’s exterior.

On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, author Chris Brown and his dog Katsu head to the river; the path was once a dumping ground on top of a long-defunct underground oil pipeline. The green roof was conceptualized by John Hart Asher of the Ecosystem Design Group at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin.

The tiny budget still allowed room for some strategic splurges, such as the vivid green Verde Ming marble in the house’s only bathroom

Designed by Atelier Lina Bellovicova, House LO marks the country’s first residential project to use hempcrete, a sustainable and fire-and-mold-resistant materil.

Fed up with flashy, environmentally insensitive beach homes, architect Gerald Parsonson and his wife, Kate, designed a humble hideaway nestled behind sand dunes along the New Zealand coastline. Crafted in the image of a modest Kiwi bach, their 1,670-square-foot retreat consists of a group of small buildings clad in black-stained pine weatherboards and fiber-cement sheets.

The master suite on the second level features a terrace and a lofted area.

“Peter and I’ve got shockingly similar and far-reaching design inspirations. Our conversations would move easily from brutalism to driftwood to kachinas and then flow right back to something applicable to architecture. I can’t tell you how many times I will do that with a less-design-literate client and just get a blank stare!” —Architect Craig Steely

Kayak in hand, Tom and Will make a break for the beach.

Ryan Anderson of RAD Furniture designed the stools as well as the table and benches on the pool deck.

Going Underground The site the Wadhams found for their home was designated as “green belt” land, which meant that there were restrictions on the size of the structure’s footprint. Because it’s critical for the pair to live on a single floor, especially as they grow older, Archer tucked the home’s three guest rooms—vital for four visiting children and eight grandchildren—all belowground. Not only does that keep the home’s layout trim, but with the living spaces and master bedroom at ground level, the couple will be able to stay in the house for longer, getting more use out of the energy and resources expended to build it.

Rian and Melissa Jorgensen's 2 Bar House in Menlo Park boasts all the usual green design suspects: energy-efficient lighting, good insulation, renewable material finishes, radiant heat, and the roof is pre-wired for future PV panels. Still, one of the homeowner's favorite aspect of green design is the living roof planted with succulents, aloe, viviums, and ice plants.

Emilio Fuscaldo sits in the garden outside the brick house that he designed for himself and his partner, Anna Krien, on a small subdivided lot in Coburg, a suburb north of Melbourne, Australia.

The sod roof is angled to create a sweeping elevation on approach and is planted with grass tussocks cut from the hillside during construction. “The tussocks camouflage the house, melting it into the landscape,” explains architect Kate Brown.

“I wanted to plant a green roof for its thermal mass, but I wanted it to be as natural as possible,” Liang says.

Nataša Stanaćev and Manu Granados of Stanaćev Granados Arquitectura designed and built this beachfront cabin in Matanzas, a rustic, windswept area of Chile, while they were living in Spain.

Stanaćev and Granados not only thought about views from the cabin, they also considered views of the cabin. With that in mind, they designed a green roof planted with creeping redflush that harmonizes with surrounding cypress forest.

“Segovia is a very central region, but an underdeveloped one,” de la Quadra-Salcedo says. “Traditionally devoted to agriculture and mainly livestock, it flourished in the sixteenth century but now that the older generations are disappearing, there is a problem of abandoned villages and fields.” The structure highlights the rural surroundings.

The Casa Cuatro sits above a 180-foot cliff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The locally quarried stone makes the house blend in with the landscape and acts as a thermal-mass wall, absorbing heat during the day and releasing it through the evening.

Mark Word Design did the landscaping, with an emphasis on water conservation. "It's about usage levels, but it's also about the way we treat storm water and runoff since it all goes back into our supply at the end of the cycle," designer Sarah Carr says. Word and his team chose plants that help reduce erosion, require little watering, and allow storm water to percolate. Mulch and living ground covers—including Big Blue liriope, marsilea, and Palisades zoysia turf—keep moisture within the soil and lower the temperature of the soil, protecting the roots of the live oak trees.

The interior combines modern and more traditional elements, such as this oriental rug.

The cypress cladding carries over from the exterior to the interior of the house.

The house was built on piers (save for the lower-level bedroom) so that little of the natural landscape would be disturbed.