Big Branch Woodworking and Lackey Construction fabricated the cabinetry throughout the home, including the birch built-ins in the mudroom, designed by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design. Each family member has his or her own cubby with storage for coats, shoes, hats and gloves, with built-in outlets for charging iPhones.

Built-ins reduce the need for furniture.

The outside deck, made of local celery-top pine, welcomes both humans and the natural landscape further into the house.

A wall of built-in shelving runs the length of the space, providing ample room for the residents' book collection.

The house, which was built in 1922.

Alex enjoys a sun-filled breakfast at the built-in dining table and bench, one of many space-saving designs.

Anne Suttles waters the bamboo muhly, palo verde, strawberry tree, and magic carpet thyme thriving in their Austin yard.

Spiekermann and Dulkinys agree that their house—the first they’ve built from the ground up—is definitely different.

Here's the new layout, with furniture being built in.

Waechter Architecture reimagined a traditional gabled home in southeast Portland without significantly altering the original building. A simple coat of red paint abstracts the century-old structure, creating a residential work of art.

The clients and design team chose to forego an open floor plan in favor of defined, separated spaces. In this scheme, the vertically oriented spaces act as a cinematic "hard-cut" to their horizontal counterparts. The custom hot rolled steel kitchen, one of these vertical transition spaces, receives light from above through a Velux skylight. A GE Profile Induction cooktop and oven and Miele refrigerator complete the space.

A tight construction budget informed the choices Sean Guess made as he designed a house for a couple in Austin, Texas. Budget-minded materials, like the James Hardie fiber-cement siding, helped hold construction costs to $130 per square foot. Sherwin-Williams’s Cyberspace hue colors the exterior and Parakeet coats the custom kitchen cabinets by Austin Wood Works. The planter is made from Cor-Ten steel.

Paul finds a hiding place amongst the bedroom built-ins.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

Corporate high-flyers and admitted neat freaks Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton couldn’t handle the chaos anymore. Read more about this Victorian terrace in London here.

“In this house, the roof is the only facade—the rest is dissolved beneath it.” —Architect Aljoša Dekleva

Inside the sleeping cabin, a fireplace built of local granite marks the midpoint between two bedrooms and a bathroom. The floors and walls are wrapped in warm-hued Douglas fir.

At the entry looking upward towards a Velux skylight, a vertical "sleeve" is made of stacked end grain plywood. The theme of vertical and horizontal architectural elements providing different environmental perspectives carries through to the rest of the home. Horizontal forms look out to the lake, while the vertical columns look up the sky.

The unit can be configured to allow room for meal preparation around a built-in kitchen.

Elsewhere, the blocks accommodate other uses, like support for a built-in table and benches in the kitchen and a rooftop observatory (next slide) for watching the sun set over the Ilaló volcano.

On one side of the house, a white central staircase leads to a split-level landing the Robertsons call "the reading room." "We needed a place to hang out and for the kids to read," explains owner Vivi Nguyen-Robertson. Awaiting the birth of the couple's son, she relaxes in a built-in reading nook in the library.

Seen in the architectural context of its London neighborhood, the house is all the more extraordinary: compact, materially innovative, and easy on the eyes.

During the renovation, Grimley and Smith added built-in storage to keep clutter in check.

Custom built-in furniture takes design cues from the home’s timber frame. The staircase and all built-in storage objects are made of wood. Two black wood units separate the stairwell from the living room and kitchen.

A bank of built-in shelves lines the hallway.

The guesthouse has similar built-ins and is outfitted with a reproduction rotating sconce by Serge Mouille and rugs by Stephanie Odegard.

Photo by Patrick Barta

The dining room leads onto a terrace with a built-in concrete table and barbecue that are original to Raman and Schaffrath’s design. A pair of Hardoy butterfly chairs from Knoll are positioned by the pond.

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.

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

Our kids are our future—teach them to be conscientious and kind to Mother Earth with these sweet, informative children’s books.

Home Renovation Tip: Get an Understanding of What’s Already Around

Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

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.

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. Photo by Nic Granleese.