The restrained 820-square-foot interior is defined by the angular ceiling. Garlick left the prefabricated structural panels unfinished to save on material costs. A True North wood stove from Pacific Energy heats the house. Max, the family’s cat, naps on a vintage rug purchased on eBay.

"The cedar siding is simply stained with a black semi-transparent oil stain [from Cabot], which allows the color of the wood to still emerge through,” architect Robert Hutchison says. “We love how the black color makes the building recede into the background, and how it in turn allows the trees on the site to emerge as the highlight.”

The extended clan, which includes about two dozen members, collaborated with Gray Organschi Architecture to design an inclusive home for three generations.

The view as it appears today.

Architect Jesse Garlick’s rural Washington vacation home references its rugged surroundings. The steel cladding has developed a patina similar to the ochre-red color of bedrock found in the area.

A narrow building next to the main structure houses storage and an outdoor kitchen.

Architect Christi Azevedo, along with homeowners Lorena Siminovich and Esteban Kerner, transformed this 1,485-square-foot, multilevel, mid-century maze into a modern and efficient family home in just three months. “It was the craziest frickin’ thing,” laughs Azevedo. “It was like a Tetris game, putting it all together, trying to squeak out space wherever we could.” Purchased as if straight out of 1955, the home is now the ideal small space for Siminovich and Kerner to raise their young daughter, Matilda.

The Andersen Architectural Collection’s Eagle windows and doors provide the panes and passageways of the home.

“The home is quite small, but designed in such a way that you don’t feel it,” Herrin says. Lift-slide openings by Quantum Windows & Doors, which were fabricated fewer than 50 miles from the house, make the main living space seem larger.

The floor-to-ceiling windows at either end of a Seattle boathouse allow light to stream through the entire 1,000-square-foot space.

Hale and Maisie peer out of one of the living-room windows, from where Edmonds (pictured at left with Pippa) dreams about installing a zip-line directly to their garden patch.

The bathroom features Chromtech tile, a Toto toilet, Kohler vanity, and powder-coated steel countertop.

The spacious house features five bedrooms and six baths, plus a notable art collection and an in-home theatre.

Completed in 2008, the rectilinear home features a roofline with a dramatic parabolic curve that creates two bulbous volumes inside the home, one of which houses a curved skylit shower.

Olson Kundig Architects created Studhorse in Washington's remote Methow Valley as four structures oriented around a central courtyard, each positioned to best enjoy the surrounding vistas in all four seasons.

One of the main goals of the construction was to do as little harm as possible to the existing environment, which includes waterways that salmon depend upon. Herrin and his team created a garden roof that covers the full extent of the home to meet this objective. “This helps control storm water runoff and also replaces lost insect habitat—insects being a critical food source for juvenile salmon,” he says.

The bedroom is outfitted with only the basics.

Olson Kundig Architects' Delta Shelter, in Mazama, Washington, is a 1,000 square-foot steel box home with a 200 square-foot footprint. Photo by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects/TASCHEN.

“BLK_LAB uses a series of thoughtfully placed windows to achieve a combination of passive solar design and an advanced thermal envelope,” says architect Christopher Patano, founder of Seattle firm Patano Studio Architecture. The home is insulated with cellulose, a material made from 85 percent post-consumer recycled content, which is densely packed into each stud cavity.

“There had been two or three primitive cabins on the property in the past, which resulted in a clearing that we utilized for the site,” Joseph Herrin says. “This allowed us to avoid any further tree removal for construction, and provided an opportunity to begin to restore that portion of the property with native landscaping.”

“The liberal use of wood roots the structure in the landscape and provides the owners with an experience strongly connected with location,” Herrin says. The exterior’s Western red cedar shingle siding has a semi-transparent stain, half Fieldstone and half Burnt Hickory from Cabot.

Studhorse | Olson Kundig

George Nelson's book Tomorrow's House, classic Neutra homes, and the contemporary architecture from the sunny state of California's all provided inspiration for Peter Bracher's personal Genesis Project.

A supposedly impossible site was the perfect plot for Hale (pictured) and Edmonds, who were searching for some sort of break that would afford them the chance to build their own home. Stilting the house over the steep hill gives them direct access to nature while still being located just a ten-minute drive from downtown Seattle.

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.

The couple made the house feel even more spacious by flooding a series of levels with natural light.

The “mid-ground” between the three structures serves as a community hub. Dick takes advantage of the site’s shared bicycle storage and its proximity to a popular bike lane.

Another view of the kitchen. What looks like drawers are not all drawers—some are false cabinet fronts that conceal appliances.

Rolling Huts (Winthrop, United States) A series of six modernist huts created by Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects, the Rolling Huts look like rustic case study homes, a herd of designer cabins that just may exemplify the term 'glamping.' Elevated on stilts, the 200-square-foot structures offer another level of outdoor accommodation. Photos by Chad Kirkpatrick

On Vashon Island, about 20 miles southwest of Seattle, architect Seth Grizzle designed a 440-square-foot multiuse structure for his clients Bill and Ruth True.

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.

Taking inspiration from train cabins, the guest bed lifts to reveal a bathtub. Garlick made the mechanism using sailboat hardware. The velvet curtain is by Restoration Hardware and the tile is from Stone Tile.

The floating bookshelf is composed from wood found on the property. Garlick purchased the Technics turntable and receiver from a used audio store.

A sofa from Design Within Reach opposes a Hi Turn chair by Bensen in the living room.