The couple designed the master bedroom, choosing a new red carpet inspired by the original and a Half Moon pendant by Allied Maker.

The staircase was painted white to promote uniformity of design.

The kitchen and dining area features an integrated system by LIXEL, a custom-made table, and Tendo chairs. A bespoke, curved bookshelf wraps around the wall beneath a panoramic window.

Seen from above, the two houses look like triangles joined at their long edge to form a square. The side facing the street is curved, presenting what Nakasa calls a “morphological contrast” with the gable roof peeking out behind.

The ceilings of the two houses were at slightly different heights, an incongruity Nakasi played up for visual punch. He exposed the beams in the higher ceiling and painted them white to match the smooth finish of the lower one. The desk beneath the window is from Muji.

More prized possessions that made the cut: A George Nelson Half-Nelson lamp sits atop an Alexander Girard bedside table.

The blue porcelain tiles covering the house’s exterior are typical of commercial buildings of earlier decades. “It was intended to invoke nostalgia of the past and newness at the same time,” lead architect Akio Nakasa says.

Globe pendant lights by Panasonic hang whimsically throughout the house. The strip window sits high for privacy.

The main entrance sits on the second floor, accessible by a back staircase that Nakasi says is meant to “raise expectations” as guests ascend. It opens onto the living room and kitchen.

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.

This airy addition on the back of a historic house in Boise is a model of sensitive renovation, seamlessly melding new and old. Photo by Lincoln Barbour.

Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton behind their London home.

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

This outdoor chair from designer Damian Velasquez is both striking and strikingly comfortable—you might not believe you're sitting on metal. The mesh design is sturdy, but has just enough give to conform to your body. The heat-dispersing, wind-resistant powder-coated stainless steel construction makes it a smart addition to your yard.

O Table by Half 13 $2,800 This curvy powder-coated stainless steel outdoor table, fabricated by Damian Velasquez in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is available in nine vibrant colors.

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.

“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.

A skylight was added to bring in more light, and the existing ceilings painted Benjamin Moore ‘Black Tar’ for contrast. The island pendant is the Schoolhouse Ray 17” Pendant and the stools are the Artek Aalto High Chair K65.

“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.

Chair No. 35 by Half13.

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

Where once there was a timeworn 1950s bungalow in the Metropolitan Green Belt south of London, there now stands a dynamic house whose two volumes are joined by a glass atrium. The project was designed by Grant Freeman of OB Architecture.

Churtichaga and de la Quadra-Salcedo purchased a parcel of former farmland to build their vacation home twelve years ago but only recently completed the house—a timber-clad minimalist structure expertly designed to disappear into the scenic landscape.

Half13's outdoor pieces can be powder coated with a spectrum of bright hues.

Atherton's bedroom also contains a miniature piano; outside is a red bud tree, an appealing spot for mellow contemplation.

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!