Located on a steep site with limited suitable building ground, the firm decided to cantilever the home over the hillside, which has the effect of helping the structure blend in with the landscape.

The home is embedded in a hillside with five feet of soil above it. In addition to blending the structure into the landscape, the surrounding earth provides natural insulation.

The outdoor room is backed by a gabion wall made of stone. Rainwater runs off the roofs into a channel before being funneled through pipes concealed within it to an underground concrete tank.

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.

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

Using natural materials is one way of bringing nature indoors. Oiled white ash floors and ceilings, along with Italian poplar and Lawson cypress joinery, are found throughout architect Andrew Simpson’s 538-square-foot home outside Wellington, New Zealand.

The exterior of the Popadich residence is modeled after boat storage sheds, while the interior is outfitted with industrial concrete and ply.

GilBartolomé Architects says the metal facade looks like "the skin of a dragon set in the ground when seen from below" but "waves of the sea when seen from above."

Located in New Zealand, this compact prefab vacation home in the seaside community of Onemana Beach was a collaboration with architecture students from Auckland’s Unitec Institute of Technology.

The sunny side of the home is clad in cedar weatherboards and features sleeping quarters on the upper level with living spaces below.

Open enclosures and connections to adjacent living spaces keep the home inviting and airy rather than densely packed—a key feature for an owner of two dogs: Ben, a whippet, and Flynn, an Irish gypsy dog.

Oriented to absorb the afternoon sun, floor-to-ceiling doors comprise two-thirds of the home’s west-facing walls, which open to an elevated deck overlooking Island Bay. Combined with extra-thick building insulation, this passive element provides sufficient heating for the home, even during winter months—a true feat given the region’s cold seasonal winds.

Architect Bergendy Cooke, who worked for Zaha Hadid and Peter Marino before returning to her home country in 2007, is an admirer of the strong, sculptural architectural forms that appear in Japanese and Spanish architecture. Outside Queenstown, she put her ideas into practice in a home that would be the benchmark for bc+a studio, her own venture. The combination bunk bed and playhouse is a whimsical gesture the architect designed specifically for her two daughters. The spaces are organized in such a way that they can play independently or together.

Playing off the work of artist James Turrell, as well as the front porch scheme prevalent in the South, an outside living room of the Lewin House by Dencity is half covered and half open to the leaf canopy overhead. A pair of teak armchairs are clustered around a Laguna fire table from Restoration Hardware.

As the facade of a Bates Masi-designed home in Water Mill, New York, rises from eight to 14 feet high, the mahogany planks subtly widen. “It was quite a demand to make of the contractor,” architect Paul Masi says. “But the design was so much about traveling through the site and weaving [the house] together with the deck.”

Stradwick House Plan A Deck B Dining Room C Living Room D Kitchen E Bathroom F Bedroom G Master Bedroom H Study-Office

Architect Ben Waechter wrapped the upper floor of Nick Oakley’s house in inexpensive black corrugated steel. By rounding the corners, Waechter avoided unsightly trim at the edges.

The house's angled placement on the site, as well as its narrow footprint, provide effortless cross ventilation and abundant natural sunlight.

In the master bedroom, a Mandal bed from Ikea is draped with a Tuuli duvet cover by Marimekko.

In this kitchen and dining room, architect Bergendy Cooke rethought traditional wood panelling using black pigment-stained veneer. The kitchen has expansive surfaces, including a long, wood-topped kitchen island where the couple cook and entertain, and where the children eat and play. "All of the materials were selected for their integrity and longevity," says Bergendy.

In the kitchen, the cabinetry is walnut veneer with a weathered finish applied by cabinetmaker David Rogers. “The process involved sanding and rubbing in stain as well as adding a clear finish,” project architect Eero Puurunen says.

For now, one-year-old Awa is small enough to sleep in the hammock that hangs from the ceiling.

Manning House by Jack Manning (1960)

The house that Henri Sayes designed for himself and his wife, Nicole Stock, is distinguished by a cutaway in the cedar cladding that mirrors the angular double-height space within. In the yard, a grassy berm, fashioned from earth excavated for the foundation, takes the place of a fence.

Ballantyne House by Warren & Mahoney (1959)

Simpson runs his practice, WireDog Architecture, from his home study, where custom bookshelves line the perimeter of the mezzanine for a storage solution that doubles as railing.

The home also extends into outdoor panoramas, even—and especially—from the ground floor, where a westward-facing deck cantilevers out into the lush landscape.

A cantilevered second floor addition wrapped in black corrugated steel gives Nick Oakley's home in the Alberta district of Portland an industrial feel from the outside, one that is countered by the welcoming, wood-dominated interior.

“I suppose you could consider me part of a subculture who lived in various inner-city spaces,” says Simpson, whose previous homes include ad hoc spaces in industrial warehouses, floors of office buildings, and units above shops and bars. In designing his Island Bay home completely from scratch, he retained his experimental spirit: “We wanted a house that responded to our wider social, environmental, and economic concerns rather than something that blindly followed convention,” he says. Unassuming in sight, the home’s corrugated-metal cladding (above) recalls the tin shed, a vernacular housing type in the region.

Cooke clad the building in a black-stained, sustainably-grown Canadian cedar, a durable choice that ages well and requires little maintenance. The dark glazing was chosen so windows appear seamless, accentuating the form of the building.

Floor-to-ceiling windows from Sierra Pacific offer views across a cedar deck to the backyard. Oakley says he and Waechter asked themselves, “How would we build something that’s functional and warm and utilitarian, and have some vestige of familiar architectural reference?”

Friends from Tonko's hometown of Bregenz, Austria, commissioned the studio when they acquired some land next to their home. They use it for drawing and sketching, as well as creating clay and gypsum sculptures that are later cast into bronze. Since the area is close to where he grew up, Tonko was incredibly familar with the view from the hillside.

The architect specifically chose a palette of natural finishes, including the polished concrete floor that flows the length and breadth of the ground level. By way of contrast, the couple’s eclectic collection of much-loved vintage furniture, including Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, an Artemide lamp, and this 50-year-old sofa by mid-century Swedish designer Arne Norell, provide color and warmth. “The bookcase also makes use of space to add layers of texture. Books are always a great addition to any interior,” says Cooke. The Beni Ouarain rug was purchased on a trip to Morocco.

To the east, through the kitchen, it captures a luscious view of a green nikau palm grove.

With its pitched roof and verticality, the house blends with the surrounding seaside neighborhood yet remains architecturally distinct thanks to its aluminum cladding.