Crowning the interior hallway is a Louis Poulsen PH Artichoke pendant, designed in 1958. The narrow apertures were designed to funnel the ocean breeze, contributing to the home’s passive cooling program. The walls are covered in American Clay, which helps to control humidity.

The large patio leads to a newly landscaped back garden. An expansive glass wall promotes seamless indoor-outdoor living. Inexpensive brick pavers were chosen for the rear patio; they offer textural contrast with the steel of the door, brick of the rear facade, and pale gray wood of the interior floors.

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

Mike Kurokawa and Paul Fishman set out for the beach from their house in the Puna region of Hawaii. A bridge leads from street level to the upper floor of the house, which is situated in a natural depression, or kipuka.

The renovated beach house's floor plans.

Bryan Cranston and his wife, Robin Dearden, relax on a Lagune sofa by Roche Bobois. The couple’s home occupies a beachfront site that they’ve owned for several years. The original structure, affectionately dubbed the “love shack” was born as 1940s-era military housing that in subsequent decades became an uneven hodgepodge that defied local permits and was slowly sinking into the sand.

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"I think an architect’s job is to celebrate what people really care about and simplify and streamline the rest.” —Page Goolrick

Built to go off the grid, this remote beachside cottage can open up completely to the outdoors with its series of movable wall-sized glass panels and screens. Designed by Herbst Architects, the modest New Zealand bach comprises two rectangular pavilions built with mostly natural materials chosen for their durability, texture, and weathering characteristics.

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 family spends summers and school vacations at the bach. New Zealand's relatively mild winters mean they use the house year-round.

Throughout the home, the original strip-wood floorboards were preserved and painted a soft, muted gray. The cool tones of the kitchen are punctuated by a bright yellow children's table by the bay window.

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

For the facade, exposed to the constant salt air, the team considered everything from copper or zinc to Kynar-coated aluminum. Eventually, a sample of titanium was tacked up for six months and showed no wear. “Part of the green philosophy is not just what is cheaper; it’s what’s sustainable,” Cranston explains. “The titanium cladding was more expensive, but this is a house we plan to be in for the rest of our lives, so we wanted something that needed virtually no maintenance.”

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.

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

The kitchen and dining area opens onto a patio. Photo by Ken Pagliaro Photography.

Having purchased the land from a friend who also has a house in the community, Schneider had a better sense of what she wanted—and what she didn't—her site. "From the experience at the neighbor's house," Foster says, "she knew she didn't want the house to have its back to the morning sun so we created a deck and somewhere to sit outside that faces east." Don't miss a word of Dwell! Download our FREE app from iTunes, friend us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!

Though the house is a conversation piece in the more traditional neighborhood, its natural materials nicely complement its surroundings.

The backyard sports a sequence of raised flower and vegetable beds and two green roofs—one atop the workshop and other atop the back entrance.

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.

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Villa by the Ocean, 2004, features a long, low profile and a green roof.

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

The steps lead to a roof deck, where the owners can enjoy sweeping views of the ocean.

The streetside facade, dominated by site-poured concrete, contains the garage, from which Jacobson and Dukes escape for a quick surf.

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

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 couple, both surfers and beach lovers, wake up to stunning views of the azure-blue Southern Ocean in their otherwise monochromatic eucalyptus master bedroom. Wardle’s firm designed the bed base, and the panel in the ceiling hides a television.

In the master bathroom, the couple traded an outdated tile tub for the BOV 02 from Wetstyle and added fixtures, towel bars, and hooks from Vola. The hallway, which retains its original black granite floor, leads past paneled walls to a deck.

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.

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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.